Game Changers--A Benchwarmers Novel

by John Feinstein

  Plus, she had plenty she wanted to talk to Jeff about, although she made it clear that if he repeated a word to anyone, she would never speak to him again.

  “So, nothing dramatic then,” he said when she finished her threat.

  She smiled. It was hard to get angry at him, harder to stay angry. His sense of humor was—what was the word her mother used?—disarming.

  She had finished buying presents for her brothers and still had to figure out what to do about her parents when they decided to take their pizza break.

  “So, tell me why you have no shopping to do?” she asked as they dug into their first slices.

  “Because we have a family tradition of getting our Christmas tree and doing our holiday shopping on the Saturday after Thanksgiving,” he said. “It’s not crowded because so many people shop the day before on Black Friday, and my dad doesn’t have to work because he’s got an Eagles game the next day.”

  “So how do you buy presents for each other if everyone’s there?”

  “I go with Dad to get presents for Mom. Then he and Mom switch off and she and I get some things for Dad while he gets something for me. Not that hard. We probably spend more time worrying about what to get the cats than the humans.”

  “They complain a lot, do they?”

  Once Jeff had explained the magic of the Michaels’s holiday shopping, Andi asked about the boys’ loss on Friday to Ardmore. Both basketball teams were now 1–3. The difference was that the girls had a conference win.

  That was when he had launched into his speech about Ardmore having a kid the Merion players couldn’t guard. “He wasn’t as talented as the Jordan kid at Haverford, but he must have been six-four and he had really good hands. They just kept throwing the ball toward the rim and he’d catch it and score. The only way we could stop him was to foul.”

  “So, you need a star and you haven’t got one,” she said.

  “We also need me playing the point the entire game,” he said. “It’s not that I’m great or anything, but at least I pass the ball. I checked over the weekend with Gary, who keeps our stats, and do you know how many assists Arlow has in four games?”

  She figured she needed to guess low. “Eight,” she said.

  “Four,” he answered. “You’d have to get more than one a game by accident.”

  “Especially if you’re spending half your time at the point.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I asked Gary if Coach C knew that stat and he said he must because he asks for all the stats to be e-mailed to him after every game.”

  “That’s just weird,” she said. “You know he wants to win and you know he’s not a guy to hold grudges—unlike my coach.”

  “I know,” he said. “So, speaking of grudge holders.”

  She sighed and told him in detail about Friday. He had texted her Friday night after Danny Diskin had told him that Eleanor had reported that Andi hadn’t played at all at Ardmore. She hadn’t written back until Saturday, which concerned him because he wondered if she blamed him for the benching, but then suggested meeting at the mall on Monday for shopping and pizza. That had been a relief.

  Other than making him swear a blood oath he wouldn’t repeat anything she told him, Andi had apparently forgiven him for going to Coach Crist.

  She sighed now and walked him through the events of Friday, from the pregame locker room to Bronson’s book crack in the postgame locker room.

  Jeff was surprised to hear the Bronson part of the story.

  “Does she have potential to maybe be a decent person?” he asked.

  Andi shrugged. “Not sure. Before the season I would have said no way. Just a bully, a female Arlow. Now, though … I kind of wonder.”

  Jeff thought about that for a minute, tearing apart a second slice of pizza in the process.

  “I’m guessing if you just show up for practice on the first day of school, this isn’t going to get any better,” he said, after taking a long sip of water to wash the pizza down. “In fact, it may get worse.”

  “Worse?” Andi said. “How can it get worse?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said. “She could try to throw you off the team. Say that you’re disruptive and she’s doing it for the good of the team.”

  “I would think the other players would object to that.”

  “Exactly,” Jeff said. “So why not beat her to that punch? Why not see if you can get up a petition to have her removed as coach before she either keeps you on the bench or tries to toss you? You know Eleanor, Maria, and Lisa will sign it, right?”

  “I think Debbie Lee probably would, too,” Andi said, playing along but still not certain about any of this.

  “But the key would be getting Jamie Bronson and her three disciples—what are their names?”

  “Alayne, Jenny, and Hope,” Andi said.

  “You get Bronson and those three and you’ve got at least nine votes. My guess is those three in the middle will swing with whomever has the most support.”

  Andi thought about it for a minute.

  “That’s pretty risky, isn’t it? Even if I get the signatures and we take ’em to Mr. Block, he’s not going to want to fire a coach because the players are complaining about her. Not unless we can prove abuse of some kind.”

  “She’s never threatened to hit anyone or anything like that, has she?”

  “No. She’s not even that much of a yeller. It comes down, really, to picking on me and, to a lesser extent, Lisa.”

  “And the crack about African Americans in the locker room at Chester Heights.”

  “Yeah, though she hasn’t said or done anything like it since then. On the other hand, she’s never apologized, either.”

  “And she doesn’t pick on Maria and Eleanor?”

  “They’re two of her best players. She may be dumb, but she ain’t stupid.”

  “In that case, you probably have to wait for her to make her next move. But keep this in mind as a possible plan B.”

  “You think she’ll make the next move?” Andi asked.

  Jeff grinned. “What are the chances you come back from the holidays and she opens practice by saying, ‘Andi, I messed up. I’m putting you in the starting lineup on Friday’?”

  “Zero,” she said.

  He pointed at the last slice of pizza. “Want it?” he asked.

  “All yours,” she said.

  * * *

  While Andi’s family headed for Williamsburg, Jeff’s family stayed home. The holidays were a busy time for Tom Michaels: all the Big Five schools had games, as did the Sixers and the Flyers. There were high school basketball tournaments going on and—most important, of course—the Eagles had two games left and needed to win one to clinch a wild-card berth, two to win the division.

  Jeff’s mom, a Montessori schoolteacher, was more than happy to have some time to chill and prepare her classroom for the post-holiday restart of school.

  Coach Crist had told his players to take it easy during the break and play hoops with friends only if they felt like it, but be ready to work hard when they came back to school on the Tuesday after New Year’s. Their first game back would be on Friday.

  “Gives us three full days of practice to get back in the swing of things,” he’d said. “We go to Main Line on Friday and we better be ready. We can’t keep losing conference games.” He smiled. “Of course, if the sixth-grade version of LeBron James shows up, I’ll understand. Short of that, we need to start winning.”

  Jeff and Andi had texted a couple of times during the break. Andi sent Jeff a photo of her standing with her two brothers and a man and a woman dressed in eighteenth-century colonial-period dress. Jeff noticed that her brothers were considerably taller than Andi. He wondered how tall she would be.

  He sent her a photo of him standing on the fifty-yard-line at the Linc prior to the Eagles game with the Cowboys. Michael Barkann was also in the photo and Jeff noted, He says he’s here to help when needed.

  Andi texted back right away. Did you say so
mething to him?

  Not a single word. Don’t want to be in Andi-purgatory for life. He brought it up. I suspect he was joking. But …

  But nothing.

  Stay calm. Let’s not panic until it’s time to panic.

  * * *

  It first occurred to Andi that it was time to panic during the first practice of the New Year. It had snowed in Philadelphia the night before school started and the opening on Tuesday was two hours late. The shortened day left everyone feeling feisty and in a good mood when the girls hit the floor for the three-fifteen practice.

  Coach Josephson welcomed them back briefly and told them the next three days would be critical to get ready for the game Friday at home against Main Line.

  “They’re one-and-one in conference just like we are,” she said. “A game we need to win.”

  They went through their usual routines: stretching, drill work, free-throw shooting. The notion of counting free throws and making people run had mercifully become a thing of the past. Andi wondered if it was because she was the player least likely to have to run.

  Coach Josephson divided them into two teams to scrimmage—nothing new. Same starting five, same second five, Lisa and Andi as the sixth man for each team.

  About five minutes in, Coach Josephson called a foul on Eleanor—the coaches always reffed the scrimmages—which caused Eleanor to look at her as if she were seeing double.

  “Carmichael, go for Mearns,” the coach said after the whistle.

  Andi started to walk onto the court to take Ronnie Bonilla’s spot at guard, which had been normal procedure. Bonilla started to walk to the sideline.

  “Hang on,” Coach Josephson said. “What are you doing, Carillo? Did I tell you to sub in?”

  “No, Coach, but I thought…”

  “Don’t think, Carillo. Not your strength. When I want you to sub, I’ll let you know. Bonilla, get back in there. Let’s play.”

  They played on without Andi. And played. And played. She never saw the court for the rest of the practice.

  When practice ended and they headed to the locker room, Coach Tuller stopped her as she was leaving.

  “Andi, don’t get too down,” she said. “Coach is just trying to make you understand about the chain of authority. In class, if you don’t like a grade, you go to the teacher, not around the teacher to the principal. This is no different.”

  “Are you the good cop?” Andi asked.

  Coach Tuller smiled. “I’m just trying to be the conciliator. The team needs you. I want to see you back playing as soon as possible.”

  “How soon do you think that’ll be, Coach?” Andi asked.

  The smile faded. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wish I did. I guess Coach Josephson would say that’s up to you.”

  Andi knew the words that came out of her mouth next were a mistake, but she couldn’t help herself. “Like hell it is,” she said, turning and walking away.

  It was time, she thought, to give some serious thought to Jeff’s plan B. This had gone far enough. In fact, it had gone too far.

  25

  When Andi didn’t get to scrimmage for even one second on Wednesday or Thursday, she began writing the petition she planned to present to her teammates after Friday’s game—assuming she didn’t play again, which seemed likely.

  She started and stopped and started again a number of times. She first addressed the petition to Mr. Block, the school principal who had stepped in to get her on the soccer team—after Jeff’s dad and a columnist named Ray Didinger had brought the situation to the public’s attention.

  Mr. Block’s first response, Andi remembered, had been to allow Coach Johnston to cut her from the team.

  She then looked up the name of the chairwoman of the Merion Middle School Board of Directors, a group of parents who were supposed to settle disputes within the school that the principal or teachers could not resolve. Her name was Ann Cowett and her e-mail address was listed in the school’s online directory.

  Andi even thought for a moment that she should direct the petition to Coach Josephson’s former and current assistants. Both had witnessed Coach Josephson’s behavior, Coach Axelson to the point where she had quit her coaching job. Maybe they, as teachers, were the ones to take the issue to Mr. Block or Ms. Cowett and her fellow parents on the board. Or perhaps she should address it to Coach Hanks, who she knew had been made aware of the problem by Coach Crist.

  She asked Jeff what he thought. He briefly campaigned for her to go back to NBC Sports–Philly. Bad publicity for the school had worked during soccer season; why not go that route again now? Andi thought about it but rejected it because she knew it would confirm what Coach Josephson had been accusing her of—whether it was true or not. Eleanor, Maria, and Lisa were all of different minds about who the petition should be addressed to, but all agreed the earliest to even think about making a move was after practice the following Monday.

  “It could be she’s going to make her point this week and then move on,” Eleanor said. “I’m not saying that’s right, I’m saying it might be what she’s doing.”

  Lisa nodded. “But if you still aren’t practicing on Monday with a game on Tuesday, it’s time to do something. This has already gone too far. Friday’s a done deal. We can’t let it go further than that.”

  Friday, as Lisa had predicted, was a done deal. There was little doubt that Merion could have used Andi’s shooting and ball handling—but especially her shooting—against Main Line. Their coach had apparently looked at the statistics from Merion’s last prebreak game, against Ardmore, and noticed that Merion had shot one out of fourteen from beyond the three-point line. Whether she noted that a player who had shot four out of four the previous game didn’t play, no one knew.

  Main Line opened the game in a two-three zone, basically daring Merion to shoot the ball from outside. Every time Maria tried to attack the lane, a second defender came to meet her. She could kick the ball to a shooter—but it didn’t do much good if the shooters were firing blanks.

  Getting the ball to Eleanor was almost impossible because Merion had someone dropping down to double-team her constantly. When she did get the ball, she had absolutely no space to work with—a player behind, a player in front, and occasionally a third player leaning in to swipe at the ball.

  She and Maria did their best to keep the game close. Lisa didn’t get into the game to add a third scorer until there were three minutes left in the first half. By then, Main Line led 24–12. Lisa’s presence opened things up a little—she made two threes—but it was still 30–20 at the half. There was no doubt in Andi’s mind that if she and Lisa had both played the entire half, Merion would be leading. With two outside shooters in the game, Main Line would almost certainly have been forced to abandon its zone, and that would open up the lane for Maria’s drives and for Eleanor to score from the low post.

  But Andi stayed nailed to the bench in the second half and Lisa didn’t get back in until under four minutes were left and the margin had grown to 49–30. Merion simply couldn’t score with only two real scorers in the game. The final was 55–36.

  “That’s a loss to a team we could have beaten,” Eleanor said as they walked off after the postgame handshakes. “I’m sick of this.”

  “Start writing,” Maria said. “And write fast.”

  * * *

  The boys had gone to Main Line and picked up their first conference win.

  That was good news. In even better news, Jeff had played a key role in the victory. The only bad news was that the team had probably played its best with Ron Arlow at the point.

  No day was perfect.

  Coach C had started the two guards—Arlow at point guard and Jeff at shooting guard—and, once again, Jeff was left to wonder what he was thinking. Maybe he knew that Main Line’s point guard was lightning-quick, but just five-three. That meant Arlow benefited greatly from high-ball screens set by Merion’s big guys—notably Eric Billings and Tavon Washington. He made four threes in the first
quarter, and Merion led 18–12 after the first six minutes.

  Main Line switched to a zone defense and the game turned into one of those back-and-forth battles that are tense and fun at the same time. The little Main Line point guard, whose named turned out to be Reilly Atkinson, played on the wing in the one-two-two zone Main Line switched to, and he used his quickness on several occasions to dart into passing lanes for steals that led to layups.

  Coach Crist switched Jeff to the point, which was no picnic with a five-ten forward playing at the top of the zone. Main Line led 43–41 after three quarters. It turned out Merion’s best offense was to get a shot up against the zone and then watch Danny Diskin and Tavon Washington take advantage of the seams in the zone to grab offensive rebounds.

  Merion had the lead, 51–49 with the clock under a minute, when Jeff, unable to see clearly around his giant tormentor, tried to shot-fake and then pass to Diskin on the wing. For about the fifth time in the game, Atkinson darted into the passing lane, stole the ball, and took off toward the basket, with Jeff in pursuit. Just to be sure he turned a mistake into a really bad mistake, Jeff fouled him as he laid the ball in with nineteen seconds left.

  As the shot went in and the whistle blew, Jeff heard three voices all saying the same thing: “Michaels, what the hell were you thinking?” The voices he could hear clearly were Arlow and Coach C. The third voice was inside his head.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  Atkinson calmly swished the free throw to make it 52–51, Main Line. Coach C called his last time out.

  He didn’t say another word to Jeff about the play. Instead he said simply: “Clear-four,” an end-of-the-clock play they’d worked on in practice. The point guard would get the ball to the top of the key, while the other four players went to the baseline. “Michaels, you’ve got the point,” he said. “If they don’t double-team, keep going to the basket. If they do, you know what to do. Forget the clock here. Just get a shot up as soon as one is available. Everyone crash the boards on a miss.”