“Hey, David. What’s up?” I answered
my phone, wondering how he got my number.
“Hi, Coach.” He sounded sort of
worn out and defeated. “Umm….I’m not gonna be able to play our next game, I
don’t think. Sort of sick.”
“Okay…thanks for letting me know.
What’s the deal?” “Sinus infection, and my dog just died.”
“Ah…Yeah, makes sense.”
“I just – I feel like I’m letting
y’all down, but – and I’m nearly better, but…losing Penny, I just…can’t play.”
“I understand.”
“..You do?”
“Yeah…lost several pets in the last
year. Several friends, family…it won’t be okay, really, ever. But you’ll learn
to move on past it.”
“If you say so.”
“Whenever you can play again, we’ll
be glad to have ya.”
“Okay."
“Heyyyy…” Chrissy’s tone sounded
strange.
“Yo, whazzup?”
“Um…well….I, uh, I’m stuck on the
side of the highway.”
“Okayy…”
“Yeah.”
“So…you’re stuck.”
“Uh-huh. Can you pick me up?”
“Chrissy – The game starts in –“
“I know,” she interrupted
miserably.
“All right, I’ll call Trent. Where
are ya?”
The game was held indoors at the
YMCA gym, the other site of games aside from Lawson Park, we were facing the
Morgan’s Bakery Dalmatians. The game ended in a 2-2 tie, it was described as “a
fiasco”. Alex and Zoey crashed into each other twice, Justin and Wayne got into
a fight and had to be suspended; and Trent got so frustrated he started cussing
a blue streak, which didn’t help things(at all). He was tossed out, too;
kicking the ball for good measure, it hammered some old guy’s head. Tammy Owens
came to the rescue, putting Questions in goal, moving Travis to defender alongside
Abby, Bailey moved up to midfield, Ashton to forward, Reese was put in as a
midfielder, with Alex and Zoey, both with sore knees and hopping around from
the pain, filling in as best they could at forward with Ashton and Kelsey. The
other games were less eventful, but still crazy, with the Wild Things beating
the Avengers 2-0 in the other inside game that seemed more like hockey than
anything else; and the Roadrunners tying the Falcons 1-1 outside, and finally
the Lasers and Mustangs battled to a 3-3 tie.
Chrissy’s car was in the shop for
several weeks. It made things interesting. Other factors which also made life
more difficult were Trent giving up on coaching and falling off the face of the
earth, the two-game suspensions for Justin and Wayne, several expletive-filled
angry phone calls from Wayne’s dad, and a handful of other things irrelevant to
this story.
Down three players, we were
stampeded by the Holden’s Drive-In Mustangs by a 6-2 score; we did play well as
a team, though. The next week we were able to tie the Lasers 2-all, which was
better than expected. They’d improved greatly from the start of the season.
In between those games, David was
welcomed back eagerly by his teammates as he came back for practice on Tuesday
night. “We missed ya,” Chrissy said. “Glad to have you out here,” He managed a
weak smile. “Yeah, thanks.”
“You doing okay?”
He tried to come up with an answer, but no words came. He shrugged
instead. “Depends on the day.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “Go work with
Bailey on his offense, try to take it away.”
He sprinted away, focus sharpened
on the job to do to keep him from thinking. Justin was doing the same drill
with Questions, as were Kelsey and Travis and Zoey and Wayne. Alex was trying
to coax Abby into playing, Ashton was working with Reese on the same subject.
“Maybe thrown-ins after this?”
Chrissy asked me on the sidelines.
“I was thinking passing circle, but
we could do that afterwards, I guess.”
“Okay,” my sister looked satisfied.
Tammy Owens walked up beside us.
“How’s David doing?”
We looked at her. “We were going to
ask you?”
“No, I meant on the field,” Tammy
clarified.
“It’s gettin’ his mind off losing
his dog for a bit, so that’s as well as can be expected, I guess,” I said after
a pause.
“Good,” she said.
“Did he catch a ride with you
guys?” Chrissy asked.
“Yeah, Ash and Alex have been
hanging out with him pretty often, helping him grieve, and just kind of being
friends He’s lonely. His parents’ divorce, that was rough on him, he’s hurting,
and then Penny on top of that….” Tammy shook her head.
“Ash is gonna be in David’s class,
and he and Alex both enjoy drawing. Then there’s soccer and stuff, sometimes
he’s came along with us to church, too. They’ve been playing Mario Kart all
afternoon, I was able to get over to Wal-Mart before coming we came over here.”
Chrissy and I nodded. “Thanks for
helping with the drinks and snacks and stuff.”
“Sure, no problem,” laughed Tammy.
“I was gonna pick some stuff up anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.”
Chrissy whistled the kids over to
work on thrown-ins. “Okay, y’all! We’re gonna try something a little different
here. When the ball goes out of bounds, then it works like basketball, and you
throw the ball back into play. Got it?”
“Could you show us?” (Who else?)
Questions asked. Several kids rolled their eyes.
“Sure, why not?” She demonstrated,
tossing a pass to Bailey. The kids practiced for a bit, Justin and David were
discussing something. “Hey, Chrissy?”
‘Yeah?”
“What if you needed to throw it….farther?”
“Like, if the defense was playing tight, but they’d overlooked someone else on
the other side of the field.”
She grinned. “Welllll…..in that
case…I’ll show ya. Ball help?” A silver ball was lobbed in her direction, and
with that, she proceeded to do a handspring and fling the ball across the
field, on one bounce it hit a goalpost and slowly came to a stop very near the
net. “Holy cow,” Tammy marveled. The
kids were stunned, then they started exploding. “HOW did you do that??” “Is that LEGAL?” “Get. Out.” “No. Way.” “Did
you just….?” “I can’t even…” Ashton and Zoey had a gleam in their bright eyes,
and Kelsey’s irises were huge in amazement.
“Uh….is it possible to do that in a
cartwheel?” Ashton wondered. “How do you practice that?” Zoey and Kelsey wanted
to know. “Is it possible for guys to do that?” somebody wanted to know.
“It’s actually probably easier to
do as a cartwheel, if you know how.” Chrissy tried to answer everybody’s
questions. “Guys don’t try very often, but occasionally you see ‘em try.
There’s not really a good way to explain how to do it except practice a lot.”
Naturally, that’s all anyone wanted
to try to do for the rest of that practice. Most attempted cartwheels failed
miserably, and I was no help, since I never really figured them out. So I kind
of held their ankles steady while they did headstands.
It was a July Saturday when we
faced the Falcons, which means it was HOT. Thankfully, it was an indoor game at
the Y. And they smoked us. The score didn’t sound too bad – Falcons 4, Panthers
2 – but it felt quite a bit worse.
We were doing pretty well to start
out with, Travis was pouncing on whichever few balls Bailey and Zoey couldn’t
get rid of, Kelsey and Wayne were sticking like glue to their kids, and David
and the Owenses were doing all those little things that usually don’t show up
in the stats, but were bound to show up on the video Sarah and Paisley were
shooting. When we swapped out players late in the first quarter, Abby did an
admirable job of being around the ball, and Reese tentatively poked his foot
out and nudged the rolling ball. Justin was getting double-teamed most of the
time he was in, and when he wasn’t, he was getting tripped. Stephen the ref
called them those times he could see the fouls happen, so it kind of worked
out.
“Does the other team being
sponsored by a funeral home strike
anybody else as kind of creepy?” Gary Owens asked around. “Sure it does,”
answered Kevin Patrick. “but they’ve got to advertise somehow, don’t they?”
Gary shook his head. “I suppose…” “It’s never too early to plan for those kinds
of things, you know. What would your wives say if they woke up one day and you
were gone without making any sort of arrangements?” Bailey’s grandma asked.
Kevin and Gary looked at each other. “Did she just…?”
The Falcons scored a goal late in
the second, we tied it up early in the third by way of Ashton’s pass to Kelsey.
Just after that Justin stole the ball and looked around to see who was open.
The quick answer was, well, nobody. So he just killed it along the length of
the gym; where the ball slammed off the back wall on one hop, Alex took control
and slipped it past their goalie before anyone quite realized what happened.
2-1 Panthers. And after that was when it really went south. Bailey missed a
takeaway attempt and Trav wasn’t ready for a shot so soon; that tied the game.
Then the Falcons lured Kelsey into a trap near the midfield corner, stole the
ball away and cut triangle-shaped holes in our shocked defense as they flew
upfield. David and Ashton’s attempts to halt their progress were miserable
failures; he spun around in confusion trying to figure out where the ball was
going and she slipped and skidded on her rear along the hardwood floor. If they messed up that badly, was there any
chance Trav could do anything to stop the other team? Late in the game Zoey was
charging towards an attacker, only to have Stephen the ref step unexpectedly in
her path. She cut hard to avoid him and wound up pulverizing poor Abby. Seeing
that unexpected hole due to the improvised pick, they shot and the ball went
past Questions. And that was pretty much the end.
Our last game of the season was
outside on the park field against the Shuttle Stop-sponsored Avengers team.
They had a redhaired girl that was a decent passer and another kid who was even
better than she was. They wore Nos. 11 and 8, respectively.
“Black Widow and Hawkeye?” Chrissy
asked, watching me watching them. I raised my eyebrows, she did the same.
“We’re siblings. Don’t ask how it works, I don’t know.”
Their goalie looked like he was
talking to himself. And chewing some teammates out. But he did command their respect…and had some serious jumping ability.
“Stark.” “Yep.”
We gathered our team around us,
their bright eyes glowing with excitement and fear. “This is a really good
team, guys, they play really well together. But if we work well together –
putting our teammates first – then we’ll see what happens on the scoreboard by
the end. Think you can take ‘em?” “Sure, why not?” Wayne answered immediately.
“Let’s play. We’ll find out.” David said. “That works for me.” Kelsey shrugged
one shoulder and grinned. Let’s go, then,” Chrissy nodded and the huddle
started to break up.
Justin looked thoughtful.
“…Avengers, huh?” Curious stares. “Yeah, that’s what they’re called…” “So, we
can pull together from everywhere else. Become a part of Larry’s nightmares.” I
had no idea what he was talking about, and nobody else seemed to know, either.
“Like Sherriff Tom told Larry in The Big
Green,” Alex explained. “I think it was that Japanese kid Tak who said
that, actually…” “Yeah, so, if they’re Avengers, why can’t some of us be, too?
Or other characters we like?” Justin continued. “Zoey, you’re the Energizer
Bunny.” She grinned in agreement. “David, you’re a little like Agent Coulson.
Alex, maybe a little bit of Loki? I’m not sure.” They looked at each other.
“I’d really be happy if you don’t kill me right now.” David said
straight-faced. “Kelsey, you’re Kate Douglas. The rest of you….I don’t know.
Just pick somebody, and give it the best job you can. Enjoyed having y’all on
my team.” “Well, that about covers it. Get on out there.” I herded them out
onto the field. “Um, Ryan?” “Hmm?” “Who do we have starting?” I chewed my lip
in thought. “Let’s set Questions in goal, and….I’ll let you guys figure the
rest out.”
They went with Alex and Zoey as
defenders, Bailey, David and Kelsey as midfielders and Justin as the lone
forward. An interesting idea, saving Wayne and Ashton on the bench. It seemed
to work pretty well, though; what we lacked in offense we kept them running
pretty fast while our Panthers played Keepaway. Nobody really had any chance of
scoring. The closest was when David and Hawkeye got into it a little bit
battling for control, tipping each other’s passes out away from their intended
targets. We switched to Trav in goal and swapped in Abby, Reese, Ashton and
Wayne for Alex, Kelsey, Justin and Bailey. The Avengers had their Team 2 out as
well, and things went about the same as ever.
Towards the end of the second
quarter the ball skittered out of bounds off of Red. Wayne started to make a
move to throw it back in, only to have Ashton stop him. He stared at her a
minute, confused, then shrugged and let her go. She took the ball from the ref,
backed up four steps, then launched forward into a cartwheel/handspring thing.
It caught me by surprise; and most of the Avengers. Our bench erupted; and the
stands were atwitter.
“Did you get that?” Kevin asked
Paisley, who was busily shooting away. “I think so….haven’t had time to check.”
“HOW did she…?”
“Is that LEGAL?” Gary Owens
wondered.
“You win the gold medal, Ashley
honey!” That last one was from Bailey’s grandma. There were a lot of snickers
and giggles following.
“Thattaway, Ash…” Chrissy murmured
approvingly.
Tammy’s fists were clenched, she
was biting her lip hard, terrified that Ashton would kill herself with gymnast
moves like that.
The ball flew through the air and disappeared into the cloudy sky. While
everyone else was shocked into spectating, David had snuck downfield and more-or-less
controlled the missile of a pass on two hops. Ashton bolted towards where the
ball had gone immediately after release, getting a jump on everyone else. Off-balance,
David passed it back up to the charging Ashton. She faked to her right, which
Stark the goalie bit on. David backed up to open a lane for her to shoot; the
ball was hit hard. The net rippled
from the impact, and the world blew up. Okay, I made up that last part. But it
would have been kinda cool….though we’d probably also all be dead. This is what
spending my summer with a bunch of little kids has done to me. Anyway, we all
went crazy. Ashton was group-hugged and high-fived, Chrissy was having a
conniption, I whooped and hollered and the parents were going berserk. “Nice
shot,” David commented. “Thanks. Get back on defense.” “Hey,” the Avengers’ No.
11 approached them. “Good work out there.”
We held the lead through halftime
and most of the third quarter. The Avengers had the ball deep in our territory,
Hawkeye had the ball down near the end line with the goal on his right and he
was being hassled by Alex and Justin. The Black Widow broke loose on the other
side of the goal and was spotted by her teammate. He snapped off a pass in her
direction, which looked at the moment very full of yellow shirts. She broke
away from Kelsey and leaped over David’s slide tackle attempt. Zoey was the
only defender left and she gamely tried to get between the ball and the
Avenger. But No. 11 ducked down and slid, her foot delivering a volleyball-like
cut-shot that Questions couldn’t track. Tie game. Zoey smiled her admiration of
her opponent’s skills. “That was nice,’ David said. “Thanks,” she nodded. From
somewhere in the stands a voice called out, “Way to go, Nat! Great job!” Nat
rolled her eyes. “Parents….” Kelsey groaned in agreement. “Gotta love ‘em,
but….yeah.”
It started raining a couple minutes
after that goal, and parents scrambled for umbrellas. Paisley and Sarah
hurriedly hid their cameras. The field turned into a muddy Slip’n’Slide, and it
was exactly like that early practice we had. Our most important players became
David and the Owenses out of necessity; they were our best passers. But the
field was a gigantic mud-pit. All we were missing were Ernie the goat and that
song “Sunny Side Up” over the montage. The game ended in a tie, which while not
what we were hoping for, it was better than getting beat 17-0, so that’s something.
We hosted a
end-of-season party down in Tulsa at Incredible Pizza, Wayne and Justin
challenged Kelsey to a pizza-eating competition; Abby loved the skee-ball,
which Trav and Bailey helped her with; Kelsey’s dad beat Questions in
mini-golf. I borrowed Paisley’s camera as most of the parents and Chrissy raced
go-karts; Tammy spun Sarah and Gary ended up winning. Abby gave Chrissy a huge
hug and said loudly, “I yove Kwissy!”
Chrissy grinned at the little munchkin. “You’re pretty great, too, Abby.” “Did
you have fun playing soccer?” I glanced at Heather Colson, who also looked
unsure if this question would be understood. “Me – I pway it again?”
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