Soon to turn 19, Brandon was enjoying his freshman year at the university. This had been his first time actually being away from his parents’ home. Just before leaving for winter break, Brandon had seen that there would be try-outs for the baseball team once the spring semester started. He had played baseball as a child, in middle school and freshman year of high school but decided not to pursue it any further during the remainder of his high school years as he was more involved in his academics.

Brandon returned home for the winter break, enjoyed the holidays with his family, the first time that he’d gotten to see all his family since his high school graduation party. He spent time catching up with his high school friends, most of whom stayed behind in his small town to pursue trades or community college. January came and Brandon returned to his university dorm room a week early, to prepare himself for his busy semester ahead. He had already made his way to the bookstore to pick out his reading material for his upcoming classes and had started to browse through them, trying to get a head start on the semester. Brandon was a very knowledgeable freshman, graduating salutatorian from his high school, all the while maintaining that trim but fit athletic body that he had formed from playing sports growing up. His shaggy blonde hair, blue eyes and trim but muscular build always caught looks from the girls on campus, and many of the guys too. But Brandon wasn’t looking for anything romantic, he was there to focus on his goal of becoming an aeronautical engineer.

As he passed through the dorm hallway on his way to get lunch, Brandon again saw the flyer for baseball tryouts. He stopped and put the information in his phone to remind him of the date. He thought about it several times during winter break and just wanted to see if he could make the team and if so, if he could balance his class work with practices and games.

The coming weeks saw classes return and slightly warmer weather. One Tuesday morning, Brandon woke up and looked at his phone. There was the reminder that he put in several weeks ago, “Baseball tryouts”. They were this afternoon! Brandon went to his morning classes, grabbed a sandwich from the café for lunch, and went to his only afternoon class. Afterwards, he returned to his dorm room, changed into some jogging pants, threw his hoodie and sneakers on, and headed to the baseball field.