Sophomore Surge

by K R Collins

  “Good morning,” she tells the class.

  “Good morning,” they chorus back.

  “My name is Sophie Fournier and I play hockey for the Concord Condors.”

  “You’re the first girl!” someone in the front row shouts. Her hair is in two pigtails, and she squirms in her seat as if she has too much energy to hold still.

  “We raise our hands when we have something to say,” Miss Donovan reminds the class.

  “You’re right, I was the first woman drafted into the NAHL, and I’m the first woman to play in it. But there were two more women drafted last year. Does anyone know who they are?”

  Five hands shoot up in the air.

  Sophie points to the girl in a pink sequined top who answers, “Gabrielle Gagnon. She’s beautiful. And her hair is so long. I’m growing mine out like her.” She twists in her chair so Sophie can see her braids, the tips of them reaching her shoulder blades. She still has a ways to go before she matches Gabrielle’s hair.

  “Do you want to be a goalie like her too?”

  The girl shakes her head. “Whenever we play broom hockey in gym, people hit my shins and it hurts.”

  Sophie nods and looks out at the class again. “Does anyone know who the second woman drafted is?” Only Jessi and Kaylee’s hands are in the air now. “Jessi?”

  “Elsa Nyberg,” Jessi says, proud. “She was supposed to come play with us this season but she didn’t.”

  “She plays in a city called Gothenburg in Sweden. It’s close to where she grew up. How many of you think it would be tough to have to move really far away to play hockey?”

  Everyone’s hands shoot up.

  “It would be tough for Elsa too. I played against her once at an international tournament. She played for Team Sweden. Who knows what team I played for?”

  Five hands go up.

  “Canada!” Nick answers after Miss Donovan calls on him. “Who’s your favorite hockey player?”

  “Mikhail Figuli. Have any of you seen him play?”

  She smiles and relaxes as they throw question after question at her. After last night’s mess, she forgot she’d been looking forward to this. Kids want to know her favorite color and if anyone’s ever pulled her hair in a scrum and how many mouth guards she goes through in a year. It’s fun.

  “One last question,” Miss Donovan eventually says. “Lucy, you’ve waited very patiently.”

  Lucy pushes her glasses up her nose and folds her hands on her desk. “Miss Donovan always tells us if a bully is being mean, we should tell a teacher and we always keep our hands and feet to ourselves. How come you hit the guy with your stick?”

  This second grader’s judgment hits her harder than Lenny Dernier’s and even her dad’s. “I lost my temper. Has it ever happened to you?” Everyone in the room nods. “Miss Donovan is right, though. You shouldn’t use your hands or your feet or even your hockey stick to hurt someone when you’re mad. After I hit him, I had to sit in the penalty box.”

  “Like the take-a-break chair?” Lucy asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell a teacher? He was saying mean things to you. Miss Donovan says bullying with your words is as bad as bullying with your fists.”

  Sophie hesitates. Chirping, even trash talking, isn’t bullying. It’s part of the game. Three cameras are fixed on her, and there’s a whole class of eager seven and eight-year-olds waiting for her answer. “Miss Donovan sounds like a good teacher. Maybe I can learn something from her even though I’m not in school anymore. But there aren’t any teachers in hockey, so who can I talk to if I need help?”

  “The officials!” Nick calls out.

  “Your captain!”

  “Your coach!”

  “Those are all really good suggestions. Who wants a T-shirt?”

  Tomorrow, they play the Empires at home but today, Sophie leaves practice and drives to Durham to meet with Ritchie. She brings sandwiches from her favorite place in Concord. She’s glad for her foresight when she arrives at Ritchie’s off-campus house.

  Her shoes stick to the floor as if someone spilled beer and let it dry rather than cleaning it up. The counters look as if they haven’t been wiped down in months. She doesn’t want to know what the inside of the fridge looks like. Sandwiches from the shop are a much better choice.

  “Hungry?” she asks. She sets her brown paper bag on the counter and pulls out four sandwiches, two bottles of water, and two Gatorades.

  “Always.”

  Sophie eyes the bar stools, all of them wobbly, and decides to stand. “I need your help with something.”

  Ritchie unwraps his first sandwich, and his gaze flicks up to her. “No offense but you’re a professional hockey player. Don’t you have teammates and shit for this?”

  For a guy going on his fourth year in college, he isn’t very smart. “If it was something I could ask my teammates for, I wouldn’t be here. Look, I’m asking you for help, and I’m hoping you’ll keep your mouth shut about it as a favor for Colby.”

  “Dude, I’d die for Colbs. He’s my goalie.”

  It’s exactly what she was counting on. “Let me know what your team’s schedule looks like, and I’ll get you all tickets to see a game.”

  Ritchie looks up from his sandwich, lettuce dangling from his mouth. “Seriously?” The lettuce falls to the floor. He leaves it there but sets his sandwich down on the counter near a suspicious stain. “You’re not going to ask me to do anything illegal, are you?”

  “I want to play some one-on-one with you, and I want you to run your mouth the whole time.”

  Ritchie holds his hands up as if she’s asked him to do something he can’t do. “It’s against the bro code.”

  “Remember the time you bet your per diem I couldn’t go one-on-two against you and your d-partner and score? And how I did. Twice. Or the time your team had to run suicides for every goal I scored on you in practice until your coach took pity on you and called it at ten?”

  Ritchie scowls at her. “Fine. I have, in the past, thought some bad things about you.”

  “I know.” Everyone she’s played against has. “Now, I want you to say those things to me while we fight for the puck.”

  “Is this about the game the other night?”

  Maybe he’s smarter than she originally gave him credit for. “This is about me wanting to be the best player I can be.” She flashes him a smile and takes a giant bite out of her sandwich.

  She works with Ritchie for an hour, battling with him along the boards and letting him chase her around the ice while he runs his mouth. She trips him up a few times and throws an elbow or two until he puts some heat into his insults. It isn’t the same as being in a game, but she still arranges to meet a couple of times a month to keep working at it.

  She’s always had an analytical approach to the game, helped by her dad. He would film her practices, first on a shaky camcorder and later on his iPad. He downloaded coaching software so he could slow the video down, draw on it, even compare it to other video he had of her or players he wanted her to play like. She knows how to pick out one, or two or three, things from her game, isolate the problem and fix it.

  Too slow on the draw for the faceoff? She has a reaction ball, bright pink and covered in irregular bumps. When she drops it on the ground, it could go anywhere and the goal is to catch it before it can bounce more than once. If her edges aren’t good enough, she has drills. Same for her net front presence and her tip-in goals and her board battles. If there’s a weakness in her game, she has a fix for it and from there it’s a matter of effort and putting in the time.

  Keeping her temper is too important for her to brush off an opportunity to shore up her emotional strength. It doesn’t keep her from being angry which is why, after her session with Ritchie, she drives back to the practice rink and tapes up her hands for a few rounds with the punching bag.

  “I thought you were curbing your violent outbursts.”

  She spins around, her hair falling
out of its ponytail. Coach Butler stands by the doors. His arms are crossed over his chest and his severe face looks even more disapproving today as he presses his lips into a thin line.

  She steps away from the bag, but there’s no hiding the sweat-soaked spots on her shirt. “I am working on them. No more outbursts during games.” But she needs some kind of outlet or she’ll have a breakdown.

  “You’re a good hockey player, but there are a lot of good hockey players in our program. I want the focus to be on our team. If it isn’t, changes will be made. Do you understand?”

  If you’re a problem, I will bury you.

  It’s unfair. Everyone in the League knows Coach Butler likes his teams to play with an edge. It’s one of the reasons why she doesn’t understand his hiring here. Boston is the New England team known for its bruising players and big fights. Concord’s game has always trended toward speed and skill which is why she’s a good fit for the team. She knows the double-minor she took cost them the game, but she bets if it was Theo or Nelson or even Matty who did the same thing, Coach would defend them.

  “I understand,” she says. She’ll be better. She doesn’t have any other options.

  Coach Butler stays in the doorway, staring her down, until she unwinds the tape from her hands. Once he’s satisfied his message has gotten across, he leaves. She’s tempted to re-tape her hands and have a go at the heavy weight bag, but she won’t risk digging herself into a deeper hole. Besides, while there’s something cathartic about punching things, it isn’t making her a better player.

  She loads up a bar instead so she can squat. Her lower body strength is one of her best assets. She’s difficult to knock off the puck, and she has one of the quickest first strides in the League. She uses her second hair elastic to twist her hair into a bun so the ponytail won’t catch on the bar when she ducks under it.

  She takes a deep breath and releases it as she stands up, lifting the bar from its resting place. Another deep breath as she sinks down. She exhales as she stands. She does it again. And again until her legs give out. She drops to the floor and the bar slams down on the spotter rails.

  She sits there on the dirty floor, breathing hard. She’s still there when the doors open again. If it’s Coach Butler he can yell at her, she’s exhausted enough she won’t be tempted to snap back at him.

  “Hey, I saw your car in the—are you okay?” Teddy rushes over.

  “I’m fine.” Stupid, because she shouldn’t squat to failure the day before a game, and she certainly shouldn’t do it without a spotter, but this is apparently her week for being stupid. Maybe she’ll get it all out of her system. “What’re you still doing here?”

  “I came back to look at some tape with Richelieu. I’m starting against the Empires tomorrow.”

  “Awesome!” She drags herself off the floor and onto a nearby bench.

  Teddy shrugs. “Lindy let in six against Cleveland, and Butler was pissed so I played against DC and then Lindy played against Denver and we lost so”—another shrug—“I’m back in net.”

  “Lindy isn’t the reason we lost to Denver. I mean, I’m excited for you, but I lost us the game.” And now their starting goalie is paying for it.

  “I get it. Being a backup is shitty. Every start I’m given is one taken away from Lindy.”

  “Hey.” Sophie pulls herself out of her guilt spiral and gives Teddy a sweaty hug. “You’re going to crush it against the Empires. You want to grab dinner and talk about what you and Richelieu saw?”

  “Only if you shower.” He pushes her off him, but he’s grinning as he does it. “You’re disgusting.”

  She exaggeratedly sniffs her sweat-soaked shirt. “Smells like hard work and dedication to me.”

  Teddy laughs as he helps her take the weight off her squat bar.

  They kick off their home-and-home against the Empires at home. It only takes two shifts for Roesner to check her into the boards. He leers at her as he has her trapped there. She shoves him off and joins the play, banging her stick on the ice so Merlin notices her and passes her the puck.

  The next time she’s on the ice, it’s Supinski who trips her, sweeping his stick out. She lands hard on the ice and then scrambles to her skates. He smirks around his mouth guard. “Guess my stick’s too much for you to handle.”

  She wants to slash his stick, snap it in two to watch him flinch. Instead, she skates to the bench for a change. Discipline, she chants to herself as Coach Richelieu claps her shoulder, a silent acknowledgment for her keeping her temper in check.

  On the next shift it’s Roesner again and then Supinski. By the time she’s in the locker room for intermission, she wants to break something. She tosses a roll of tape from hand to hand, wishing she could wrap up and spend even five minutes with the punching bag. She’s stuck here, on the wooden bench as Coach Butler drones on about the period, picking apart their weaknesses and glossing over their strengths.

  Merlin hands her a granola bar. It makes a satisfying crack when she breaks off the first piece.

  It’ll have to do.

  A few minutes into the second period, Supinski loads up for a shot. Sophie drops into the shooting lane and braces herself for the sting of the puck. But Supinski fans on his shot, completely missing it.

  It’s Witzer who darts in to steal the puck, because Sophie’s laughing too hard to do it herself. She slants a look at Supinski and laughs even harder. He skates up to her and cross-checks her across the chest, hard enough to push her back a few inches. She flicks her mouth guard out and dares him to do it again.

  He does.

  The second one is enough for an official to skate in, arm raised.

  Concord scores on the power play; Matty off Sophie and Kevlar.

  She tallies another two assists before the game is over, and Concord wins, 5-1.

  She gives Teddy extra helmet rubs when she finds him in his crease. “You’re a rock star.”

  He taps her calves with his paddle, a thank-you, before she moves aside so Witzer can slap his back and yell.

  Teddy’s given their next start, this time against the Empires in New York City. The opposing team tries a new strategy; instead of running their mouths, they take runs at her. She comes out of the game with a split lip and three new bruises. She doesn’t take a single penalty.

  More importantly, Concord wins 3-2.

  They fly to Phoenix, and Sophie dumps her bags on the extra bed in her hotel room. It’s too much effort to unpack so she digs out her pajamas and her toiletry bag. She’ll figure the rest out in the morning.

  Her phone buzzes while she brushes her teeth. She hurriedly spits and half-heartedly rinses before she answers.

  “I’ll fucking kill him,” Travis says.

  “No, you won’t.” She drops her toothbrush in its holder, wipes her mouth, and sits down on her bed. “It wasn’t your job to fight for me when we were teammates and it’s still not your job.”

  “I thought this shit would be done by now.”

  Me too. “At least I’ve had a lot of practice.” She laughs weakly and Travis doesn’t laugh with her. “Look, I slipped up and now every guy in the League thinks they have an edge on me. They don’t. I know how to lock shit down. I’ve been better since the Denver game.”

  “Figs says anyone on our team who says shit to you gets a beatdown from him.”

  “Tell him he doesn’t need to fight for me either. He should focus on scoring more beautiful goals from your assists. You hit fifty last game.”

  “Yeah.” He sounds pleased, a little embarrassed, and quickly follows it up with, “But you had your fiftieth assist in your first season.”

  “Then tell your center to start putting some goals away too. You’ll catch up in no time.”

  Travis laughs. “Yeah, let me tell Richard DePalo he needs to play better.”

  “Eh, I’ll do it for you. When do we play you next?”

  “You don’t have our match-ups memorized?” Travis sniffles. “It’s like all the love has
gone out of our relationship.”

  “Because there was so much to begin with,” she says, dryly. She does look up their schedule and cheerfully picks apart DePalo’s game until Travis is laughing too hard to tell her to stop.

  They play a few more games before they fly to LA, and Sophie spends the night before the game hanging out with Teddy. They’re stretched across his bed, a poker tournament on, because he has the worst taste in TV. She almost wishes Big Red, his roommate this season, had stayed. If she had an ally, they wouldn’t be watching a bunch of dudes sitting around a table.

  But Clifford is hanging out with Spitz, claiming it’s rookie time. At least poker is easy to talk over.

  “They call him the Goalie Killer,” Teddy says, seemingly out of nowhere.

  He’s played every start since the Empires, and Sophie isn’t about to let Carl Alstead force him out of the lineup. The Orca has a reputation for taking out goalies. He drives the net hard and sometimes…doesn’t stop. He’s mastered the art of “accidentally on purpose,” and she’s seen more than one goalie lose weeks of their season thanks to him. Teddy won’t be one of his casualties.

  “He won’t touch you,” she promises.

  “You’ll break his nose if he gets too close?”

  Teddy grins and nudges her shoulder. She nudges him back. “You bet your skinny chicken legs I will.”

  “I’m more like a gazelle; quick and graceful.”

  “Quick, I’ll give you. Not so sure about graceful.”

  “Like you’re one to talk. You fell over the boards yesterday!”

  “Merlin pushed me.”

  Teddy laughs. “So you fell with help.”

  “Chicken legs.”

  He laughs harder and slings an arm around her shoulders when she tries to roll away from him.

  Mary Beth finds Sophie after morning skate. She crooks her finger, and Sophie breaks away from the guys, ignoring their dramatic “oohs”. Theo hums the Jaws theme as Sophie thinks of what this could be about. She’s been on her best behavior since Denver.