Outside the Lines

by Kate Christie

  She waited five minutes. When no response was forthcoming, she texted again. “You okay? Let me know when you get a chance.”

  Her phone dinged. “Tm mtng rn. Call u ltr!”

  The plot thickened. Emma almost never used text shorthand. Aargh…. Once again, not being on the national team blew.

  When her phone rang a few minutes later, Emma’s picture flashing on the screen, Jamie headed downstairs.

  “Do you want me to pause it?” Jodie called after her.

  “No!” she hollered back. She had a feeling Emma was about to tell her something far more interesting than the outcome of the match. “Hey,” she added into the phone, dropping onto the futon in the guest room. “What’s up?”

  “A lot.” Emma’s voice was hushed, or maybe it was just the cold Jamie knew she was fighting. “I can’t talk long. It’s insane here. Barry and Rob fired Craig. He isn’t even going to fly to San Diego with us tomorrow.”

  And that… was not at all what Jamie had been expecting. It did, however, explain what Rob Muñoz and Barry Winchester, the president and general secretary of US Soccer, were doing in Colorado. They’d showed up at the beginning of training camp, bringing with them what Ellie and Emma had both deemed a weird vibe.

  “Did you hear me?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah, I heard you.” Jamie rose from the bed and crossed to the daylight basement window where she placed her free hand on the glass, letting the coolness penetrate her palm. “How’s the team? How are you?”

  “I think we’re all in shock. A rep told us on the bus that Rob and Barry wanted to meet with us, but most of us assumed it had something to do with qualifying. Even Ellie and Phoebe didn’t know, although they did say the federation had checked in with them after the Algarve.”

  As Ellie’s housemate, Jamie could imagine how that meeting had gone. “Did they offer a reason?”

  “Rob says it’s an issue of culture. Apparently the federation has decided his coaching style isn’t a good fit for the team. You should have seen Craig, Jamie. He was nothing but classy. I can’t believe he’s out. We’ve gone eighteen and two under him. Two losses, that’s it, and they fire him!”

  Jamie wanted to feel bad for Craig, she really did. In theory she even succeeded. But in reality, she stared at her faint reflection in the window and gave a fist pump. Craig Anderson, the man who had convinced her to give up her European football career and then promptly squashed her national team dreams, was out. The coach who hadn’t believed in her enough had been cut himself, and now she might have another shot at making a future roster. The door wasn’t exactly open, but it wasn’t as firmly closed as it had been even a few hours earlier.

  She schooled her tone and said softly, “I’m sorry, Em.” Because as much as she was secretly thrilled by the news, she had an idea what it must be doing to the team.

  Voices sounded in the background. “I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay? Oh, and check your email. I swear it wasn’t planned.”

  Before Jamie could ask what she meant, the line went dead. She lowered her phone and looked out the window, focusing on the yellow-orange lights of the city in the distance. No wonder Ellie had called Jodie freaking out. The World Cup was only a little over a year away. To fire a national team coach at this point in the cycle was almost unheard of. In fact, as far as she knew, it was unheard of.

  The floorboards creaked overhead again and she heard Jodie call, “There’s a goal! Do you want to see the replay?”

  “Yes!” she shouted, and raced back upstairs.

  They didn’t talk about it. Jodie kept watching the game as if nothing had happened while Jamie divided her attention between the television and her iPad. Sure enough, Emma, Angie, and Ellie had all sent her emails before the game with identical subject lines: “The Theory of Marginal Gains.” Each message contained a PDF attachment—a handout from that morning’s mental training session. Reflexively Jamie started to angle her screen away from Jodie, but then she stopped. Sharing training materials with someone who had been in and out of the player pool was allowed. Sharing details of a coach’s firing before anyone outside of the federation knew, on the other hand, not so much.

  The handout, titled “Sir David Brailsford and the Theory of Marginal Gains,” wasn’t long. Jamie skimmed the text and before going back to read through again more slowly. The gist was that in 2010, cycling coach David Brailsford had been given the GM position at newly formed Team Sky and tasked with a goal no British rider had achieved previously: to win a Tour de France title. As Jamie well remembered—her English girlfriend’s family had fully copped to being “a bit nutty” about cycling—Brailsford had accomplished this goal in 2012 when Team Sky’s leader Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour. Wiggo’s teammate, Chris Froome, came in second that summer and then, in a turn of events that had sent Clare’s family “over the moon,” had won the Tour himself the following year. Not only that, but with Brailsford at the helm, the British cycling team had cleaned up at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

  According to the article, Brailsford’s formula for success hinged on what he called “the aggregation of marginal gains.” Basically, he believed that if Team Sky could improve certain areas of performance by as little as one percent each, those gains would eventually add up. He started with predictable targets: fitness, diet, and bike and rider aerodynamics. But then—and this was what set him apart from other team managers—he applied his philosophy of improvement to other, seemingly unrelated areas. Like finding the most comfortable pillows to bring on the road, or discovering the best way to avoid infection and illness while on tour. His team, clearly, had flourished under this approach.

  Jamie leaned back, considering the implications. Sleep comfort and immune system health were crucial to any professional athlete’s career, so it made sense that Brailsford had concentrated his attention on those areas. What else might he have selected for his program? And, more to the point, was it possible that an aggregation of custom-tailored marginal gains might help her stay healthy and earn another shot at the pool? Her national team buddies obviously thought so.

  She was about to turn off her iPad, but then almost of her own volition, her fingers brought up her Twitter app. Biting her lip, she searched on the USWNT hashtag. They’d won the game, she discovered—not a given but also not surprising. But that wasn’t why the hashtag was trending. She narrowed in on a headline from ESPN: “Craig Anderson fired from US women’s national soccer team; Jo Nichols to serve as interim coach.”

  Jo Nichols, who had selected Jamie to the U-16 national team and made her a starter on the U-23 squad. The same Jo Nichols who, as interim head coach between Marty and Craig, had given Jamie her first cap with the senior side. She was the reason Jamie was in the pool, the reason she’d ever seen a lick of playing time, and now she was back at the helm of the senior national team.

  It doesn’t mean anything, Jamie told herself, tamping down the sudden surge of excitement that threatened to buoy her off the couch. Jo was only the temporary coach while the federation searched for someone to replace Craig permanently. Even if she called Jamie up again, it didn’t mean she would make a single roster. Still, an interim coach who had always believed in her was better than one who hadn’t. As she scrolled through Twitter, restless energy made her legs jump and her teeth all but chatter. The gloom and angst she’d started the day with was long gone now, replaced by—oh, her stupid, naïve heart—hope.

  Jamie closed the cover on her iPad. Control what you can, she reminded herself as she refocused on the television screen in time to see Emma pick the pocket of a Chinese striker and send the ball up the field to Maddie. Let the rest go.

  Easier said than done.

  * * *

  Emma pocketed her phone and ducked back into the conference room, sucking hard on a cough drop. It had been a busy evening. After Rob and Barry dropped their bombshell, Craig had come in to say goodbye and wish the team well. She still couldn’t believe that he h
ad thanked them, the players who had played so poorly that they’d cost him his job. Emma was sure she hadn’t been the only one in the room who’d had a hard time meeting his gaze as he walked out. Bottom line: Their performance under his leadership was the reason he’d been fired.

  After the door had closed behind Craig, there had been a moment of silence. Then the players had begun to talk amongst themselves until Ellie held up a hand. “Let’s take a break,” she’d said, voice calm and commanding, “and come back in five ready to talk this through.”

  Their five minutes now up, the room was once again vibrating with discordant energy. This wasn’t how the national team was usually informed about coaching changes. In Emma’s experience, any major alteration to the program had come at the end of a World Cup or after an Olympics, tournaments with high pressure and expectations. Maybe that was why the tension in the room felt worse than she had seen since the ’07 World Cup—because Craig’s firing had come so unexpectedly, and now no one was sure what was going to happen moving forward.

  On the one hand were Craig’s supporters, like Rebecca Perry: “Not a good fit for the culture?” she said, voice rising above the others. “That’s ridiculous. It’s not like they weren’t familiar with his coaching style before they offered him the position.”

  On the other were his detractors, like Steph Miller: “Seventh place, you guys. Not only that but we gave up five goals in one game. Against Denmark!”

  The debate didn’t last long. Soon Ellie was holding up her hand again and saying in that same firm voice, “Guys, I think we’re getting off-course here. The decision has been made and it’s out of our hands. At this point I think we need to concentrate on moving forward.”

  “Before we move forward, I for one would like to know why this happened the way it did,” Ryan Dierdorf said, arms folded stubbornly across her chest. “Why do it in the middle of a road trip? Why not wait until Wednesday?”

  “Because after Wednesday we all leave for our pro teams and don’t see each other again for another month,” Phoebe said. “I think they wanted to give us time to get used to the idea while we’re still together. Maybe they actually learned something from what happened with Jeff in ’07.”

  “I thought you guys knew ahead of time with him,” Ryan said.

  “Define ahead of time.” Phoebe waved a hand. “Anyway, that was different. We all knew he wasn’t long for this world after what happened in China.”

  Other than Phoebe, Ellie and Steph were the only remaining starters from the 2007 World Cup squad that had seen its championship dreams in China squashed by Brazil. In the days and weeks that followed the humiliating 4-0 loss in the semifinals—a game that had featured an own goal and a red card ejection for the US side—the players had argued bitterly amongst themselves in a feud that created a division between veterans and newer players. The loss and ensuing drama had cost head coach Jeff Bradbury his position a year before the Olympics. Emma, the youngest player on the roster, had tried to keep her head down and stay out of the inter-squad blame fest that became the Great National Team Meltdown of ’07, as she and Maddie had come to call it.

  Talk about a bad fit—Bradbury had coached the team to be harsh, blunt, and defensive both on and off the field, just as he’d been as a semi-pro player before becoming a coach. Unlike the national team’s previous head coaches, he didn’t understand how to motivate female players, relying on intimidation and pressure to achieve the results he wanted. Bradbury was a screamer, and wielded his power in a way that actively discouraged creativity and bold performances. The players used to joke before practice about who he would pick to crush that day, but dark humor did little to diminish the stress and anxiety they felt playing for him. Like most of her teammates, Emma had been relieved when Jeff Bradbury got fired.

  Craig had been the polar opposite, which might have been the problem. He’d been quiet and observant and so willing to experiment with personnel and line-ups that Emma sometimes wondered if he even had a long term strategy in mind. Marty Sinclair, the coach who led the team in the years between these two very different men, had achieved positive results with an approach the players ate up. She had treated them like professionals and equals, offering them a say in the team’s direction while still retaining ultimate control. She had worked with them, firm but respectful, and the team had thrived under her leadership.

  What they needed, Emma thought now, was another Marty. She wasn’t sure the federation agreed, though.

  Ellie chimed in again. “I don’t think there’s any great conspiracy here, guys. You heard Rob: The Algarve result was a symptom of a larger, systemic issue, and they were still discussing what to do up until this morning. Today’s game only further underscored the poor fit.”

  The game hadn’t been that bad, had it? But then Emma remembered the frustration of watching as shot after shot sailed wide of the goal, as the Chinese keeper saved the few that were on frame, as one set piece after another failed to yield the desired result. They had played like a team that was the opposite of possessed. Dispossessed? The double entendre seemed fitting.

  “Do you believe what Rob said?” Steph asked, face neutral. She had made no secret of her dislike of Craig’s coaching style and, especially, his tendency to play untried newbies over more experienced players. But at the same time, she’d said more than once that she didn’t trust the federation as far as she could throw it.

  “Do you?” Phoebe asked. “How many people here believe even half of what comes out of Rob and Barry’s mouths?”

  Emma frowned as the assembled players exchanged weighted glances. That wasn’t the point at all, and as a leader of this squad, Phoebe should know that. Before Emma could find a diplomatic way of saying as much, Jenny Latham spoke up.

  “I don’t think that’s the question we should be asking right now. The question we need to ask ourselves is what we can do to help support the next coach. Because ladies, in case you hadn’t noticed, World Cup qualifying is six months away, and I for one would prefer to avoid a repeat of 2010.”

  A collective groan made a short lap of the room. Forget losing to Japan in Frankfurt in the ’11 finals. They almost hadn’t even made it to Germany after being upset by Mexico—Mexico!—during the 2010 CONCACAF qualifiers. Marty used to say they took the scenic route to the ’11 World Cup, and she wasn’t kidding. After falling to Mexico at CONCACAFs, the team had played a two-leg series against Italy to determine who would win the sixteenth and final berth in Germany. While they had managed to defeat Italy on goals by Ellie and Jenny Latham, it had been one of the tenser moments in Emma’s national team career.

  “Good point, Jen.” Ellie looked around the room. “What was it that Marty said right before the second game against Italy? That the glass was half-full? Well, it’s half-full again, friends. A new coach brings change, but maybe it’s needed change. Whatever played into the decision, Craig is out. It’s up to us to decide how to respond.”

  That was all well and good to say, Emma thought later that night as she headed toward the ice machine on her hallway. But in reality, they had little control over their working conditions. While the players’ union did its best with what they were given, and current contracted players had it better than any previous generation of women, ultimately the decisions that impacted them most were out of their hands. Emma knew firsthand that FIFA’s attitude toward women’s soccer—namely, that female players did not deserve equal treatment or equal pay—had found willing support among the upper echelons of US Soccer, a nonprofit that refused to be transparent with the millions earned every year by its marketing arm. That lack of transparency and tendency to misrepresent its motives and intent meant that the players—both male and female—ended up second-guessing major decisions like the one that had been handed down tonight.

  As was often the case during training camp, the ice machine was empty, a state of affairs that always made Emma think of Jamie and their first fateful meeting in a Southern California hotel ten years ear
lier. A wave of longing passed over her, so intense that tears pricked her eyes. She was tired, a bone-deep weariness that arose from this stupid cold she’d been fighting all week; from the federation’s political mind games; from constant travel and what felt like almost too much soccer. Through hard work and sacrifice, she had achieved her childhood dreams and was living the life she’d always wanted. But sometimes, even so, the thought wriggled into her mind that maybe the grass was greener. Maybe she would be happier living a lower-key life in Seattle like Dani, with a commute that didn’t require passports or landing gear. Intellectually she knew that if she crossed the fence and settled in the opposite field, she would miss her current life desperately. Besides, she would still be the same person. What was the quote? “Wherever you go, there you are.” Even so, she couldn’t help wondering.

  She was sick of all the going, going, goneness of her life. She wanted to rest, to take a day off of training here and there, to live a full week without having to think about soccer. But if she did that, she could put in jeopardy the goal she’d spent so much of her life working toward. Then again, was being a professional soccer player worth the constant emotional and physical stress? Was it worth being apart from the person she’d come to care about most? Jamie’s image appeared in her mind again, and she remembered her first thought after Rob’s announcement had sunk in: With Craig out, Jamie might have another shot at the team, especially with her former youth coach at the helm.

  Ellie and Phoebe believed that Jo Nichols might be offered the opportunity to lead the team on more than an interim basis, just as she had after Marty left. The question was, would her answer be different this time? Since Emma had been out with a burst appendix at the end of 2012, she hadn’t spent much time around the former national team star turned coaching prodigy. She did know, however, that Jo understood female athletes as well as the politics of the international game. And that she had a soft spot for Jamie, or so it seemed.