Posted: 10/10/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Trent Meacham

Trent Meacham and Theresa Lisch spent their first date in an unconventional location. They passed up the movie theater, the coffee shop and all the restaurants and headed to the basketball court.

Chaifetz Arena, the St. Louis University basketball facility, may sound like an odd location for a date until one discovers both are Division I basketball players: Trent, a redshirt senior guard at Illinois, and Theresa, a junior and leading scorer on the women's team at St. Louis University.

The two first played a game of H-O-R-S-E. Lisch swept the first round and only lost one shot in the second round. But Meacham recovered winning the next contest, a game of one-on-one. Trent and Theresa acted more like adversaries than mutual admirers on their first date.

"She was competitive," Trent said. "She was playing hard, so I liked that."

Fast forward a year, and Theresa and Trent are engaged to be married. Both love basketball and each other, but the passions have no immediate correlation. Rather, basketball was simply a catalyst to finding each other and serves as just another side conversation in their daily phone calls.

Theresa didn't suspect anything different during her visit to Champaign on Sept. 13. Some friends told her they thought Trent was quieter and more nervous than usual. But Theresa couldn't see it. It just seemed like every other weekend they saw each other.

The two walked down the Quad and sat down to chat by the Eternal Flame, the Class of 1912 monument located between Lincoln Hall and the English Building. A campus myth says that lovers who kiss beneath the Eternal Flame will have a long and happy relationship.

After a couple minutes of conversation, Trent bent down on one knee and pulled out the ring, a band with a princess cut diamond surrounded by a halo of smaller diamonds.

"I immediately started crying and somehow said yes," Theresa said.

Meacham said it took him "a while to get down on one knee" but said his marriage proposal turned out perfectly.

"I didn't want to do anything public or anything," Trent said. "It didn't have to be anything spectacular, but it was really nice. It was just the two of us."

But the union of Trent and Theresa almost didn't come to pass.

Trent befriended Kevin Lisch, a St. Louis University men's basketball player, during a basketball tour of France with Athletes in Action in August 2006. Trent stayed in touch with Kevin after the tour and started to hear from mutual acquaintances that he should meet Kevin's sister, Theresa.

Continued...

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