I was sitting at home bored one Friday flipping through the channels, when I came upon a women's professional basketball league called the A.B.L. This was not a game of seven-foot giants dunking the ball and celebrating afterwards; this was a game played by five-foot giants with heart and determination. This was a pure game. It was a game that the founder of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, would have been proud of. This was a game where, with each bounce of the basketball, you saw all ten players on the floor dripping with sweat, playing their hearts out as if the decision of the game held their lives in the balance. In this game of high-intensity play with heart and determination, there was one woman who caught my eye: Jennifer Rizzoti.

Less than two minutes into the game, the five-foot-five-inch Rizzoti, while trying to take a charge from the six-foot-three-inch Marta de Souza Sobral, suffered a cut to her right eye. With blood dripping, Rizzoti headed for the locker room. Now, for any NBA showboat, this injury would have been enough to stay out for the rest of the contract. For Rizzoti, however, this meant rushing back on to the floor with 6:20 left in the second quarter. This was just twelve minutes after she received the cut, which required seven stitches. In fact, this injury was so gruesome, it prompted the announcer to remark, "I didn't know she (Rizzoti) played hockey in her spare time." Rizzoti did not miss a step however, scoring eight points and dishing out five assists, while leading her New England Blizzard to a 100 to 73 victory over the visiting Richmond Rage. Rizzoti did all this filled with adrenaline from the adoring Hartford Civic Center crowd, in front of whom she had also played at the University of Connecticut.

This high-intensity, well-played game prompted me to take two actions. First, my parents and I will try to get tickets to a Blizzard home game. Secondly, when I am sitting home bored next time, I will definitely check to see if there is an A.B.L. game that I could watch. l