Game Changers--A Benchwarmers Novel

by John Feinstein

  “Benchwarmers forever!” Andi said.

  They both laughed. At least, Jeff thought, they both seemed to feel a little bit better.

  * * *

  Any good feelings Andi might have had quickly vanished soon after she walked into the locker room the next afternoon.

  On the whiteboard in the corner of the room, in bright red marker, was the word Starters.

  Below it, in the same red marker, were five names:

  Bronson

  Dove

  Jolie

  Mearns

  Medley

  Andi gasped. It had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t start. Coach J was starting Bronson and two of her pals—Alayne Jolie and Jenny Mearns. Eleanor Dove and Maria Medley clearly deserved to start, but so did Andi and Lisa Carmichael.

  She felt an arm go around her shoulder. “She’s crazy,” Eleanor said. “Unless she’s planning to sub you and Lisa after about thirty seconds.”

  “I doubt that’s the plan,” Andi said. “I know she can’t stand me, but what the heck did Lisa do wrong?”

  “I’d say being friends with you, but then why are Maria and I starting?”

  “Maybe because she’d rather not lose by fifty,” Andi said.

  Before Eleanor could answer, the door opened and the two coaches walked in.

  “Okay, everyone,” Coach Josephson said. “You see the starters. I would expect all of you who aren’t starting to play—at some point. How much will probably depend on how the game’s going or foul trouble. It will also depend on how much support you show for your teammates from the bench.”

  She looked directly at Andi. “Those of you not dressed yet, you’ve got five minutes. I want everyone on the floor for warm-ups at three forty. Bronson, make sure they’re all ready to go by then. Got that?”

  “Sure, Coach,” Bronson said. “You bet.”

  The coaches walked out. Bronson whirled and pointed a finger at Andi. “If you’re not in uniform in five, Carillo, I’m going to suggest you not suit up.”

  It was Maria who answered. “Just take care of yourself, Bronson,” she said. “Let the coach pick on Andi. She doesn’t need your help.”

  Bronson took a step in Maria’s direction, but Eleanor stepped in between them. Bronson was wider than Eleanor, but Eleanor was probably four inches taller.

  Bronson stopped. “Oh yeah, I forgot you come equipped with a bodyguard,” she said, staring straight at Eleanor. “That’s the way you people work, huh?”

  If Bronson was looking to start a fight, she’d picked the right words. It wasn’t Eleanor who charged at her; it was Lisa Carmichael. Andi was half a step behind. It seemed as if everyone in the room was pushing and shoving: Bronson and her crew squaring off with Andi and her friends while the four neutral parties tried to pull them apart. Andi and Jenny Mearns wrestled each other to the ground before they all heard a whistle—which, in the small locker room, sounded more like ten whistles blasting at once.

  They all looked up and there were the two coaches.

  “What in the world is going on here?” Coach Josephson yelled. “Who started this?”

  Before the finger pointing could get going, Coach Axelson stepped in.

  For the first time since tryouts had started, she blew her whistle. Andi hadn’t even known she had a whistle until that moment.

  The sound of the second whistle—especially given its source—got everybody’s attention.

  “Girls!” she shouted. “We are on the same team—that includes everyone in this locker room. If you have issues with someone, stow it. Camden is the opponent today, not anyone in here. So just stop!”

  There was dead silence. Finally, Coach Josephson said, “Everyone on the court in two minutes. Any more fighting, no questions asked, the people involved don’t play today.”

  She turned and walked out. Andi pulled free from Mearns and ran to her locker to get dressed. No one said anything. Andi waited to see if Bronson was going to apologize to Eleanor and Maria.

  The only thing she said was, “Everyone, hustle up. We’ve got a game to get ready for.”

  Maybe so, Andi thought, but this wasn’t the end of this by any stretch of the imagination. This team was no longer just divided by cliques.

  It was also divided by race. It could have been the Jets and the Sharks. Andi couldn’t think of anything worse.

  9

  On the other side of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the boys’ team didn’t have any pregame locker room fights or anyone screaming at one another. Even the two team captains managed to remain civil to each other.

  The trouble began after they left the locker room. It came in the form of their opponent.

  Jeff was hardly surprised by this. His father had briefed him on some of Camden’s history before the bus trip across the Delaware River. Camden High School, which Camden Middle fed into, had been known for its athletics for years. In the 1980s, University of Louisville basketball coach Denny Crum had recruited so many Camden players that other coaches talked about his “Camden connection.” The high school had won numerous state championships and had produced players who had gone on to the NBA—most notably Milt Wagner, a star on Louisville’s 1986 national championship team. More recently, his son Dajuan had starred at Camden before going on to play at Memphis, where—by sheer coincidence—his father had been an assistant coach.

  It was clear pretty quickly that the Camden Middle School team was on a different level than the kids from Merion. On the first play of the game, one of Camden’s players, who looked to be about five-seven, stepped in front of a pass Jeff was attempting to throw to Camden James and took off down the court with no one between him and the basket.

  Jeff, racing back to try to get into position, was two steps behind when the kid leaped, seemed to hang in the air—and dunked. The tiny gym, which might have seated two hundred people, exploded. With good reason, Jeff thought. He knew there were little guys in the NBA who could dunk, but this was a sixth grader.

  As soon as Arlow inbounded the ball to him, he was double-teamed. He tried to dribble through it, lost the ball, and watched as another Camden kid went in for an uncontested layup. It was uncontested because Arlow, standing right there, had zero interest in trying to take a charge.

  Before Arlow even picked the ball up to inbound it again, Coach C called time-out. The game had started thirty-nine seconds earlier. Jeff had only one thought walking to the bench: This is going to be a long afternoon.

  * * *

  Coach C’s message during the time-out was simple: Calm down. He looked at Jeff and added, “Don’t try to dribble through double-teams. You have to ball-fake and then pass.”

  It was a simple concept: Pretend to pass the ball in one direction, hold onto the ball, and then throw it someplace else. They had worked on the art of ball-faking and shot-faking in practice. Coach C had actually quoted the famous basketball coach Bob Knight at one point: “Knight liked to say, ‘Is there anything better in life than a good shot-fake?’ The answer is there are lots of things better, but when playing basketball, a good ball-fake or shot-fake is a very good thing.”

  Jeff and the rest of the Mustangs did calm down after the time-out and did better against the pressure defense. Jeff even found Arlow streaking to the basket behind the defense at one point for an open layup.

  That was the good news. The bad news was the basket made the score 14–4.

  It was 18–6 after one quarter and 32–14 at halftime. It wasn’t so much that Merion was playing badly; Camden was just better. The Little Wildcats—the high school was the Wildcats—were bigger, faster, and better shooters.

  “Other than that,” as Jeff said to Danny Diskin after the game, “we were pretty evenly matched.”

  Danny shook his head. “They were smarter than us, too.”

  He was right.

  Everyone from both teams got to play. Coach C took Jeff out of the game when he put Arlow at the point and then rested Arlow when Jeff went back in to run t
he offense. They didn’t play together at all after the first quarter. Jeff wasn’t exactly sure why, but he didn’t mind. He understood Coach C wanting to see as many guys as possible in a game that couldn’t possibly be won.

  The final score was 57–33. Camden didn’t press at all in the second half, which was a relief. For all the ball-faking Jeff did when double-teamed, his pass-completion percentage wasn’t much higher than 50 percent. That wasn’t great for a football quarterback and it certainly wasn’t good for a point guard.

  When they got back to the locker room, Coach C was direct.

  “That’s almost certainly the best team we’ll play this season,” he said. He smiled. “If it’s not, then we’re in a lot of trouble. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sixth grader dunk before. I doubt if we’ll see that again.

  “If nothing else, we learned a lot about ourselves and what we need to work on today. Okay, let’s get into sweats and get back on the bus.” There was one shower in the locker room, so they’d known beforehand they wouldn’t be showering at Camden. “Michaels, Arlow, get ’em in.”

  Jeff moved to the center of the room. Arlow took his time getting there even though he was about four steps away. It was clear to Jeff he was sulking—not so much because the team had lost but because he’d only scored four points. Jeff knew him well enough to know his first concern was almost always his statistics.

  So, when Arlow was slow joining him, he didn’t wait. He put up his hand and said, “Get better, on three.”

  The others came to the center of the room—Arlow, too—finally. The hands went up. “One, two, three,” Jeff said.

  They all said, “Get better!”

  Everyone turned to take their things from their lockers and put on their sweats. All except for Arlow, who was glaring at Jeff.

  “Did someone make you captain?” he asked. “Did I miss something?”

  Jeff shook his head.

  “Can we get through one day without an argument, Arlow?” he said. “We are teammates. You were sulking. Our job is to show life and lead the team, win or lose, regardless of how many points we score.”

  For once, Arlow didn’t come back at him. He’d noticed, no doubt, that everyone in the room was staring at the two of them. Jeff’s comment made too much sense to fire back. He just shook his head and walked to his locker.

  Diskin leaned into Jeff and said softly, “Well, pal, you won that round.”

  “That’s about all we won today,” Jeff said.

  He hoped Coach C was right about Camden being the best team they would play. He wondered how the girls were doing playing the Camden girls back at school.

  * * *

  The answer was: not very well. Sadly for Andi, that wasn’t close to being her biggest problem as the afternoon wore on.

  She knew she was in trouble as soon as they walked onto the court after the locker room fight had been broken up.

  Right away, she noticed the camera crew set up at the far end of the court. She saw the NBC Sports–Philadephia logo on the camera and she instantly recognized Michael Barkann, usually a studio host but someone who had said on-air during soccer season, “This might be the best story in our town this fall,” as Andi had progressed from being cut to benchwarmer to starter to star.

  “What in the world are they doing here?” she whispered to Lisa Carmichael.

  Lisa smiled. “Following up on the best story of the fall?”

  Andi groaned. She was almost certainly right. There was absolutely no reason for a TV crew to be at a sixth-grade basketball game. Maybe Camden had a star they were there to see? Not likely. How could anyone possibly know if a sixth grader was a future star before a single game had been played?

  Then, as she went through the pregame layup line with everyone else, Andi spotted another familiar face: Stevie Thomas, the star kid reporter who was now a freshman at Penn. He had also followed her story during soccer season. He did most of his work for the Washington Herald and had brought a lot of attention to Andi’s story outside of Philadelphia. He certainly wasn’t here to check on anyone playing for Camden.

  He was here for Andi.

  The media had played an important role in getting Andi on the team and on the field during soccer season. Now, though, the last thing she needed was any attention at all from the media.

  A basketball whizzed past Andi’s head.

  “Hey, Carillo, get your head up,” Jamie Bronson barked.

  She’d thrown a pass to Andi in the layup line and it had gone right past Andi because she wasn’t paying attention. She’d been lucky not to get hit in the face by the ball.

  “What’re you doing, Carillo, posing for the camera?”

  It was Alayne Jolie, right behind her in the layup line.

  Andi didn’t answer. She had no answer.

  * * *

  Things didn’t get any better when the game started. The Camden girls, Andi would learn later, were every bit as good as the Camden boys. About the only Merion player who was able to score with any consistency was Eleanor Dove. When she got the ball around the basket, she was almost impossible to stop.

  Even though Camden had two players who were taller than she was, she was quicker and a better leaper. There were two problems: first, it wasn’t easy to get the ball to her since she was frequently double-teamed. Second, none of the other Merion players could score—at all.

  Even Maria Medley, who was so much quicker than the rest of her teammates, struggled because it seemed as if all of Camden’s guards were as quick as she was. At the end of the first quarter, the score was Camden 14, Eleanor Dove 6. No one else had scored for Merion.

  Coach Josephson hadn’t subbed at all in the first six minutes. At the start of the second quarter she sent five new players into the game. Andi wasn’t one of them. She found herself sitting on the end of the bench next to Lisa Carmichael.

  “I know she can’t stand me,” she whispered to Lisa. “But what in the world did you do?”

  Lisa smiled. “Became friends with you?”

  She was joking, or at least half joking, but there was a ring of truth to it. Andi guessed the only reason Eleanor and Maria had started was because they were the team’s two best players. Or, at least two of the three best. Andi honestly believed she was the best shooting guard the team had. It was tough to prove that sitting on the bench.

  Three minutes into the second quarter, Andi heard Coach Axelson say to Coach Josephson, “Amy, we’ve got to call time and get some subs in.”

  Coach Josephson shot her a withering look but stood up and put her hands together in a T-signal to get a time-out.

  The score was now 22–6. Debbie Lee, subbing for Eleanor, was a little taller but not nearly as quick or agile. With Eleanor out, Merion was struggling to get a shot off, much less score.

  “Dove, Medley, go for Lee and Eisen,” she said.

  Coach Axelson was pointing at Andi and Lisa. “Coach, we need to get them in,” she said.

  Andi could see Coach Josephson scowl. Then, finally, she said, “Okay, fine. Carillo, Carmichael, get in.”

  “For who?” Andi asked.

  Coach Josephson looked at her as if she were too stupid to live. Then she looked at Coach Axelson. “Go for Allison and Mearns,” she said.

  Andi and Lisa raced to the scorer’s table to report in to the game. The horn blew. There had been no discussion of tactics at all.

  Still, walking onto the court, Andi felt better. She was playing—finally—and that, she decided, was a start.

  10

  It was quickly apparent that—perhaps by accident—Merion now had its best team on the floor. Ronnie Bonilla, who was the only player left in the game after the subs came in, was a perfect fifth wheel, willing to screen when she had a chance and a hardworking defender.

  On Merion’s first possession after the time-out, Medley got a solid screen at the foul line from Jolie and was able to squeeze through for a layup—becoming the first player not named Dove
to score for Merion.

  Camden’s point guard, who Andi found out later was named DeShea Watson, got careless with a pass inside, throwing it over everyone’s head, for a turnover. Then, Eleanor recognized a double-team when the girl guarding Andi left her for a moment. She pitched the ball quickly to Andi, who was wide-open at the three-point line, and Andi swished the first shot of her career. That cut the margin to 22–11 and Camden’s coach called a quick time-out.

  The Little Wildcats put in some subs at that point and righted themselves, but the last two minutes of the half were played evenly: It was 26–15 at the break.

  Halftime was ten minutes long, so the players only had a couple of minutes to relax before heading back to the court.

  Coach Josephson had very little to say, except for one sentence that surprised everyone: “We’ll go back with the five that started the game.”

  The five who had been on the floor the last 3:12 of the half looked at one another as if to say, Whaaa? Even the starters looked surprised.

  It wasn’t as if the starters weren’t trying; they were. Eleanor continued to play effectively inside, and the defense seemed better adjusted to the speed of the game than it had been at the start.

  But the first four minutes pretty much guaranteed the home team wasn’t going to stage any sort of miracle rally. It was 35–19 before Coach Axelson was able to convince Coach Josephson to go to the bench again. This time, she kept Eleanor, Maria, and Bronson on the court and subbed Eisen and Carmichael. Andi remained nailed to the bench.

  She finally got back in at the start of the fourth quarter, but by then it was 39–22. She made another three-pointer—sinking the three after getting a solid screen from Eleanor—and twice found Lisa open on cuts to the basket. As in the second quarter, Merion staged a mini-rally with its best players on the court, slicing the margin to 42–30 with two minutes remaining.

  They weren’t going to win, but they were making the score respectable. Then Coach Josephson went back to the three starters who were sitting and even took Eleanor and Maria out. Merion didn’t score again. The final was 48–30.