Field of Schemes by Jennifer Coburn Page B

competed in and how her team ranked. Clearly we were going to fail the written part of this test. I glanced over at Rachel, who was running around the periphery of the field with several dozen other girls her age. How many spots were on the team? What were her odds? For Rachel this may have been a field of dreams, but for me it was a field of nerves.
    When I returned the form to Francine, she flipped through the pages and said, “You didn’t finish filling it out, dear.”
    Standing before her, I felt naked. “Rachel’s new to soccer.”
    “Okay,” she chirped, sounding like she was masking her real message: These blank spaces don’t bode well for her.
    “And this Purple Sparrow team?” Francine asked, looking at Rachel’s application. “Where’s this league?”
    “It’s a Kix team,” I said. “On the rec side.”
    “I see.”
    I wasn’t sure why I needed Francine to encourage me. She had no say in whether or not Rachel made the team. “Preston invited her to try out for the team,” I explained anyway.
    “Oh,” Francine said, sounding impressed. “That’s a good sign.” Why did I need validation from the check-in lady? Why did I feel relieved, and in fact proud, when Francine turned to Rhonda next to her and added, “Her daughter was scouted by Preston. From the rec program . ” The woman raised her eyebrows with approval. Now I could move on, which was surely appreciated by the woman standing behind me in line.
    I walked over to a cluster of parents gathered around Preston asking questions. Soccer tryouts were the first daytime kids’ event I’d ever been to where there were just as many fathers as mothers in attendance. The coaches had dispersed and were with different age groups of girls, each taking notes on a clipboard.
    “Today we’re looking at their individual ball-handling skills,” Preston said, clearly continuing after a parental interruption. “And at the callbacks on Friday, we’ll do some one-v.-ones and a few game-related exercises.” Callbacks? There was more than this? “Then, at the final callback next week, we want to see their chemistry so we can put together teams that work well together. Does that make sense?” I hated when people asked whether something very simple makes sense. Did he think we were idiots? Or was I just cranky because I realized that this stress-induced nausea was mine for another week?
    A woman built like a potato asked, “Will all the girls get to come to the callback?”
    Preston shifted his weight uncomfortably. “This is the part of club soccer I like the least,” he said. “Some girls won’t be at the level we need them at, so there’s no point in bringing them back and wasting your time.”
    A skinny woman with red hair raised her hand. “What if our daughter is having a bad day today? Can’t she have another chance?”
    Oh God, please don’t let Preston mistake her for me. We have the same features, except for the deep lines on her forehead, surely a result of years of asking questions from a position of powerlessness.
    Preston sighed. I could see that he wanted to extricate himself from this conversation, but needed to stay put until the parents dismissed him. After all, if the club was going to ask these folks for thousands of dollars to let their kid play soccer, it had to make sure everyone felt heard, served, and validated. I wondered how the American customer service mentality and California New Age style seemed to a native Jamaican. We must have seemed like a high-maintenance lot, to say the least. Tryouts had started more than twenty minutes ago, but Preston was far from being released. “I’m sorry, but in order to evaluate the girls properly, the groups need to keep getting smaller,” he explained.
    This was Soccer Survivor.
    Before Preston could excuse himself, a Latino dad in a Yankees wool hat and too-long windbreaker jumped in with another question. “Say you know today that you’re taking Savannah. Do I still gotta