ESPN.com Feature: Tanner Smith

Feb. 19, 2009

It was a typically frantic Monday morning and, hurrying to get out the door, Kathy Smith started to scratch her name on her son’s homework assignment when she stopped to read what he had written.

The fourth-grade creative assignment was pretty straightforward: If I Had Three Wishes.

Kathy smiled as she read the first item on her son’s bucket list: a golden retriever. Ever since he met a slobbering canine friend across the street, Tanner had been hounding his parents for a puppy. But with the holidays closing in, his parents already had warned him: Don’t bother asking Santa for a dog.

His second wish was to play professional basketball, hardly a surprise for a young jock like Tanner, who spent his time shuffling between the football fields, baseball diamonds and basketball courts in his Alpharetta, Ga., community.

It was the third item that made Kathy stop.

Click here to read the complete feature article written by Dana O’Neil for ESPN.com.