by Mike Lupica
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It does to me.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Gabe said.
“Anybody can get hurt playing football,” Alex said.
Gabe gave her a long look and said, “I wasn’t just talking about getting hurt on the field.”
Alex knew he spoke the truth. Already she could tell that Coach was skeptical of her. What would the rest of the guys think? But she couldn’t worry about that now. Today was a win.
“See you Monday night,” Alex said before catching up with her dad.
“Unless you change your mind, of course,” Gabe said.
“I won’t,” she said. “Come on. You know me better than that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“You always knew I loved football . . .” she said.
“I thought that meant watching it.”
“Maybe I finally got tired of just watching.”
Gabe walked toward his dad then, and Alex looked around for hers. She saw him underneath one of the side baskets, talking to Mr. Mencken. Her dad seemed to be doing most of the talking. But at least he appeared to be acting cordial.
When they were in the car Alex asked, “What was that all about with Coach?”
“I just wanted to make sure we understood each other.”
“Dad,” she said. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him I wanted him to treat you the same as every other player on that field and work you just as hard.”
“And that was it?”
“Pretty much . . .”
“Daaaad,” she said.
She could see a smile creep onto his face.
“I might have mentioned one other thing.”
Now he was really smiling.
“What?” she said.
“I might have told him that if he tried to work you harder than everybody else, or didn’t give you a fair shot at making the team, I’d tell everybody that he used to cry like a little baby when we lost a game.”
“He did?” Alex said. “For real?”
“Waa waa waa,” her dad said, mimicking a whining toddler.
“Wait,” Alex said. “There’s no crying in baseball, but I never heard about football . . .”
One of their favorite movies to watch together was A League of Their Own, about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Alex’s favorite moment was when the team manager, played by Tom Hanks, told one of his players, “There’s no crying in baseball.”
“Same rule applies,” her dad said, winking.
4
Coach had sent out an email blast over the weekend to all who had registered for tryouts, explaining how there would be no contact or tackling drills until the roster had been set. The team’s first official practice would be held the following week, at the start of the school year.
But he reminded all the players who’d be attending the tryouts to show up on Monday night with helmets and shoulder pads.
The last line of the email read: “There will still be football activities this week. You all need to get used to dressing like football players.”
Alex didn’t have a helmet or pads. There had never been any reason for her to have them.
Until now.
On Sunday afternoon, Alex and her dad went shopping at the Dick’s Sporting Goods in downtown Orville. By then Jack Carlisle had done some online research about the best and safest helmets for twelve-year-old players. He told Alex it was the first time he’d had to think about buying a helmet since he was in high school and his own father had taken him to the local sporting goods store, back before superstores like Dick’s existed.
“Gotta tell you, kiddo,” he said. “These things cost a lot more than they did when I was playing.”
Alex grinned.
“I’ll bet a loaf of bread does, too,” she said.
“And I can’t believe how many different kinds there are,” he said.
“Waa waa waa,” she said, leaning into her dad.
All joking aside, Alex knew how lucky she was to have a dad like hers. One who not only supported her dreams but helped her reach them. She never took that for granted.
The manager of Dick’s, Mr. Pritchett, was an old friend of Alex’s dad. Over the years, they had bought Alex’s softball glove and bat and soccer shin pads and soccer spikes at Dick’s.
This trip to the store was different.
When Mr. Pritchett greeted them, he said to Alex, “Don’t tell me. You grew out of last year’s soccer cleats, right?”
“We’re actually looking for a football helmet,” her dad said.
Mr. Pritchett looked genuinely confused.
“Who for?” he said.
“Alex,” Jack Carlisle said, like it should be obvious.
Mr. Pritchett looked down at Alex. She smiled at him and shrugged. Then he looked over at her dad.
“Seriously?” he said.
“We hardly ever joke about football at our house,” Alex’s dad said.
“She’s going out for the team?” Mr. Pritchett said.
“That she is.” He put one arm around Alex and squeezed tight. Almost like he knew what was coming and was bracing Alex for it.
“But, uh . . . are you sure she can, um . . .” Mr. Pritchett paused, as if the rest of his thought had gotten stuck in his throat somewhere.
“Try out? Handle the pressure? Make the team?” Alex’s dad guessed, knowing full well that wasn’t what Mr. Pritchett was asking. “We wouldn’t be here if the answer to any of those questions was no.”
“I’ve sold girls lacrosse helmets before,” Mr. Pritchett said. “But I don’t believe I’ve ever sold a football helmet to a girl.”
Alex thought he made it sound as if he were about to sell a bicycle to a fish.
“Well, Scott, my old friend,” Alex’s dad said, clapping him on the back, “there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”
Then he told Mr. Pritchett that he was actually looking for a specific helmet, one he’d researched, a Riddell Youth Speed Flex.
“They’re kind of expensive,” Mr. Pritchett said.
“And kind of safe, too, from what I read,” Alex’s dad said.
Mr. Pritchett chuckled. “Helmets were a lot cheaper in our day.”
“So was a loaf of bread,” Jack Carlisle said.
He gave Alex a quick wink. She winked back. They were sharing a private joke.
Even though football, more than ever, was no joke with them.
The colors for the Orville High team were blue and white, and the helmets were white with blue trim. The kids trying out for the seventh-grade team were encouraged to buy white helmets, too, if possible. Coach Mencken made some suggestions about brands in his email but said parents were free to buy whatever they thought was safest.
Alex’s dad told her that the Speed Flex had gotten a five-star rating on safety and comfort.
“I was looking for six stars out of five, to tell you the truth,” he’d said to Alex on the way to the store. “I’ve read the same stuff about concussions as everybody else.”
“I know this isn’t easy for you, Dad,” Alex had said. “But I appreciate you letting me do it anyway.”
Mr. Pritchett said they were in luck. He’d just gotten a shipment of Riddell youth helmets that included the Speed Flex. And in the Orville blue and white.
“What am I gonna stock?” he said to Alex’s dad. “Notre Dame colors?”
Once Alex had a Speed Flex on her head, she thought it was pretty much the coolest thing she’d ever worn in her life. There were inflatable pockets on the inside that were supposed to provide extra protection. Alex had done some research of her own. The consensus seemed to be that the helmet should fit without having to fasten the chin strap
s. Hers did. But fastening the straps turned out to be no problem.
She secured the chin straps in place and walked over to look at herself in a mirror.
“It’s perfect,” she said to her dad.
“But does it really fit?”
“It fits so well that I may sleep in it,” she said.
“Okay, that’s weird.”
She took off the helmet and carried it with her to the section where the shoulder pads were. Dick’s carried three different brands, the names of which they recognized from the research they’d done. But they were set on Wilson Rush pads, which provided the same support as the other brands but just looked a little sleeker to Alex, even though no one except her was ever going to see them once she had her jersey on.
If she got to wear a blue Orville jersey.
When she looked at herself in the mirror with the pads on over her T-shirt, she thought she looked a little bit like Iron Man.
“I look like I’m on my way to Avengers practice,” she said to her dad.
“Maybe you should be, instead of football practice,” Alex heard from behind her.
Jeff Stiles, who’d been the quarterback on the sixth-grade team, and his dad had come walking into the shoulder pad section of Dick’s.
“What did you say?” Alex said to Jeff.
Jeff tried to act surprised. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “I didn’t say anything.”
But she knew what she’d heard, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
“Hey, Jeff,” she said. “You’re gearing up, too, I guess?”
“Just some new pads,” he said. “I’ve got my same helmet from last season.”
“Like he’s going to have the same job,” Mr. Stiles said, putting his arm around his son’s shoulders. “QB 1.”
Starting quarterback. His dad made it sound as if Jeff getting the job were a foregone conclusion.
Jeff looked at Alex.
“So you’re still doing this, huh?”
“I must be,” Alex said. “I think these pads would look pretty silly at soccer practice.”
“A lot of the guys think it’s pretty silly for a girl to try out for our team,” came Jeff’s retort.
“And not just the boys on the team,” Mr. Stiles added.
Jack Carlisle smiled at Jeff’s dad. But Alex knew her dad. It was the fakest one he had.
“You mean the parents, Bob?” Jack Carlisle said. “Last time I checked, middle school sports were supposed to be about the kids.”
“Like girls go out for football teams all the time,” Mr. Stiles said with an arrogant laugh.
“Not all the time,” Alex’s dad said. “Just this time. And like it’s always been: the ones who are good enough are the ones who get the jobs, same as it was when you and I were getting after it in high school.”
Alex looked to see what Mr. Stiles’s reaction would be. Her dad had told her that when he and Mr. Stiles were at Orville High, they’d both gone out for quarterback. Jack Carlisle had won the position as a sophomore and had kept it all the way through their senior season. Mr. Stiles had been a running back.
“Yeah,” Mr. Stiles said. He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice. “Good times.”
“Well, see you tomorrow night,” Alex said to Jeff.
“Good times,” he said, rolling his eyes.
* * *
• • •
There was one more thing for them to buy before football tryouts the following night:
A football.
Alex would have been fine if seventh graders used a regulation-size ball. She already knew she could grip one just fine. After all, she’d thrown a regulation ball at the fair to win Simba. But by now, she’d discovered they would be using an intermediate-size ball, a Youth Size 7.
A regulation ball, the size they used for high school football and college and the pros, was a 9.
Alex’s dad bought her a Youth 7 to take home with them, along with her new helmet and Iron Man pads.
The second they were home, Alex hurried to put on her helmet and pads, so she and her dad could practice with the new ball in the backyard.
“Did you hear what Jeff said?” Alex said to her dad.
“I did,” he said. “And I heard what his dad said, plain as day. Apparently he’s convinced that the football gods want his son to be the quarterback he never was.”
He shook his head. “It’s just football,” he continued. “But some things never change, even from when I was a kid. Some of the parents in the gym the other night were still making it out to be more serious than climate change.”
“I take it seriously,” Alex said.
“That’s different,” he said.
“How?”
“Because this is your dream,” he said. “And you’re allowed to chase your own dreams as hard as you can.”
“I do want this, Dad,” she said. “And I’m not gonna lie: Jeff and his dad’s attitude today made me want it even more.”
“It’s not about them,” her dad said in a stern voice. “It’s about you.”
“I know.”
“And yes, I know how much you want this, sweetheart,” he said.
She knew there was no way in the world he could see her smiling at him from behind her facemask.
“I’d appreciate it,” she said, “if you wouldn’t call me sweetheart when I’m in uniform.”
“Consider it done,” he said.
He jogged out to the middle of their yard. She threw him a pass, and then another, and another. Every time she caught the ball, she’d rub it up a little, like a pitcher with a new baseball, trying to bang it up a little. Make it feel less slick. She’d read about how when NFL teams got a new shipment of footballs, they’d do all sorts of crazy things to break them in for their quarterbacks, including sticking them inside a sack and banging it against a wall.
But the laces felt the same to her. And she felt as if she could control the smaller ball even better than a 9.
“How’s it feeling?” her dad asked, starting to back up a little.
“Sweet,” she said.
“Please don’t say ‘sweet’ when you’re in uniform, sweetheart,” he said.
Everything was fine back here, Alex thought, just the two of them. Like always. Playing a game of catch. Alex knew it wasn’t going to be anything like this tomorrow. She was going to feel like the new kid at school, even though she’d known most of these boys from growing up in Orville. She had lived here her whole life. But tomorrow she would feel like an outsider.
The girl who was always holding back, now putting herself out there, knowing that just about every other kid on the field had already made up their mind about her. Rejection was a feeling Alex knew well. Didn’t make it any less painful, though.
She had heard it in Jeff Stiles’s voice today. And he didn’t even know her dream. At least not all of it.
“You can really catch the ball,” her dad said. “Coach might take a look at those hands and try to turn you into a wide receiver.”
Alex had the ball. She didn’t respond, just motioned with her left hand for her dad to go long, toward their deer fencing at the end of the yard.
She let the ball go, not putting too much air underneath it, not wanting her dad to be too close to the fence when he caught up with her pass.
He wasn’t. He reached up and caught the spiral with plenty of room to spare.
“I’m not a wide receiver,” Alex said, taking off her helmet and shaking out her long brown hair. “I’m a quarterback.”
5
But was she, really?
Was she good enough to play quarterback?
Why? Because she could hit her dad with passes in the backyard when nobody was watching? Because she had enough arm and accuracy to win a stuffed animal at the town fair?
Alex was alone in her room. She’d set her helmet and pads on the rocking chair in the corner and spread out on her bed, new football clutched under her arm, laptop open across her lap. Her dad was downstairs watching the Pirates game on TV.
She was up here. Alone with her questions.
And her doubts.
It had all been so exciting at first, making the decision to try out. But then she’d gone to the meeting and seen the reaction all around her in that gym—from the boys, from the coach, and probably from just about every parent there except her own father.
Her dad had always told her she could do anything she set her mind to if she was willing to put in the work. And if she was good enough. And that didn’t just apply to sports.
That’s how Alex wanted this to go, hoped it would go.
Dreamed it would go.
She would show them she was good enough, and they would let her play, even if it meant playing quarterback.
But would it go that way?
Would Coach Mencken be that way?
Even Gabe, one of her best friends at school, didn’t seem all that thrilled about her showing up at the gym. Alex was worried that he might get some heat from the other guys if he showed support for her. Probably more if he embraced her as a teammate.
Maybe she’d even lose him as a friend.
She still hadn’t talked about the tryouts with any of her other friends, even though they all probably knew by now. Alex had purposely avoided Instagram since she’d gone to the meeting. Word traveled fast in a small town like Orville, and there were at least fifty guys her age at the meeting. Everybody in the grade had to be talking about it. None of her soccer teammates had reached out to her, but they had to be talking about it, too. The thought made Alex’s stomach turn. Trying out for football meant she couldn’t play soccer this season. The girls would be livid when they found out.
Or maybe it wasn’t nearly as big a deal as she was making it out to be.
It’s a big deal to me, Alex thought.
She wasn’t even completely sure why it was, though. Why this had become such a runaway dream so quickly. But it had. Maybe it was because she hadn’t pushed herself enough. Maybe it was because there was a part of her always feeling as if she were holding herself back.