and laughing. Second string doing the same thing.
And the blue team. My team. We just sort of stood around, looking at each other like we weren’t really sure why we were even there.
“All right, men,” Coach Bear said, waving us into one big group. He crossed his arms. They were so hairy it made his gut look like it had a unibrow. He dragged one hand down his mustache and sighed. “Thursday’s our first game. Pine Ridge Middle.”
Coach Donnelly nodded. “Gotta watch their backfield.” He was basically a miniature version of Coach Bear.
“Yep. We’re five-and-oh against ’em but that don’t mean we ain’t gonna go out there and play like we’re oh-and-five, right?”
The team grunted out a round of cheers.
Coach Bear pulled his baseball cap down. I wasn’t sure how he ever saw with it covering ninety percent of his eyes. “That’s what I wanna hear! We’re gonna go undefeated, boys. I ain’t gonna accept a loss. Not with the offense we got this year.”
More cheers. Grunts.
“You know my favorite saying. Second place is the first loser. We gonna come in second Thursday?”
After a loud round of NO s, we took off for our warm-up jog.
Football practices would be so much better if they were like all the training montages I’d seen in the Step Up movies. The ones where the music starts and the hero gets a determined look on his face while he dances in front of the mirror, messes up, wipes the sweat off his face, and keeps going.
But they’re not.
Like…at all.
They’re more like getting chased by a whistle-blowing pit bull while you run through a trail of old tires and jump over cones with trip wires strung between them. Last year I almost passed out during our first few practices. I wasn’t used to all the running and jumping.
This year was different. My body stayed on the edge of exhausted all the time, but I kept going. Even Coach Bear noticed me a couple of times.
I won’t lie. It felt great.
I even got a “Not bad, Parker, now see if you can run like that with a ball in your hands” from him. He put me in on a play while Bobby Fleagle, the first-string running back, was getting some water. DeMarcus glanced back at me, giving me a good job nod.
My body buzzed with excitement. It made me want to push even harder. So I did. DeMarcus called, “Hike!” and rammed the ball into my stomach. I took off, remembering the way Bobby had gone the last few times he ran the play.
There had to be a trail of fire behind me, because I was a rocket and I wasn’t about to stop.
Except I did. I didn’t see who it was, but a pair of hands landed on my shoulders and shoved me over the sidelines. Our first practices were always padless, so we weren’t allowed to tackle. But apparently throwing someone halfway to China was okay.
Thankfully, I didn’t black out. However, I did land on my shoulder so hard the only sound I could make was a humming noise that sounded like a stray cat pushing out a litter of kittens.
The thud of footsteps filled my ears. My teammates’ heads popped into view one by one. The coaches shoved their way through the crowd. For a while nobody said anything. Which made it even worse. Like they were watching a cockroach on its back wiggling its way right side up. It was humiliating. My face felt red-hot and ten sizes bigger than usual. My hands were all sweaty, sliding over the bumpy covering of the—
The football! I yanked my head off the ground and looked at my hands. Yeah, I might’ve been tossed out of bounds by the Incredible Hulk, but I’d held on to the ball.
Coach Bear smiled. “Way to hustle, kid.”
DeMarcus grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet. “Nice run, Dillon.” I did my best to play it cool, but trust me, inside, my stomach was dancing harder than the entire cast of High School Musical.
Even though my spine was probably broken. And my feet. Maybe Dad was right about needing new cleats after all.
At dinner, I almost collapsed into my plate
And the blue team. My team. We just sort of stood around, looking at each other like we weren’t really sure why we were even there.
“All right, men,” Coach Bear said, waving us into one big group. He crossed his arms. They were so hairy it made his gut look like it had a unibrow. He dragged one hand down his mustache and sighed. “Thursday’s our first game. Pine Ridge Middle.”
Coach Donnelly nodded. “Gotta watch their backfield.” He was basically a miniature version of Coach Bear.
“Yep. We’re five-and-oh against ’em but that don’t mean we ain’t gonna go out there and play like we’re oh-and-five, right?”
The team grunted out a round of cheers.
Coach Bear pulled his baseball cap down. I wasn’t sure how he ever saw with it covering ninety percent of his eyes. “That’s what I wanna hear! We’re gonna go undefeated, boys. I ain’t gonna accept a loss. Not with the offense we got this year.”
More cheers. Grunts.
“You know my favorite saying. Second place is the first loser. We gonna come in second Thursday?”
After a loud round of NO s, we took off for our warm-up jog.
Football practices would be so much better if they were like all the training montages I’d seen in the Step Up movies. The ones where the music starts and the hero gets a determined look on his face while he dances in front of the mirror, messes up, wipes the sweat off his face, and keeps going.
But they’re not.
Like…at all.
They’re more like getting chased by a whistle-blowing pit bull while you run through a trail of old tires and jump over cones with trip wires strung between them. Last year I almost passed out during our first few practices. I wasn’t used to all the running and jumping.
This year was different. My body stayed on the edge of exhausted all the time, but I kept going. Even Coach Bear noticed me a couple of times.
I won’t lie. It felt great.
I even got a “Not bad, Parker, now see if you can run like that with a ball in your hands” from him. He put me in on a play while Bobby Fleagle, the first-string running back, was getting some water. DeMarcus glanced back at me, giving me a good job nod.
My body buzzed with excitement. It made me want to push even harder. So I did. DeMarcus called, “Hike!” and rammed the ball into my stomach. I took off, remembering the way Bobby had gone the last few times he ran the play.
There had to be a trail of fire behind me, because I was a rocket and I wasn’t about to stop.
Except I did. I didn’t see who it was, but a pair of hands landed on my shoulders and shoved me over the sidelines. Our first practices were always padless, so we weren’t allowed to tackle. But apparently throwing someone halfway to China was okay.
Thankfully, I didn’t black out. However, I did land on my shoulder so hard the only sound I could make was a humming noise that sounded like a stray cat pushing out a litter of kittens.
The thud of footsteps filled my ears. My teammates’ heads popped into view one by one. The coaches shoved their way through the crowd. For a while nobody said anything. Which made it even worse. Like they were watching a cockroach on its back wiggling its way right side up. It was humiliating. My face felt red-hot and ten sizes bigger than usual. My hands were all sweaty, sliding over the bumpy covering of the—
The football! I yanked my head off the ground and looked at my hands. Yeah, I might’ve been tossed out of bounds by the Incredible Hulk, but I’d held on to the ball.
Coach Bear smiled. “Way to hustle, kid.”
DeMarcus grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet. “Nice run, Dillon.” I did my best to play it cool, but trust me, inside, my stomach was dancing harder than the entire cast of High School Musical.
Even though my spine was probably broken. And my feet. Maybe Dad was right about needing new cleats after all.
At dinner, I almost collapsed into my plate
Similar Books
