“If the rules mean anything, she shouldn’t be in this bracket.” Imani froze. Her mother had moved apartments late in the summer after a rent increase. There had been weeks of forms, school visits, bus route changes, and nights when Denise seemed more tired than a person should be. Imani had enrolled in South Dock properly, but fear did not wait for facts.

She imagined being told told she could not play because an address on an old record was different from her current one. It would mean a group of strangers were trying to take a hard-won chance and tech converted it into a technicality. She took the concern to Ward rather than confronting the parent. Ward listened and pulled a copy of the tournament rules from her folder. The fictional Metro Civic Classic required proof of current enrollment and a signed school eligibility statement by a submission deadline.

It did not require a player to live in one address for 6 months. Ward had submitted the roster through the school’s registrar several weeks earlier. She showed Imani the school copy where her name appeared beside number 12. “Could they still object?” Imani asked.

“They can file a protest. Anybody with a team in the tournament can ask us to check, but an objection isn’t a fact, and this is a record we can verify. “What if something didn’t go through?” “Then, we fix the record with the original submission. We don’t make up a story. We use what we sent.”

The coach’s confidence helped, but it wasn’t permission to stop worrying. The school office was closed for the afternoon, and the old confirmation message was buried among hundreds of emails. Ward said she would contact the registrar before the semifinal. She did not pretend paperwork would vanish because South Dock deserved to win. She also refused to make a student responsible for a tournament clerk’s filing system.

That evening, the team returned briefly to South Dock’s gym. Ward had planned no more than 20 minutes of shooting, but Imani asked for one last look at her right-side bank. Zora held a pad at an angle, giving her a shoulder to move around without making real contact. Imani missed twice, corrected her approach, then found the backboard softly. She made four in a row before the fifth spun out.

“That’s the one you need to remember.” Ward said. “The miss. The one after it. If somebody stops you, you don’t get to decide the next move until you see what they do.”