Tulsa Shock

Author's Note: Today you are going to be reading a creative piece. I decided to write this because I was inspired by her talent with a basketball. Make sure to pay attention to how they work to get better.

Congratulations Mackenzie Schill, you have just have been accepted to the WNBA, read a sheet of paper from the Tulsa Shock. When she opened this letter she was so happy that she fainted, in other words gravity pulled her down to the ground. When Mackenzie came to, she knew that she was going to really have to work her butt of to play.

It was her first day playing with Tulsa Shock. She felt like she had to use a lot of speed in order to keep up with the other players. They did a lot of drills involving momentum, after a while of those drills they got into shooting. A lot of taller stronger people aren’t as good at shooting as guards, you could tell because the taller people had to force the ball to get the ball to the hoop. Now Mackenzie is a guard so shooting was one of her specialties.

After they worked on their shooting skills, they helped the centers work on their moves. They had little girls guard the big girls so that if they had a mismatch they would have the advantage. The posts also practiced going up against girls that were the same size as each other, so that they could improve their moves and be able to beat anyone under the hoop.

For the next part of the girls practice they worked on acceleration. They had to learn how to speed up and beat their defender down the court. They practiced this by doing suicides. Suicides are sprints running from the baseline to the free-throw line back to the baseline to the half-court line back to the baseline then down to the opposite free-throw line back to the baseline, then to the other baseline and back. This helped with acceleration because you have to work on stopping and then starting up and regaining your speed.

Since the girls were already working so hard, their coach decided to make them push them a little bit harder. The team was pretty fast with their feet, but their coach wanted to make them even better. She wanted to make them do defensive slides, which are where you slide from one lane line to the other and you go for as long as your coach tells you to. It kills your legs, after you do them for about a minute, your legs start burning. I can relate, since I have had to do them a lot in my career.

The coach finally decided to lighten up on the girls since they were working really hard. Their coach wanted them to do free-throws while their legs were tired, so it would prepare them for tough games. After shooting about 20 free-throws each practice was over. Mackenzie knew that she was going to have to work her butt off for the rest of the season, seeing as this was her first practice. She knew that it would get harder as the season went on. 

Compare and Contrast

Colton

-          Not a bad kid
      Has parents

-          Lives in a house with family

-          Good friends

Roger

-         Troubled child

-          No parents

-          Lives on the street by himself.
      No friends 

-        

       

      Both  

      Both at a young age. 

-         Both have problems in their life, right now.
      Both scared because of their situation. 

-          

Death and Tragedy

Author's Note:  I decided to write about Charlie St. Cloud  because I thought it would be a good book to write a theme essay on. Make sure to pay attention to the main theme in this book. 

Sadness is something that most people have in their life. In the book Charlie St. Cloud sadness is something that happens to the St. Cloud family. Everyone has to deal with sadness once in their life at least. A family member dying, finding out that your someone in your family has cancer, or worst of all one of your siblings or parents dying. In Charlie St. Cloud Sam, one of the main characters dies, therefore making a tragedy strike in the St. Cloud family. 

If someone close to you dies, you got to be brave and fight through it. Charlie St. Cloud, Sam's brother, has to do just that. Sam was one of Charlie's best friends, I can feel Charlie's pain. I lost my grandpa, he was really close to me; we would always make jokes. When he died, I knew I had to be brave and not let the fact that one of my best friends was gone. I knew that he was in a better place though. 

A lot of people just feel like giving up on their lives when someone important dies in their life. I can say that I was more like Charlie in this case because I was brave and was only upset about his death for 2 or 3 days. Charlie in this case was brave but, he could still be with his brother. In the book it says that Charlie would meet Sam in the woods around sunrise to help him get better with his baseball throwing. When Sam dies, he doesn't fully leave Charlie's presents. During the funeral for Sam, Charlie decides to run away to the spot where he swore he would meet him. When running through the woods Charlie tripped and fell, when he looked up he saw Sam. You could tell that Charlie was shocked to see him standing there in front of him. Sam looked at him and said you 

didn't forget about our deal did you? From then on Sam and Charlie met there until Charlie met a girl. Of course the guy choose the girl over a guy. My point that I am trying to make is that you got to be brave because even when people pass on, they will always be with you, if you can see them or if they are just watching over you. 

If you think about it, Charlie St. Cloud  and The Last Song are similar in ways. For instance in Charlie St. Cloud Charlie's little brother dies, in The Last Song Ronny; the main character, her father dies yet she is brave and fights on with her life. Both books have a death occur in them, also in both of the books the main characters both get involved in a relationship. A lot of things can happen in books that are the same in other books. 

In conclusion I think that there can be many themes in a book, but the main theme in Charlie St. Cloud is bravery and courage. The reason I think that bravery is the main theme is because that happens a lot in the book. I guarantee that there are more than one theme in every book, but there is one dominate theme. 

A New Ending

Author's Note: I chose this as my predicting piece because I thought it was pretty well detailed. Also because I liked this story a lot, and thought that I would bring this story back up.

When he made his way out into the world, he had just realized that the women who he had tried to steel her purse, just gave him 10 bucks. He was deciding what to do with the 10 dollars he had just gotten. He wanted to get the suede shoes he wanted, but when he realized that Mrs. Jones just changed his point of view on life, on people. As the days went by Roger thought about the 10 dollars more and more, he kept wondering why she had given him the ten bucks. Was it because she felt bad for me? Was it because she didn't want me to get in any more trouble? Or was it because she wanted him to be a successful. We will never know for sure.

He felt bad for taking the 10 dollars from the women, he wanted to repay her by getting her gift. He decided to go to the store and get her a bracelet. It was maybe 3 weeks later when he finally returned the favor. He walked up to her house, knocked on the door and when she opened it he said hi, remember me? She replied with a faint answer of yes. Well if you remember the time when you gave me the 10 dollars, this is to repay you for this. She asked why are you giving me this bracelet? His response was you changed my point of view on life, and you have changed my life, I am not steeling anything anymore. This is just my way of saying thank you. He started walking away, as he was, Mrs. Jones just kept staring at him. And they never saw each other again. 

There's A First For Everything

Author's Note: I decided to write this story because it was actually one of the better days of my basketball career, I'm saying this because I usually get yelled at during basketball. It was one of the days I will never forget. Make sure to pay attention to how me and Haylie became closer just by basketball. 

It was the first day of basketball try-outs. There was a lot of people trying out, a lot of which I knew. There was this one girl who stood out, at least to me. It was the first time I was seeing this girl. Everyone seemed like they knew her. I was really confused, so I went up to Kenzie; one of my friends and asked her if she knew who she was. Kenzie replied with a yea, thats the new girl from Arrowhead that our coach was talking about. Just as I was going to reply the coaches blew their whistles and said that the try-outs were going to begin. We were in line getting our numbers, when I said my very first words to Haylie. I remember saying Hi, my name is Becca, I hope we get to play together.

We got our numbers and the coaches told us to line up in number order, as we were finding out the order, I realized that I was 2 people away from Haylie. As usual they split us up into even teams. They didn't know what Haylie was like, whether she was one of the better players or one of the not so good ones, so Haylie and I got put on the same team. For me the tryouts were the same as they always were, for Haylie you could tell that at her old school she did something different then us. We got started right away and after a little bit of playing time with Haylie I could tell that we were going to be on the same team. 

When we were about to leave the tryouts one of the coaches told us that we would not find out the teams until the following week. So we all waited and waited and waited until, we finally got the packets we were all waiting for. The moment of truth was going to be revealed, would we be adding a new teammate and losing one, or will we be the same old team we are known for. I opened my packet and read Congratulations Becca Groer you have made the Pewaukee black team. As soon as I finished reading mine, I turned to Haylie to ask her what team she was on but I figured out the answer immediately, I could tell it was good because she was jumping up and down with excitement. 

It wasn't too long after finding out the teams that we had our first practice. The first time being together is always the worst and the best practice. It's the worst because its the first time being with your team and coaches; its the best because all you basically do is go over simple drills. Haylie caught onto the drills pretty quickly, not saying that the drills are like rocket science, but it took me a couple of times to perfected them. It only took Haylie 2 or 3 times to get them perfect. Once I saw what Haylie can do with a basketball, I knew that we were going to be even better then we were the previous year. 

It's a couple years later now and Haylie is still apart of our team, she still is one of the better players on our team. Haylie will have a good future playing basketball and I hope that I will be able to play with her in high school. Haylie and I can help each other out with more stuff and make each other better. I hope we will play basketball together for a while. 

The Voices

Author's Note: I wrote this prediction because we had to. Also because this is what I thought was going to happen in the end of the movie. 

What I think that will happen is that the kids will figure out a way to tell someone-- like another teacher or the principal, so that the teacher will get in trouble. I think that it is going to end like that because I have a gut feeling that the teacher will get in trouble for having such a creepy thing in his classroom. Cause I feel like the teacher always gets in trouble. 

My prediction was was incorrect, because the teacher didn't get in trouble. But I still do think that is going to happen, because as I said before I feel like the teacher always gets in trouble. 

Crazy, True, Sad and Happy

Conflict: The main conflict in Heaven is for Real is that there is a little boy name Colton who is going through a pretty rough time. This would have to be a person vs. self because it is him and something in HIS body there for making it be person vs. himSELF! He is not yet 4 years old and his appendix irrupted. There are many conflicts in this book such as the fact that his parents didn't know what was wrong with Colton, until after about 20 hours of miserable pain, they took him to the hospital. He was throwing up consistently, and he was like in a daze the whole time; it was caused because of all the "poison"   leaking out of his appendix into his body. 

Resolution: The resolution here is that his parents got him to the hospital just in time, to get the "poison" out of his little body. I guess you could say that he was one very lucky duck that he is still alive. He must have been very brave also because he had to go through surgery, if it was me I probably wouldn't have gone through with it, even though it means life or death. To me the real main resolution here is that the doctors got the "poison" out of him and was able to safe the kids life!