For Alicia Lang, it started as just a dream and turned into reality – and one of the best moments of her life.

Lang, 16, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system. A defective gene and its protein product cause the body to produce thick mucus that clogs the lungs and affects the pancreas, stopping natural enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.

About a year ago, she was in the hospital at Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center in Ohio, and when people from the Make-A-Wish Foundation asked her what she would like to do, Lang knew exactly what she wanted.

She wanted to come to New York City, come to the US Open and meet her favorite player, Maria Sharapova.

And on Monday night, her entire dream came true, as she met the 2006 US Open champion prior to the Opening Night festivities honoring all 40 US Open champions.

On the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the Langs were brought to meet the tennis star. Alicia spotted Sharapova as her family walked towards her, and when the star turned around, she greeted Alicia with a big hug.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Sharapova said, as she bent down to hug Lang.

The three-time Grand Slam champion, not playing in the 2008 US Open due to an injured shoulder, proceeded to ask Lang if she had seen other players around the grounds, if she liked Arthur Ashe Kids' Day and how much she plays tennis.

Alicia said she just plays for fun now but her brother Nick, 13, plays in tournaments.

“So I’ll see you here in a few years?” Sharapova told Nick of the US Open, bringing smiles and laughs from the Lang family.

She gave Alicia a signed photo, and she also signed a framed photograph, a racquet, as well as an article written about Alicia in 2005 and a hat for Nick, who also has cystic fibrosis but a milder case.

After a few minutes with her idol, Alicia was moved to tears and almost speechless. The meeting went just as she had pictured.

“It was the perfect greeting (the hug),” Alicia said. “She commented on my outfit, she said it was cute. She was so nice and so tall.”

“It was pretty fantastic,” added Mary Kay Lang, her mother. “It was nice of her to take a few minutes to spend with us.”

The Make-A-Wish Foundation provided Alicia and her family – her parents, Jim and Mary Kay, and Nick – the airfare to New York City from Cincinnati, lodging for three nights, a shopping spree at Macy’s and sight-seeing.

It was then through fundraising efforts and donations around their home that the Langs were able to raise the money to afford to stay in New York for the Open after the three days provided by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

And it was through the combined efforts of the USTA, the Midwest Section, including Executive Director Mark Saunders, and the Midwest Youth Tennis and Education Foundation that the Langs were provided tickets to Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day, as well as the day and night sessions for Day 1 and Day 2 of the 2008 US Open.

A former Midwest Section volunteer knew Sharapova’s agent and then helped make the meeting with her happen this past June. Alicia was originally supposed to meet Sharapova at Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day after her scheduled press conference.

“I just sat there. You don’t think when you hear something like that,” Alicia said when she heard the news the meeting with her idol would happen.

Alicia also is a big fan of Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic and loves Sharapova because of her on- and off-court activities.

“I just really like her,” she said of Sharapova. “She does all this other stuff, and she’s good.”

But then came the news in early August that a shoulder injury would keep Sharapova out of the US Open. Alicia, Mary Kay and Nick were at the Olympus US Open Series tournament in Cincinnati, when Jim called Mary Kay to tell her he had heard Sharapova was not playing at the US Open. They told Alicia that night.

“I just said ‘What?’ like 10 times,” Alicia said when she heard the news. “I said, ‘Are you serious?'”

Last Sunday, just a few days before the Langs were due to arrive in New York, the Langs received an e-mail from Saunders detailing the trip, and they discovered the meeting with Sharapova was still possible.

“We assumed all along (since hearing of her injury) that she wasn’t going to be here,” Alicia said. “It was a huge relief.”

Alicia was also carefully able to work out her hospital stays so she would be able to make the trip to New York.

She is in the hospital for two weeks at a time about every three or four weeks for intravenous antibiotics to help her breathing and kill the bacteria in her lungs. Born with the disease, it was diagnosed when she was five.

Neither of her parents have the disease, but both are carriers of the gene.

In addition to the hospital stays, Alicia has three treatments a day for 24 minutes each using a nebulizer, which is like a pipe that is plugged in, to breathe in a mist that helps break up the mucus in her lungs.

To help her digestion, she needs to take pills whenever she eats food with fat to help her body break up the fat. In fact, because her body flushes through fat, she has to eat a very high-fat diet. At night, she gets 1,500 calories in a formula inserted directly into a G-tube in her stomach.

She also has CF-related diabetes and has a diabetic pump that provides insulin, so she does not have to have needles everyday. And because her IV treatments are so frequent, she had a port inserted under the skin under her arm to attach the IV to.

Unlike Alicia, Nick has not had a hospital stay since 2001 and does not have a G-tube or a pump. He plays tennis competitively at tournaments on the regional level, whereas Alicia no longer does. The two started playing tennis when Alicia was in sixth grade, and she played for her middle school team.

Now Alicia will be a junior at Lakota West High School this fall and takes some electives online but takes the rest of her courses at school. A sport she enjoyed, both Alicia and Nick randomly ended up playing tennis.

“Nick was playing baseball, and I said I wanted to play a sport,” Alicia said. “I looked through the newspaper – I was looking up places near our house – and I saw tennis.”

The Langs first had contact with Sharapova three years ago after an article was written about Alicia and how much she liked Sharapova in the Cincinnati Inquirer. A family who knew Sharapova read the article and contacted the reporter, asking how to contact the Langs. In response, Sharapova sent Alicia a few Nike shirts, a sweat jacket – all with ‘Maria Sharapova’ on the label – some hats, as well as an autographed racquet.

But the best part of the presents was a handwritten note from Sharapova that said, "You are such an inspiration to me."

On Monday, Alicia got to hear it in person.