by Mike Lupica
Clean catch.
First down.
She hit Tyler with a pass on the next play, and he ran fifteen yards with the ball before getting knocked out of bounds. Then she threw one to a wide-open Perry, and for a moment she thought he might go all the way until Jabril reached out and got his flag at the nine-yard line.
“First and goal,” Coach said. “And for today, we’re going to pretend there’s thirty seconds left in the game and we need a touchdown to win. Just to dial things up.”
Dial things up?
More than they already were?
Alex looked at Coach in the huddle.
“How many time-outs do we have?” she asked.
She thought Coach almost smiled. Just not quite.
“Smart girl,” he said.
Or maybe he meant smart for a girl.
“One,” he said.
She rushed a pass to Lewis on first down. He was open. She just missed him by being too anxious. The announcers on TV always talked about how the game slowed down in big moments for good quarterbacks. Only it had just gotten too fast for Alex. She told herself to slow down now, not get ahead of herself.
Just get the ball in the end zone.
If she did, she might make this team after all.
Maybe those weren’t really the stakes. But it felt that way to her, and that was all that mattered.
She missed Tyler on second down. This one wasn’t her fault. Tyler bobbled the ball slightly, and Jabril knocked it away for another incompletion.
The throw was to Perry again on third down. But Jabril blitzed. When Alex was out of the pocket this time, she decided to run for the score. Jake Caldwell was able to pick up Jabril and block him as Alex ran to her left this time. Alex turned the corner and thought she might make it, but at the last second she felt someone grab her flag. It was one of the safeties, Kerry Rhoades. Alex was still inbounds and immediately called time-out.
Fourth down from the one.
In the huddle, Coach said, “One shot at it. Run or throw?”
Alex didn’t hesitate.
“Gabe,” she said.
She looked at him and nodded. He did the same.
Coach said, “Push the boy guarding you a few yards into the end zone and then come back on a curl.”
“Got it,” Gabe said.
“No,” Alex said. “Get it.”
“You just get it to me,” Gabe said, “and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Coach told Alex to back off the line into the shotgun formation. Cal Calabrese, the center, would snap her the ball. He’d done it a few other times on the drive. The snaps had been perfect.
This one wasn’t. It came out of his hands low and hot, bouncing in front of Alex, immediately throwing off the timing of the play, especially Gabe’s pass pattern.
But when she finally collected the ball and looked to her left, he was still open, Kerry Rhoades having played too far off him.
Still time to get it to him.
She never felt Jabril coming from her blind side, never computed that fumbling the snap had given him more time, too.
As she brought the ball forward, Alex felt Jabril’s hand on her arm, then felt the ball come out of her hand and pop straight up in the air between them.
She reached for it. Too late. The ball fell right into Jabril’s hands, as perfectly as if he were her intended receiver. Jabril took off in the other direction, flying for the end zone at the other end of the field. Alex took off after him, but it was like chasing the wind. Or a speeding car.
Alex kept chasing anyway, not giving up on the play. But Jabril kept putting more and more distance between them, never once looking back.
In that moment, Alex didn’t imagine him just running down the field with the football under his arm. She imagined him running away with her chance of making the Orville Owls.
10
“I can’t blame this on anybody else,” Alex said to her dad. “I blew it myself.”
They were in the car, on the way home. It somehow seemed like they’d been coming the other way just a few minutes ago, showing up at the high school for the first night of tryouts. It had happened as fast as Jabril recovering her fumble and running down the field.
“The only person who thinks one play is going to be the deciding factor is you,” her dad said. “And by the way? It was a play at the end of the only successful drive the offense had all night. I know I’m not the most objective person in the world when it comes to you, but even if you include what happened at the end, you were the better quarterback tonight.”
“I needed to be a lot better,” Alex said, and slumped lower in her seat.
Coach had thanked them all for trying out before they left. He said that not everybody he’d watched over the past four nights had the same talent for football but that he would take into consideration how hard each and every one of them had competed.
“I could see how much you all wanted it,” Coach Mencken said. “I know you all want to make this team. But not everybody can. Sometimes not everybody gets a trophy.”
Then he thanked them all one more time and told them the roster would be posted on the school website at ten o’clock the next morning.
“Remember,” he said. “Nobody lost this week. You all gained a lot of good experience out there.”
In the car Alex said, “I just needed to complete that last pass.”
They were making the turn into their driveway now. When the car had come to a stop, Alex started to get out.
“Wait,” her dad said.
Her helmet was next to her in the back seat with her shoulder pads and the long-sleeve practice shirt she’d worn over them. Alex had changed into a black Steelers T-shirt and sweatpants but still wore her rubber cleats.
For a minute, she figured if she didn’t make the team, she could wear the same shoes for soccer. The rest of the world called it football. It just wasn’t the football she wanted to play. But then she remembered she’d missed soccer tryouts. She had nothing to fall back on. It was football or nothing.
Even if she could return to soccer, it would somehow feel like a consolation prize. Only because she’d had the most to lose by going out for football. If her name wasn’t on that list in the morning, she was going to feel like a failure in front of the whole town.
“You need to explain to me again why you did this,” her dad said.
He turned in the front seat to face her.
“You know why,” she said. “I wanted to be a football player.”
“And that’s exactly what you were tonight,” he said. “You made plays, and you didn’t give up, and you took your team down the field after Coach only gave you one shot to do that.”
“Then I made the biggest mistake on offense that anybody made all night,” Alex said. “On the last play anybody saw, starting with Coach. You know what he’s going to remember? That turnover. The big T-O.”
“No, he’s not,” Jack Carlisle said. “Unless he’s forgotten anything he ever knew about football. What he ought to remember is that a great defensive player made a great play on the ball. That’s not just football. It’s sports.”
Alex started to respond. Her dad held up a hand.
“I know your mom told you girls need to be better,” he said. “I don’t know about that. What I know is what I saw all week long. And Ed Mencken saw the same thing I did: that you’re good enough to be on his team.”
“I just wish I could have gotten us into the end zone,” Alex said.
“And I wish I hadn’t thrown the interception that cost us the championship game against Montville my senior year at Orville High,” he said.
Alex knew the story of that game, because her father had talked about it all her life. Usually it would come after losing an important game of her own or coming up short in a big moment.
Alex opened her door again and started to get out of the car. Then she stopped herself and turned back to her dad.
“I never asked you,” she said. “How long did it take you to get over that game?”
“You want the truth?” he said. “Because it doesn’t line up with the pep talk I’m trying to give my daughter here.”
“I always want the truth,” she said.
“I’m still not over it.”
* * *
• • •
Alex started up the stairs to take a shower and wipe off the night. Before she reached the landing, her dad asked if she wanted a hot fudge sundae when she came back down. Alex reminded him she’d already had ice cream today, but according to Jack Carlisle, you could never have too much ice cream. Alex thanked him for the offer but said she was going to turn her lights out early.
“Long night,” she said to him.
“Long week,” her dad said. “But you came through it like a champion.”
“Not feeling it, Dad,” she said. “You saw Coach had Lewis make some throws tonight. If all things are equal in Coach’s head, I bet he makes Lewis the backup quarterback and adds an extra kid at another position.”
“The one who should be the backup is Jeff the jerk,” her dad said.
“You’re being very immature,” Alex said.
“I can’t help myself,” he said. “It’s why your mom gave me that pillow in my office.”
They both knew the one he meant. The pillow said, YOUNG ONCE. IMMATURE FOREVER.
“I wanted this so bad,” Alex said, shaking her head.
“You want it,” he said, smiling at her. “Present tense. You know what an old baseball guy used to say? It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Then he walked over to where she stood at the foot of the stairs and gathered her in his arms, lifting her a few inches off the ground like he used to do when she was little. When she wasn’t a football girl. Just his little girl.
“I wish you were the coach,” Alex said into his shoulder.
“I feel like one up there in the stands,” he said. “You just can’t hear the things I’m shouting inside my head.”
* * *
• • •
After she’d washed up for the night, she thought about calling Gabe. Or Sophie. Or even her mom. But then she decided she didn’t need any more pep talks.
She shut the door to her room, turned off the lights, and closed her eyes. But as soon as she did, all she could see was the ball floating up between her and Jabril, and Jabril taking off with it down the field.
Welcome to football, she thought.
* * *
• • •
The next morning, Alex awoke next to her stuffed Simba. It made sense. He was the one who ultimately gave her the courage to talk to her dad about football tryouts. Now, after four days of exhausting drills and practice, only one decision stood in the way of Alex’s dreams. It came down to this. Either Alex would make the team and work toward becoming a better player, or she wouldn’t, and everything would come to a cold stop.
It was nine a.m. The list went up at ten. The wait was agonizing, but Alex passed the time by having a bowl of Cheerios and watching ESPN.
One episode of First Take later and it was five minutes to ten. Alex took the stairs two at a time up to her bedroom and grabbed her laptop off the desk. She opened it up on her bed, right next to Simba, her good luck charm. So many athletes had them, and now she finally understood why. But would it be enough?
Alex typed in the school’s website at one minute after ten. A few clicks in, she found the seventh-grade football team roster. The names were listed in alphabetical order.
Alex let her eyes wander near the top of the list. To the Cs.
The fifth name on the list was Rick Carbury.
The sixth was Alexandra Carlisle.
After that, the names blurred.
She made it. She was on the team.
Now she could finally say out loud what she’d been thinking.
“I’m a football player.”
11
The first day of school the next week was also the first day of football practice.
By now Alex knew the first day of school was always the same, a combination of nerves and excitement. She was curious to see what her classmates had been up to all summer. Some came back a few inches taller, or with a new haircut or wardrobe. Since Alex had grown up in Orville, she already knew most of her classmates. But there was still the sense, every year, that a new adventure was beginning for all of them.
This year was different.
All she could think about was that football was starting for her at six o’clock on the field behind Orville Middle.
“Is this when they start tackling you?” Sophie said on their way to the cafeteria. Alex was grateful they shared a lunch period.
“No clue,” Alex said. “We’re going to have two practices a week. Even my dad doesn’t know how much contact we’re allowed to have. They’ve cut down on contact during the week for NFL teams, too.”
“Good to know,” Sophie said.
Now Alex laughed.
“So you’re saying you could get tackled tonight.”
“I could get tackled tonight.”
“By boys in football gear who’re probably way bigger than you.”
“I’ll be wearing the same gear.”
“I know, but there’s a difference,” Sophie said.
“’Cause I’m a girl?”
“I mean, yeah,” Sophie said. “Our bodies are different. Certain places need more protection, if you know what I mean.”
Alex just laughed again.
“Seriously, though,” Sophie continued, “do you think the guys are going to go easy on you? Y’know, to avoid tackling you?”
Alex hadn’t considered that. She’d figured, if anything, they’d want to tackle her harder. Wear her down so she’d quit the team. But the alternative was that they’d be worried about hurting her and getting in trouble for it. It was a whole new concern she didn’t know how to deal with.
* * *
• • •
When they finished eating, Sophie said she’d forgotten something in her locker and would see Alex in history, their first afternoon class. There were still ten minutes left of lunch, so Alex stayed at the table and pulled out To Kill a Mockingbird, their first reading assignment for Ms. Isaacs’s English class. Ms. Isaacs had sent out an email last week to her seventh-grade classes with the syllabus for the term. She’d said if anyone wanted to get a head start on the reading, they could. So Alex had grabbed her dad’s worn paperback from their shelf at home and read the first fifty pages. Already, she loved the character Scout.
Alex thought Scout had some lion in her, too.
She was concentrating so hard on her reading that she didn’t notice Jeff Stiles and Lewis Healey until they’d sat down across from her.
“Hey, guys,” she said.
She’d barely spoken to either one of them during tryouts. After the first night, there was really nothing to say. It was possible they’d been posting about her on social media, but Coach made it clear that he didn’t want to read about his team on “Facegram.” He said that whatever his players had to say to each other, they should say it to their faces.
Now Alex was face-to-face with Jeff and Lewis. Jeff got right to it, leaning closer in so the kids at the other end of the table couldn’t hear. He was smiling. Alex thought the smile was phonier than his dad’s.
“You know that he had to take you, right?” Jeff said.
“Who had to take me?” Alex said. She wasn’t going to make things easier for him, even though she knew exactly who he was talking about.
“No way Coach was going to cut the only girl who tried out for the team,” Jeff said.
; “I earned my spot,” Alex said. More than you earned yours.
She closed her book.
“Yeah,” Lewis said. “Go with that.”
“It was just easier for Coach to keep you than cut you,” Jeff said.
“And why’s that?” Alex said in a calm voice.
If anybody in the cafeteria was watching they would have thought the three of them were having a friendly chat over lunch. But it was like everything else. Alex wasn’t backing down. Sometimes she felt like a new person, the Alex who stood up for herself and went after what she wanted.
“Coach just didn’t want to be accused . . .” Jeff stopped himself, as if not quite knowing how to finish the sentence.
“Accused of not giving a girl a fair chance in sports?” Alex said. “Something along those lines?”
Jeff scoffed. “You have your own sports.”
“And, what, you guys have football?” she said. “Is that a law somebody passed?”
“Do you really think the other guys want you on the team?” Jeff said. “Forget Coach. You think we want the hassle of having a girl around?”
“Did you take a vote?” Alex said.
“If we did, you’d lose in a landslide,” Jeff said. “All you can do is screw up our team.”
She looked past them to the big clock on the wall. It was time for her to get to history. And get out of here. Away from them.
“How am I going to do that?” she said.
“By being on the team,” Jeff said.
“So, what do you think I should do?” she said theatrically.