The change in mood made soccer easy. The Blizzard kept possession, most of the second half, with Georgianna scoring ten minutes after the restart. Izzy and Sarimah made the difference. They supported the defence and fed the offence through Giorgianna.
With only five minutes left to play, Georgianna one-timed a low pass and beat the goalie on a breakaway to break the tie. When the final whistle sounded, the Blizzard had won! Sarimah felt like she could have kept running for days.
Tamsen had come back to the sideline. She was sitting with a bag of ice on her knee and red eyes from crying. Everyone gathered around her for a group hug.
“Be gentle, please,” Tamsen said.
“Ugh,” Kaelynn said. “Can you play the next game?”
Tamsen shook her head, “No. My knee is pretty sore. I might be done until summer and outdoor soccer.”
They returned to the dressing room and sat on the benches. It was quiet when Coach K appeared with the schedule. “All right,” he said to the team. “We play in the semi-finals later today against the Rebelles. They’ll be good, so get something to eat. And remember to hydrate. It’s warm in here.”
Sarimah grabbed a bottle and squeezed a jet of ice water into her mouth. “It feels like the desert,” Sarimah said to Izzy and Molly.
“But there’s no sand,” Molly said with a smile.
“Or camels,” Izzy added. Then she stopped and a panicked look crossed her face.
Sarimah looked at Izzy, who appeared frozen with fear.
“I’m sorry,” Izzy said. “Was that rude? I don’t even know.”
She scrunched up her shoulders as if she expected bad news, but Sarimah only laughed.
“It is okay,” she said. “Aleppo had two million people before the war. I never spent much time in the country with any camels. I am a city girl.”
It was Izzy’s turn to laugh. “Oh, I feel so dumb,” she said.
“It’s cool that the city was so big,” Molly said.
“It had many amazing things,” Sarimah said. “Now, I am not so sure what is left.”
Sarimah suddenly felt sad. She looked into the faces of her teammates. She saw they had stopped smiling, too.
“Let’s not talk about that,” she said. “We should be celebrating our win.”
The girls were doing just that when a woman dressed in a black track suit appeared at the door. “Coach, can I have a word?” she asked Coach K.
Everyone watched as their coach and the woman shuffled away to speak privately. When Coach K returned, he didn’t look happy.
“The other team is protesting,” he said. “They claim we have an illegal player.”
Sarimah wasn’t sure what that meant, but the coach was staring right at her. Her smile disappeared.
17
Unlikely Ally
“What do they mean, illegal?” Izzy asked. “We have had the same team since — well, since forever.”
“Sarimah just joined us a little while ago,” Coach K explained. “Their protest is about her.” He looked concerned, but Sarimah could tell he wasn’t angry with her. Everyone turned to look at Sarimah. It gave her the same feeling she had had at the first practice. She didn’t like being the centre of attention on the sidelines. She preferred to get noticed by playing soccer on the field with her team.
“But she’s not illegal,” Molly said. “She came to Canada fair and square.”
“That’s not what they mean,” Coach K said. “They mean she signed up too late, after the deadline.”
The girls went silent. Sarimah’s head started to spin.
“Is that true?” Izzy asked her coach. “Did she miss the deadline?”
“I don’t think so. But I don’t really know, to be honest,” the coach said. “I signed her up on the last day and paid the fee. I didn’t think to check. Nobody from the league office called me and nobody complained. Well, nobody complained until now.”
“So, what are we supposed to do?” Izzy said.
“I have a meeting in ten minutes with the commissioner and the Monarchs’ coach. Until then, prepare for the semi-finals.”
The girls broke into smaller groups. Most grabbed their gym bags to change shoes. Sarimah could only watch them as they moved around her. A few of her teammates patted her shoulder.
“It’s not your fault,” Izzy said.
“We don’t blame you,” Molly added.
“We are going to win this,” said Giorgianna.
Sarimah thanked them and nodded her head. When Izzy was alone changing her cleats, Sarimah saw her chance.
“What did I do?” she asked in a whisper.
“You didn’t do anything. The other team thinks we cheated by having you on the team. But they just want us to be kicked out so they can play in the semi-finals.”
Sarimah bent over to untie her cleats. She was fumbling with her laces when a shadow crossed over her. She looked up to see Tamsen, who had hobbled over. Tamsen leaned on the wall for support. She looked at Sarimah without saying a word.
“Someone help me,” Tamsen finally said.
Kaelynn jumped up and Tamsen put her arm around her shoulders.
Sarimah watched as they limped away.
“Where are you going, Tammy?” Izzy shouted.
“To teach them the rules.”
The team left the dressing room while they waited for the decision. Izzy and Sarimah had lunch together with their parents. Sarimah kept thinking about the meeting.
“Take it as a compliment,” Izzy’s mother told her. “The other team thinks you are too good.”
It didn’t help Sarimah to feel any better. She was worried sick about possibly costing the team its chance to move forward in the finals.
She didn’t feel hungry for lunch.
“You must try to eat,” her father told her. “You need your energy.”
The girls returned to the field two hours later. The problem was, there were three teams on the field. There were the Rebelles, arch-rivals of the Blizzard. But the Monarchs were also there, hoping they would be the team to move on to play the Rebelles.
“There are a lot of players on this field,” Sarimah said to Izzy.
“And one team is going to be very unhappy,” she answered.
As the Blizzard girls waited at the bench, coaches from all three teams appeared together from the hallway. They stopped just far enough away so that nobody could hear what they were saying. Tamsen walked in behind the coaches and moved past the group to her team.
“Hey, I told you to be ready.”
The girls smiled and pulled up their socks, taped up their shin pads or tied their hair back. They didn’t need to be told again to get set to play. They watched the Monarchs trundle off the field.
Coach K called the Blizzard into a huddle. “Tammy, you do the honours,” he said.
Sarimah was standing near the back of the huddle. She leaned in to hear what the coach had said.
“Sarimah is part of our team,” said Tamsen. “She joined us as an injury replacement, which is allowed under the rules.”
Sarimah raised her head. What? This was the first she knew of an injury.
“Cool!” Rosy said. “I knew they were wrong.”
Giorgianna moved closer to the centre. “But who was injured this year?” she asked.
“I was,” Tamsen said. “I hurt my knee a month ago. I came back too early. It’s been sore for a while.”
Coach K stepped into the huddle again. “We looked at Sarimah’s registration form. I submitted it on the deadline, but I just put the form into a mailbox. They didn’t receive it or put it into the computer until the next day, the day after the deadline. It was my fault, but they didn’t want Sarimah to pay for my mistake. So, when Tamsen reminded them about the injury rule, they agreed that Sarimah deserves a place on our team.”
>
The girls started to cheer and laugh. They clapped and patted each other on the back.
“Wow, way to go Tammy. You sure know a lot about the rules,” Lisa said.
“My dad was commissioner for four years,” Tamsen explained.
Sarimah turned away from the girls. She breathed out a big sigh of relief. Then she spotted her parents in the bleachers. She tried to smile, and then gave them a big thumbs-up. They clapped and waved.
Sarimah felt exhausted. And the game hadn’t even started yet.
18
New Strategy
“What are Rebelles?” Sarimah asked as they warmed up for their next game.
“A rebel doesn’t play by the rules,” Izzy answered. “A Rebelle is a girl rebel, I guess. But it’s not a real word. They just made it up.”
Sarimah didn’t like the name. It made her think about the war in Syria. “Why would they want that name?” she asked.
“I kind of like it,” Tamsen said from the bench behind them. “What’s wrong with it?”
“My uncle was helping the rebels in Syria,” Sarimah said. “He would call us every day on his cell phone. One day, the phone went dead. We have not heard from him since.”
The girls looked stunned.
“He was like a doctor,” she added. “I can’t remember the English word.”
“A paramedic?” Tamsen asked.
“Medic! That’s it. But he wanted to be a doctor when he graduated from high school.”
“High school? How old was he?” Izzy asked.
“He was sixteen when the war started. He is twenty-one now.”
“My oldest brother is sixteen,” Tamsen said. “He wants to be a paramedic when he graduates. That’s freaky. I’ve decided I don’t like the name any more, either.”
Sarimah saw that everything was getting serious again. She wanted to change the mood back to excited and happy. “My uncle is clever. We are sure he is safe. Now, we have a game to win.”
As Sarimah and Izzy started running drills to loosen up their muscles, Sarimah watched the other team.
“This team — they will be trouble,” she told Molly and Giorgianna as the referee did his final preparations.
“Why do you say that?” Giorgianna asked her.
“I have a bad feeling. They look angry.”
“They do look angry,” Molly said. “I don’t recognize any of them. Look at that tall girl. She looks extra angry.”
The three girls stopped their drills and stood shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. The Rebelles were practising corner kicks. Sarimah watched as they banged and crashed against each other.
“They’re going to be too injured to play by the time we start,” Izzy said. She was watching the other team, too.
“I hope you are right,” Sarimah said.
Once the game started, the Rebelles pressured the Blizzard at every turn. When Izzy had the ball in defence, she had no time to react. She had to kick it as far as she could. If she couldn’t clear it, she would kick it out of bounds so the team could regroup.
Every time Sarimah looked up, she saw two Rebelles defending her. The pressure kept Lisa and Rosy on the wings. The Blizzard hardly touched the ball in the first half. The only time they were able to get a pass was after a free kick. The Rebelles were not afraid to knock the Blizzard players off their feet, even if it meant a foul.
It didn’t turn into goals for either team, though. The first half ended scoreless.
“Why does it feel like they have twice as many players as we do?” Giorgianna said.
“It means someone is open,” Sarimah said.
She looked around as the other players gathered to listen.
“If there are two of them on one of us, one of us must be unguarded. Look back instead of ahead. That is usually the easiest pass. My father always says it when he watches football.”
Sarimah put on a serious face. She waved her finger in the air like an angry schoolteacher. “Sometimes you have to go backward to get ahead,” she said in her father’s deep voice.
All the girls laughed.
“I think he’s right, you know,” Tamsen said.
They stopped laughing and turned. Sarimah was worried Tamsen was going to get mad at them for laughing. But Tamsen was smiling.
“It’s a good idea. Make them chase us,” she said. “They look nervous. I don’t think they know what to do when they don’t have the ball.”
“That makes sense,” Kaelynn said. “When they have the ball, that big defender beside me just stops. She hardly moves. But when we get it, she starts running like my dog chasing a ball.”
There were a few more laughs as the girls talked strategy. Sarimah listened, but didn’t say much.
The Blizzard went into the second half with their new plan. Giorgianna started by tapping the ball ahead to Kaelynn. Kaelynn passed it back to Rosy, who pushed the ball all the way back to defence.
It went through the right side of the Blizzard team before the girls passed it ahead along the left. Sarimah could see the plan was working. The Rebelles chased the ball, but could not catch up to it.
Lisa received a pass about eight minutes into the second half. She had plenty of time and space on the left wing. She charged ahead, deep into the Rebelles’ zone before crossing a beautiful pass into the goal area.
It was there that Kaelynn met the pass with a smashing header. It went straight down at the goalie’s right side, deflected off the post and spun across the line. Kaelynn jumped and raised her fist.
The Rebelles never recovered. The 1-0 Blizzard win advanced them to the final game.
Everyone gathered at centre field to celebrate. They were laughing and clapping. Sarimah was right in the middle of the huddle. She felt like she was in a giant group hug.
19
Final Friends
Sarimah and Izzy arrived at the Soccer Centre forty-five minutes before the final game. Sarimah showed her parents around the building. They looked at the different team photos on the walls.
“So many teams are just girls,” her mother said. “That is so nice.”
Sarimah hugged both her parents when they found a seat in the bleachers. She walked to the dressing room to find she was the first one there. She grabbed her shoes from her backpack. She wasn’t alone for long before the door opened again.
“How’s it going?” Tamsen asked.
“Good, thank you. How is it going for you?”
Tamsen lowered herself gently to the bench. Sarimah studied the brace on Tamsen’s knee. It was a deep red and surrounded her leg in metal, plastic, and foam. Velcro straps circled her knee.
“It looks bad,” Sarimah said.
“I’ll be fine. As long as I’m ready for outdoor soccer. That’s more important.”
Sarimah nodded. “Yes, I can hardly wait for the sunshine.”
Sarimah wasn’t sure why Tamsen was talking to her after weeks of ignoring or insulting her.
They sat in silence for what felt like forever. Tamsen finally shifted in her seat again and started to talk.
“Look, I’m bad at this. But I want to tell you I’m sorry. I got mad at you at school when I hurt my knee. But, really, I was mad at myself because it was still sore when I had told everyone it was better. I rushed back into playing. It wasn’t your fault.”
Sarimah was trying to stay calm, but she wanted to yell and scream. She was mad at Tamsen for putting her through so much trouble. But she knew it wasn’t easy for Tamsen to apologize to her.
She decided to stay calm.
“Thank you,” Sarimah said. “I know how it feels when you want to play so badly but you cannot.”
“I guess refugee camps aren’t the best places for soccer,” Tamsen said.
“We were lucky. We left Syria earlier than a lot of others did, as soon as the fighting sta
rted. We lived in a camp. It was better than most. But it was different. There was no home to go to, after.”
Tamsen stretched her leg a little. There was another pause.
“Did you play much in Syria?” Tamsen asked.
“I would play whenever I could; in the street or in the park. There were many children where I lived.”
“You must have been on a good team. I mean, you are so good,” Tamsen said.
“Well, I feel like I don’t know much, compared to you. But I learned a lot from my father. He loves to watch. He used to play a lot, too,” Sarimah said.
“But you probably never played in the snow before.”
“No, that is new for me. I am still having trouble with it.”
“Nobody is very good in the snow. It’s just for fun. You really try hard, though. And you made the team happy to play and to have fun again. I like that. Anyway, I’ll let you get ready. Good luck.”
While Sarimah and Tamsen were talking, the rest of the team arrived. They were quiet, as they changed for the game.
Sarimah was eager to play. As she ran onto the field, she felt like she was leaping through the air. She finally felt like she belonged on the team.
Coach K called them all together. “Okay, we are playing the Sparks,” he said. “We know what to expect from them. They play smart, but there won’t be anything flashy. Play your game, and we should be just fine.”
He barked out some final orders and the girls charged through their warm-ups.
“We finally made it to the finals,” Izzy said, as they huddled for a pre-game cheer. “Let’s just keep playing the way we did in the semis.”
“Make it fun. Don’t forget that part,” Tamsen said.
Izzy looked surprised that the advice was coming from Tamsen. Then she laughed. Sarimah smiled at Tamsen. She looked around to see her teammates giggling in the huddle.
Finally, Sarimah thought. Everyone is happy.
The Blizzard stormed their opponents right from the start of the game. Giorgianna stripped the ball from a defender five minutes in. She passed it back to Kaelynn near the centre dot. Kaelynn kicked it all the way back to Izzy. From there, it went to Rosy, back to Sarimah and over to Lisa. The Sparks could only watch.
Snow Soccer Page 7