Playing With the Boys

by Nicole Leigh Shepherd

  “Hey, hey,” Benji reassured her. “I’m glad we’ll get more time together. I just can’t believe I was beat by a girl—”

  “Wait a minute,” Lucy said, punching him in the arm. “When you say it that way, it sounds like a bad thing—like a huge insult to girls.”

  “Insult?” Benji gasped. “It was a compliment. There’s no one I’d rather be beaten by.”

  Lucy smiled, then nodded toward the leg press. “So . . . what do I do?”

  “It’s called a leg press,” he teased. “What you do is you use your legs, put them right there, to press the weight.”

  “Oh, really?” Lucy asked sarcastically. “I couldn’t have figured that out.”

  “You two!” Coach Offredi snapped. “Enough talking.” He tossed a thick binder in Lucy’s general direction. It landed near the leg press machine with a thud. “Playbook,” he explained. “I suggest you learn what’s in there.”

  Lucy picked up the binder. Her arms sagged under the weight. She gulped and looked at Benji, holding up the book. “Well . . . maybe I could just leg-press this.”

  By the time Lucy had showered and made her way to first period, word about her making the team had already spread. As soon as Pickle saw Lucy, she bounded over.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” she said with a huge smile on her face. “You made the team? The boys’ football team? Martie just told me. She’s so excited!”

  Lucy giggled. “I know. It’s crazy.”

  “Everyone’s talking about it,” Pickle bragged.“We’re all so proud of you! We have to celebrate!”

  “Oh God,” Lucy groaned playfully.“I can’t take another Vermonster.”

  Pickle laughed. “When are you free? Today? Tonight?”

  Lucy considered. “Well, definitely not after school today.” She smiled, then told Pickle, “My first practice.”

  Pickle smiled. “Then tonight it is.”

  At the end of the school day, Lucy stood in the girls’ locker room, completely alone. Coach Offredi had reluctantly given her pads and a helmet to change into. Getting dressed for football practice was more work than getting ready for prom—not that Lucy had ever been to one, but she could imagine.

  There was the helmet with a face mask—because she was a kicker, Lucy’s face mask had just a single bar across it, while linemen wore something that looked more like a cage.

  There were two jerseys—a blue and gold away one and a white home one, each with the number 2 on the back and front. Apparently in the pros, quarterbacks and kickers had to be numbers between 1 and 19; Coach Offredi had implemented the same policy on their team.

  There were football cleats that fit Lucy’s feet like a glove . . .although she had been told by Coach that kickers often used a football cleat on their plant foot and a soccer cleat on their kicking foot. Most comfortable in soccer cleats, Lucy planned to do the same.

  Then there were the pads: shoulder pads, thigh pads, elbow pads, hip pads, and knee pads—there was even a butt pad! And although Lucy had eventually sorted it all out, it hadn’t been easy to tell which pad was supposed to cover which body part.

  But when she slipped on her jersey, she noticed it didn’t quite cover all body parts. Lucy gasped. Two giant holes had been cut out of the chest, where her boobs were supposed to be. She stared at her reflection, horrified. She couldn’t go out onto the field like this, with her sports bra showing through . . . or could she?

  Lucy shook her head defiantly. Someone had obviously sabotaged her uniform. Someone who wanted to keep her down in the locker room, too embarrassed to show her face. Well, she’d show ’em her sports bra instead.

  She put on her helmet and tucked up her hair.

  She couldn’t go as far as to say she looked like one of the guys. In fact, with her bra showing through, she looked more like a girl than ever.

  She sighed. It was now or never. She figured she had come this far. It might as well be now.

  She told herself to be tough, to be strong. She couldn’t let them get to her. That was what they wanted—to drive her away. Besides, what would Pickle and Charlie and all the girls think of her if she let some stupid holes in her jersey force her to quit? Not much, probably.

  She looked at her reflection again, steeling herself for what she was about to go do. It was time to start playing football.

  If Lucy had thought soccer Hell Week was torture, it was nothing compared to her first official football practice with the team.

  “What happened?” Coach Offredi barked as he took one look at Lucy’s cut-up jersey.

  “Oh,” Lucy said, acting surprised. “It wasn’t supposed to come like this?”

  A few of the guys stifled a snicker or two. Coach Offredi folded his arms across his chest.

  “Run a lap,” he said. And before Lucy could protest, he added, “NOW!” As Lucy took off running, she heard him ask an assistant coach to get her another jersey.

  By the time she returned, she was out of breath and a new jersey was waiting for her on the bench. She quickly pulled off her old jersey and changed. Who cares, she thought. Why be modest? They’ve already seen my bra. . . .

  And once she was fully dressed and covered, things went from bad to worse.

  It wasn’t just the fact that Coach Offredi treated her as though she had the plague, or that a few of the guys kept knocking her thigh pads intentionally—it was that she simply had no idea what she was doing. And she hadn’t exactly had time to read the playbook between geometry and U.S. history. Luckily, she was paired up with Benji.

  After warm-ups, when the rest of the team moved onto sled drills or pass plays, depending on their position, Lucy and Benji walked over to the sideline to warm up their legs and alternate taking kicks. The truth was, since you never knew what could happen on the field, Lucy and Benji had to be prepared to take over for each other at a moment’s notice. Just as Benji had to be ready to kick point after touchdowns, field goals, or kickoffs, Lucy had to be ready to punt on the fourth down.

  “Deep punts first,” Coach Offredi instructed as he walked off to work with the rushers, the group of guys who would try to block the opponent’s kicks. “Then take some shorter, low ones.”

  “Low ones?” Lucy asked, confused.

  Benji explained. “It’s basically a low line drive, closer to the ground. It’ll bounce around when it lands, be hard to settle.You can punt a squib or kickoff that way.” Lucy squinted, staring at Benji. Uh, translation please?

  “Why would you do that?” she asked, feeling overwhelmed by how little she actually knew about a sport she was supposed to play.

  “You know, like, if the weather is bad,” Benji offered. “Or if you have a really tight lead with only minutes to go, or their return man is really fast. You might want to kick off that way to do an onside kick. . . .”

  A what kick? Lucy nodded fiercely, as if it all made perfect sense—even though it hardly made any at all.

  Benji stared at her a moment longer than was necessary.

  “Uh . . . what?” she said.

  “Do you have plans tonight?” Benji asked. “Because if you do, cancel them.”

  “Okay, why?” She felt bad canceling on Pickle, who’d been so enthusiastic and sweet.

  “Because tonight,” Benji explained, “I’m giving you a crash course in all things football.”

  The sun was just setting over the ocean, and it was that special time of night when the sky deepens to dark blue, but it’s still light enough to see.

  “No, no,” Benji said, recovering the football. “Try again.” He and Lucy had stayed after practice for a one-on-one tutorial. They were working on kickoffs, since that was part of Lucy’s job.

  “I don’t get it,” Lucy said, frustrated. “Shouldn’t I be just trying to kick as far as possible?”

  “Sometimes,” Benji explained. “But sometimes not. Not if we want to do an onside kick.You need a short kick with a predictable bounce. That way we can gain possession.”

  Lucy
giggled.

  “What?” Benji asked.

  Lucy shrugged, not wanting to say.

  Benji pressed. “What?”

  “You’re funny when you’re all ... footbally and serious,” Lucy admitted.

  “Footbally?” He laughed. “Is that a word?”

  Lucy laughed too. “It should be!”

  Benji set the ball on the tee. “Okay, once more, before it gets dark.You gotta get this before Friday. . . .”

  Lucy nodded. Benji was right. Friday was fast approaching, and she’d be expected to perform.

  “Remember,” he instructed, “start low. We’re looking for a high bounce right before it hits ten yards.”

  “Then you catch it?” Lucy asked.

  “Recover it,” he corrected her.

  She acted as though she’d just said a bad word and put her hand to her lips. “Oh, sorry,” she joked. “Recover.”

  “Okay, smarty. Kick the ball.” She smiled and lined up behind the tee. She took a deep breath. Low, she told herself. Ten yards only.

  She lunged forward and gave the ball more of a hard tap then a solid kick. It started low, then bounced end over end . . . three, four, five, six, seven, eight yards. At the ninth, it bounced high and soared to ten, where Benji pounced on the ball and grounded it. He jumped up, ecstatic.

  “You did it!” he yelled. “That was perfect!”

  “It was?” she asked, then realized. “It was!!!”

  Excited, he ran over and picked her up. He spun her around. Her hair came partially out of its ponytail as the field and stands and goalposts whirled by. He finally set her down.

  “That was awesome, Lucy!” he said, breathless.

  She smiled. “Thank God. Because I’m starving.” They headed to the bench. “Good,” he said. “What sounds good? Pizza or In-N-Out?”

  “What?” she asked. Was he taking her to dinner now?

  He picked up the playbook sitting on the bench, shook it at her, and broke the bad news. “Our night’s not done. You still have a lot to learn.”

  Thirty minutes later, a huge pepperoni pizza sat in front of them as Benji quizzed her.

  “What’s a sack?” he asked.

  Lucy feigned thought, then smiled brightly. “I know this one. A sack is something you carry your groceries in.”

  Benji gave her a look of mock annoyance. “Funny. A sack is when the quarterback is tackled behind the line of scrimmage.”

  Lucy nodded. “And the line of scrimmage is . . . ?”

  “Lucy!” Benji said, exasperated.

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “Line of scrimmage is the starting line for each play and is where the ball is set.”

  “Okay, good.” The waitress walked by. Benji looked up. “Can we get two more Cokes?” he asked. The waitress nodded.

  “Now, punts—you should know the different kinds, just in case,” he instructed. “There’s a directional punt, a coffin corner kick, a pooch punt—”

  “Pooch punt?” Lucy laughed.

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t name these things.”

  Lucy took a bite of pizza and swallowed. “Before we talk about coffins and pooches and whatever else, I think I need the basics.”

  “The basics?” Benji asked.

  “Yeah, like who are all the people on the field and what do they do?”

  The waitress dropped the Cokes off. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked. “Coffee? Dessert?”

  Benji looked from Lucy to the waitress.”Coffee, definitely. I think we’re gonna be here awhile.” As the waitress left to get the menus, Benji started to explain. “So, there are eleven guys on the field at a time. . . .”

  Lucy ahemed loudly.

  “Sorry.” He corrected himself. “Eleven people ...” And as he continued, Lucy vowed that she was going to focus and listen intently to every word he said until she fully understood football—even if it took all night.

  And it pretty much did. She’d called her dad, telling him her study session was running late. He said to be home by nine. But even after Benji dropped her off, she called him before she went to bed, and they stayed on the phone until one in the morning, talking about two-point conversions and hang time and first downs.

  By practice the next day, Lucy might not have been fluent in football, but if football were Spanish, she would have at least been able to say, “Hello, my name is Lucy”; “How are you?”; and “Where is the bathroom?” Benji had been an enormous help. Of course, she had told her dad they were studying for bio lab, not going over football plays. But it was studying, so it only qualified as half a fib.

  “Okay, deep punts first,” Benji reminded her. “I’ll start.” He continued to explain. “Usually we’d practice with the snapper, but he’s also the center, so we’ll just hold our own balls for now.” Lucy giggled. If the soccer girls had been here, they’d have been having a field day with that one. Hold our own balls.

  Benji continued. “So, remember what we went over last night? This is the opposite: you want to kick the ball far and high, with at least four seconds of hang time in the air. That’ll make the chances of returning the punt a lot less. The farther you kick it, the farther back you pin the other team. That way Beachwood gets downfield to cover the return. Got it?” Lucy giggled.

  Benji blushed. “I’m all footbally again, right?”

  She nodded, then turned to follow Benji’s instructions and give herself and him some distance from each other.

  Once Lucy was a safe distance away, like half the football field, Benji took two steps and dropped the ball toward his right foot, which was the foot he apparently kicked with. His foot hit the ball right in the center, and the ball flew into the air at least forty yards, toward Lucy. She lunged toward it, almost catching it after the first bounce, but it slipped through her fingers. So catching wasn’t her strong suit. Whatever. This wasn’t baseball.

  Now it was her turn. She mimicked what she had seen Benji do. Two steps . . . drop the ball down and . . .The ball hit the side of her foot and flew more sideways than forwards. Coach Offredi looked at his clipboard and made a note. Lucy bit her lip nervously.

  “It’s okay,” Benji encouraged. “Remember? That’s called a shank when the ball does that. Try to strike the ball right in the center. Here, try it again.” He threw the ball back to her. This time, she followed his instructions; the ball sailed higher and farther. Punting was easier than going for a field goal. It required less precision.

  “Good job, Luce,” Benji cheered. Lucy smiled broadly—until Tank called over to her.

  “If that’s what you’re going to do Friday night against Curtis, I’d say we’re all screwed.”

  “Hey.” Benji was quick to defend her. “She’s just getting the hang of it. It’s only her second practice.” It was technically her third if you counted her extra work with Benji, but no one besides the two of them knew about that.

  “That’s one too many if you ask me,” Tank muttered. The other guys laughed.

  Benji put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “Just focus on the ball. Don’t worry about them.” Lucy nodded. She wasn’t going to let Tank get to her. She’d heard his real name was Robbie. Some punk named Robbie wasn’t going to intimidate her, even if he was the size of a Mack truck.