Travel Team by Mike Lupica

summer, Mr. Ross had called up Coach Kel at the summer camp he ran in the Catskills and told him that he, Mr. Ross, planned to coach the seventh graders himself this season.
    Coach Kel had called Danny when it happened, wanting him to know, saying, “I think Mr. Ross’s first choice to coach Ty all the way into the national spotlight was Phil Jackson. Obviously his second choice was himself.”
    â€œBut everybody wants to play for you,” Danny said. “Including Ty. Especially Ty. I don’t think he’s crazy about having his dad as his dad . Having him as a coach will probably just make him crazy.”
    That was when it still mattered to Danny who was going to coach the Vikings this season.
    â€œBefore I get too much older,” Coach Kel said, “I’ve got to get as good at kissing butt as I am with those X ’s and O ’s and that passion-for-the-game stuff.”
    Mr. Ross said Middletown Basketball loved Coach Kel’s enthusiasm so much that he wanted him to drop back and work with the fifth graders. Coach Kel turned him down, saying he wanted to work with older kids, not younger kids.
    Danny didn’t know what Coach Kel was doing now, whether he was coaching somewhere or just teaching phys ed at Christ the King High School. Danny just knew that kneeling at the middle of the court with all the players around him, speaking in such a low voice that Danny couldn’t hear what he was saying from his hiding place, was Mr. Ross.
    Coach Mr. Ross, that’s what he’d probably have them call him.
    Danny could see all of the usual suspects out there, trying to act as if they were fascinated by whatever pep talk—or sermon—Ty’s dad was giving them:
    There was Ty’s best friend, Teddy Moran, who was going to be one of the point guards on the team, along with the kid from Colorado, Andy Mayne. Danny noticed that Andy, who’d had long hair almost down to his shoulders for the tryouts, now looked as if he’d gotten his hair buzzed to look like Ty’s. He was also wearing the same McGrady sneakers as Ty. Top of the line, a hundred bucks, maybe more. Andy’s hair and sneakers at least made Danny smile. A lot of kids who grew up in Middletown tried to copy Ty Ross. Now the new kid from Colorado was the latest to run with the crowd.
    Danny saw the two black kids on the team, two of the coolest kids in the whole town, Alex Aaron and Daryll Mullins, both of them as long and skinny as Ty.
    Towering above everybody was Jack Harty, star tight end on Middletown’s twelve-year-old travel football team. Jack, with his dark complexion, looking big and wide like some dark-colored Hummer H2, was a born rebounder, stronger than everybody else his age, one who had a way of finding the ball once the people around him stopped flying off in different directions, like characters he’d just terminated in a blood-gore video game.
    Jack Harty was also famous in Middletown for being the only seventh grader who had already started shaving.
    Huge deal.
    So there they all were. Ty and Teddy. Alex and Daryll and Jack and the rest of them, Mr. Ross reaching into the big bag he had next to him and passing out practice jerseys, the guys trying those on before Mr. Ross went into the bag and came out with more goodies: long-sleeved navy-blue shooting shirts you could wear over your jersey while you were warming up.
    Great, Danny thought. What did Tess and her friends call it when they went girlie-girl shopping?
    Accessorizing?
    Now they were even doing that with travel basketball.
    â€œFirst class for you guys all the way,” Mr. Ross said when he was done passing everything out. He was walking toward the stage now, where he’d left his bag of basketballs, walking straight at Danny as if he’d noticed the narrow hole in the wall. “First class all the way for a team that’s going all the way this season.”
    He was a little taller than Danny’s