Ever since I was a teenager I noticed that one of my mom’s biggest wishes was to have the opportunity for her child to go away to a University. Unfortunately she was never going to fulfill that dream though me because I had no intention of going to college. I hated school. My attitude was “college isn’t for everyone” and I let that be known to everyone who even uttered the word “college”.
Every Sunday morning my mom would get me up and cook breakfast, we’d sit down at the table as she looked at all the sales ads. I always noticed that she enjoyed ads from Target and Wal-Mart those most. She would spend a lot of time looking the “Back to School” (particularly college) sales. She would just love looking at everything they had to decorate a dorm and etc. I would feel bad that I wasn’t the one to go away to college but the weight was lifted off of me when she started having more kids when I was 13 years old.
When I was thirteen she had my little brother, and then when I was sixteen she had my little sister. My brother wasn’t exactly the studious type either. However my sister made decent grades and she is an excellent athlete. She was the best in basketball and track. My mother and myself know absolutely nothing about sports so for a long time we had no idea what kind of potential my sister had. It wasn’t until I attended one of my sister’s first track meets that I realized that she was good enough to get a scholarship.
I knew that my mother would not be able to afford tuition at a university. I knew that my sister’s high school was not doing anything extra to obtain a scholarship for track; their main

concern was football. And I knew that my mother would not know the first thing about getting my sister a scholarship. In knowing all of this I also knew that if it was going to happen, I’d be the one to do it. One day I wrote down all of my sister’s stats from both basketball and track and I put together an athletic resume. I also made a virtual athletic resume. I went to every university website that I could think of and got the email address of all their coaches and for months I would send her resume in a word document as well as the link to her athletic resume. I was unsure if anyone would bite but I knew I had to try. I would be up until three and four in the morning getting email addresses and sending out her information. Immediately we were flooded with emails and phone calls about their interest in my sister. So many that we were a bit overwhelmed. There were coaches flying in from Nebraska to meet her and take all of us out to dinner. A coach from Texas A&M drove about six hours to our home to meet her. There was even a college in Mississippi that paid for a round trip ticket for her to come visit their school. In the end my sister ended up picking University of Texas in Arlington on a full scholarship. My mother was on cloud nine. On the day that we moved my sister in her dorm I could tell she was so happy. After we got my sister settled, as a family we all went out to eat. My mom gave a toast and a special thank you to me for everything I did to get my sister a scholarship. This was the best feeling in the world knowing that even though I wasn’t the one to go to a university; I was the one that fulfilled her dream through my little sister.