Saving the Team

by Alex Morgan

Emma put her arm around Zoe’s shoulder and squeezed. “She’s better than fine when it’s just the three of us—she’s awesome!”

  I smiled, feeling glad I had met such a nice group of girls. Imagine if everyone in this school were like Mirabelle! I shuddered. I had to know what was going on with her and Jessi. “So . . . what’s the deal with Mirabelle?” I said.

  Emma and Zoe groaned. “The Mirabelle saga,” Emma said dramatically. “It never ends.”

  Jessi got a sad look on her face. “This is going to be hard to believe, but Mirabelle and I used to be besties.”

  “No way!” I felt my eyes grow wide. Jessi and Mirabelle were so different! Plus, Mirabelle was an entire grade ahead.

  “She wasn’t always like this,” Jessi explained. “We live on the same block and are neighbors, so we basically grew up together. Our parents are good friends. We knew each other before we even went to elementary school. Believe it or not, since Mirabelle was older, she always looked out for me.”

  “That is hard to believe,” I said, still surprised at her revelation. “Mirabelle seems to look out only for herself.”

  Jessi nodded. “Now she does. We played soccer together in elementary school. Right before sixth grade she joined a traveling soccer team.”

  “She mentioned that,” I said.

  Jessi snorted. “I bet she did. Once she joined the team, which has girls from schools all over the county, she made friends with some girls from Pinewood.”

  “It’s a super-expensive private school,” Zoe explained.

  “Yeah, I keep hearing about how good they are at soccer,” I said.

  “Both the boys’ and girls’ teams,” Jessi said, and nodded. “Anyway, Mirabelle really wanted to go there, but her parents couldn’t afford it. When she started sixth grade at Kentville, she completely changed. New wardrobe. New attitude. She acted like she didn’t even know who I was. We stopped hanging out. My mom said it was because we were at different schools, but something about her had changed.

  “I was so nervous to go into the sixth grade, knowing Mirabelle wouldn’t even talk to me,” Jessi said, and she smiled at Emma and Zoe. “But luckily I met these two on the first day, and I wouldn’t trade them for all the Mirabelles on the planet!”

  I shuddered as the image of an army of snotty Mirabelles popped into my mind. “If Mirabelle ditched you, why is she so angry at you?”

  Emma and Zoe giggled as Jessi sighed.

  “At first I missed the old Mirabelle,” Jessi admitted. “I was hurt and confused. I thought if I could just make her remember all the fun times we used to have, we could be friends again. So one day last year I put this picture of us together in elementary school in her backpack, thinking it would remind her of what good friends we used to be. But the picture fell out in the locker room at her travel team’s practice. All the Pinewood girls saw it and gave her a hard time about it.”

  “Why?” I wondered. “What’s the big deal of having a picture in your backpack?” I kept one of me and Kara in my bag.

  Emma began to giggle again. “Let’s just say that Mirabelle wasn’t always the perfect, fashionable person you see today.”

  “She had an awkward phase,” Jessi explained. “And maybe she used to dress a little dorky. I didn’t care. She was my friend. But she thought I’d planted the pic in her backpack on purpose, to embarrass her in front of her new friends. And she’s been mad at me ever since.”

  “It’s been a whole year?” I asked. “Boy, she really holds a grudge.”

  Jessi nodded. “So, sorry, but if you’re friends with me, Mirabelle won’t be very nice to you.”

  Emma and Zoe laughed again. “Yeah, because she treats everyone else sooooooo nice, right?” Zoe said, and chortled.

  Jessi laughed. “Well, she is friends with all the popular eighth-grade girls,” she said. “I guess she figured they were the only kids in Kentville good enough for her.”

  “Sometimes I think the only reason they’re friends with her is because they’re afraid of her,” Emma said. “She is really bossy.”

  “And pretty rude,” I added.

  At that moment Frida appeared from around the corner. “The list from tryouts is up!” she said. “Here’s hoping I didn’t make it!”

  Jessi jumped up and grabbed my hand to help me. The five of us raced toward the back of the gym and the locker rooms. My heart pounded as we ran, which didn’t help my increasing nervousness. Even though the team didn’t have a great record and seemed pretty disorganized, I really wanted to make it. I loved playing soccer, and I’d play anywhere I got the chance. Plus, I really liked Jessi, Zoe, and Emma.

  As we got down to the locker room, a few of the girls from tryouts were already there, taking turns looking at a list of names posted on the wall.

  “Frida, you’re on here!” someone cried out from the front.

  Frida let out a disappointed sigh at the news. Clenching her fist, she shook it at the sky. “Curses!” she exclaimed.

  Jessi patted her on the back. “Sorry, Frida. You should thank your mom for me, though. You’re a great player, even if you don’t want to be.”

  “This is just going to cut into my audition time!” Frida wailed as she turned around and left the locker room.

  Just ahead of us Emma was craning her neck, trying to see if our names were on the list.

  “Devin, your name’s on the list,” Emma said. “And there’s Jessi, Zoe, and me, too. We all made it!”

  Zoe had a look of complete shock on her face. Emma gave her a hug. “Awesome! We’re all on the team together,” Emma cheered.

  “Wait a second.” Jessi got up close to the list and squinted. “Every person who tried out made the team!”

  I squeezed past Emma to take a look at the list with my own eyes. I scanned the page, and ten eighth graders and nine seventh graders had made the team.

  “Nineteen girls tried out yesterday,” I recalled. “And everyone made it? Wow, that’s a big team.”

  In soccer only eleven players could be on the field at a time. Most teams had spots for three or four alternates, but the Kentville Kangaroos had eight. That was a lot.

  Emma shrugged. “That’s Coach Flores for you. She wants everyone to have a chance.”

  I felt silly for even being nervous about tryouts. I could have sat on the field, recited nursery rhymes, and still made the team. That fact took away my feeling of accomplishment. I never imagined soccer in California would be like this! On the bright side, I had three new soccer friends to hang out with. But then Mirabelle’s face popped into my mind. How was I going to deal with her?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After school the next day I realized I’d forgotten my gym clothes, so I had to go home to change for our first practice. I didn’t want to be late, so I hustled over to the Kentville soccer field as fast as I could. I had on my pink headband and was ready to go. As I arrived, I saw a bunch of boys stretching and getting ready for their practice. All of them were laughing and joking with one another, completely oblivious to me, standing by the far goalpost. There wasn’t a girl soccer player in sight. Had I gotten something mixed up? When was our practice? This was where we’d had tryouts the other day.

  Setting my bag down, I pulled out my phone and pulled up the schedule Coach Flores had e-mailed out to us yesterday. Yes, it was right there: Wednesday, September 3, two forty-five p.m., girls’ practice. So where was everybody?

  “What’re you doing here?” a voice said from behind me.

  I jumped. A skinny boy with spiky black hair squinted hard at me. He looked familiar. I was pretty sure he was in my English class.

  “I’m, um, on the soccer team.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. “The guys’ soccer team?”

  “No!” I shook my head quickly. “I’m on the girls’ team. But nobody’s here. We’re supposed to have practice now.”

  “The girls don’t practice here,” he said, stating the obvious. Then he offered something useful. “They’re acr
oss the street, at the community park.”

  “Steven!” shouted some boys from across the field. “Get over here. We have to start!”

  “Sorry. Gotta go,” Steven said, trotting off backward while pointing across the street. “You better run.”

  I picked up my duffel and sprinted across the street in the direction he’d pointed in. Peering through the trees bordering the park, I spotted the girls’ soccer team in the distance, and jogged over to them.

  I broke into a sprint again and ran up to Coach Flores, who was talking to some of the players.

  “I’m so sorry. I went to the wrong place,” I said, still panting.

  “No problem! I’m glad you made it,” she said with a smile.

  My old coach back in Connecticut would have made me run laps for being late, but I didn’t tell Coach Flores that.

  “Get in line and get ready to have fun!” she said cheerily.

  The team was in one long line, zigzagging through a series of cones, dribbling soccer balls. Dust swirled around everyone’s feet. Instead of the lush, well-maintained grass of Kentville’s soccer field, the community park’s field was basically dirt with a few tufts of weeds.

  I shuffled into line with Jessi, Emma, and Zoe. “Where were you?” Jessi asked.

  “Back at the field outside school.”

  “Like we’d ever practice there,” said Jessi. “That’s reserved for the boys. We get to use it only for actual games.”

  “But we had tryouts there the other day,” I countered.

  “Yeah, on the first day of school,” Jessi said. “The boys’ coach didn’t want to overwhelm his boys with tryouts on the first day, so we got sloppy seconds.”

  “I just found out from Coach that we get the field for a game or practice only if the boys are at an away game,” Emma added. “It’s so unfair, right, Zoe?”

  Zoe nodded. “I heard the seventh graders last year complaining they were second fiddle to the boys’ team,” she said regretfully. “I can see what they meant.” We all looked bummed out at the news.

  A girl standing in line in front of us turned around. “If we win some games, maybe we’ll get some more respect around here.” She had long blond hair with bangs cut straight across her forehead.

  “Hey, Brianna,” Emma said. “I thought after tryouts you said you weren’t going to be able to play soccer.”

  “I am kind of booked up,” Brianna admitted. “What with chess club, Model UN, and the upcoming science fair. And I’ve got to keep my GPA up—I’ve still got a perfect four-point-oh. But I figured I would try to add soccer into the mix. After all, healthy body, healthy mind.” She tapped her forehead.

  I laughed to myself. I had a feeling Brianna would love my mom’s green smoothie, which Mom always called brain food. Maybe Brianna would trade Maisie some fruit punch for one! But I felt myself frowning as my mind went back to where the girls’ team ranked.

  “Let me get this straight,” I interrupted them. “The girls’ team never gets to practice on the actual field? How are we supposed to get familiar with it?” At Milford whoever had an upcoming game got priority. That wasn’t the case here, I guessed.

  “That’s not all,” Brianna said. She pointed to the end of our field.

  Something was missing. “Where are the goals?” I wondered.

  “I was wondering the same thing, so I asked Coach as soon as I got here. See those trash cans down there?” Emma said, indicating two big bright orange cans spaced a few yards apart. “Those are the goalposts.”

  “How do we know how high to kick the ball?” I asked. Without any crossbars it would be hard to know if a ball would count as a score.

  “Coach said we just kick it, and if she calls it a goal, it’s a goal,” Emma said. A junky field, trash cans for goals, and a coach who acted more like a preschool teacher than a soccer coach. Were all of our practices going to be like this?

  “What drill are we doing?” I asked.

  “We’re dribbling through the cones,” Jessi said. I watched the few girls ahead of us go.

  “Are we dribbling the cones any special way?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Coach just said to go through them. Any way you want,” she said. Back at Milford, each time through the cones we’d focus on something different. Maybe just left-foot touches, or keeping the ball close with short dribbles for extra control. Something to learn and get better at. Here nobody seemed to be concentrating very hard on what they were doing.

  On my turn I raced in and out of the cones, double tapping the ball on each crossover.

  “Nice! How did you do that?” exclaimed Emma from behind me. “Let me try.” When she stood still, Emma looked as athletic as Mirabelle. They were about the same height and athletically built. It was when Emma moved that the resemblance crumbled. As Emma tried to do the double tap, she kicked the ball too far ahead each time, which meant she had to run to catch up to it, and she overshot the cones.

  I felt my back stiffen as Mirabelle laughed from behind us. Jessi twirled around to face her. “You do it, then.” That was absolutely the wrong thing to say. I had no doubt Mirabelle could double tap. Triple tap even. Of course, when Mirabelle’s turn came, she whipped through the cones perfectly. “Beat that,” she said, gloating.

  Ignoring her, Jessi went through the cones pretty perfectly herself. But when she turned around to see Mirabelle’s reaction, Mirabelle was ignoring her, talking to a group of eighth graders and laughing. “Figures she’d pretend she didn’t see me,” Jessi said with an eye roll.

  After ten more minutes of us dribbling around the cones, Coach Flores got us started doing a passing drill. If you could call it that. In Milford we would have called it a warm up. The whole thing consisted of standing around with everyone in a big circle, with one ball being passed around. You had to call out the name of the player you were going to pass to before you kicked the ball. It was kind of a mega-yawner.

  But with the Kangaroos it was also an exercise in patience. You would think that not knowing everybody’s name yet would make the drill more difficult for me, but no, that was not the case. Someone would call out “Grace!” and the ball would go to Mirabelle. “Anna!” and Emma would get bonked in the face.

  “Nobody really knows what they’re doing, do they?” I asked Jessi.

  She shrugged. “It is only the first practice. But Coach Flores doesn’t seem to care a whole lot about teaching us skills, does she?”

  I looked over at Coach Flores, who was smiling like we had all just won a game. I never thought I’d meet somebody who was too nice, but Coach Flores seemed to fit that description. She stopped smiling just long enough to blow her whistle. “It’s five o’clock!” she said, grinning once again. “Gather round, everyone.”

  “I hope you all had fun today! And congratulations for making the team!” I did a mental eye roll. All you had to do to make the team was show up! “You are all officially Kicks!” Some of the girls cheered at the mention of the team’s nickname. “No pressure, but I wanted you to know our first game is at the end of the week,” Coach continued once we’d all formed a circle around her.

  “Wait—this week?” Mirabelle asked.

  “Yes, on Friday night,” she said. “But don’t worry, you girls are looking great.”

  “But the game wasn’t even on our schedule,” Mirabelle complained.

  “Oh, it wasn’t?” said Coach Flores, looking confused. “I’m sorry. That is completely my fault.”

  How could we possibly have our first game when we barely even knew one another’s names? Coach’s touchy-feely-everyone-have-fun-no-pressure style had left us completely disorganized.

  “We’ll be traveling to Victorton, so we need at least eleven of you to show up. Otherwise tell me in advance if we need to forfeit. I know Friday’s the weekend. And since I left if off the schedule, I’ll understand if you guys made other plans.” I swear, if she weren’t our coach, I would have thought Coach Flores was encouraging us to skip the game.


  “But if you do want to play, you’ll have to get your permission slips signed to ride the bus.” A stack of permission slips was passed around. Another sunny smile lit up her face as she looked around the circle. “Anyone have any questions?”

  Mirabelle raised her hand. “We don’t even know who our captains are yet. Are we going to choose them before the game?”

  “Hmmmmm.” Coach looked thoughtful. “What if we had one captain for the eighth grade and another for seventh?” The eighth-grade girls huddled together, Mirabelle in the middle. A lot of loud, intense whispering could be heard. It sounded like they were arguing.

  Finally a tall, thin girl wearing red-and-white-striped socks emerged from the huddle. She didn’t look happy.

  “The eighth graders want Mirabelle as captain,” she said.

  “Thanks, Grace.” Coach smiled at her. “Mirabelle is our eighth-grade captain.”

  Grace frowned slightly. I had seen her at tryouts. She was quiet but a good player with natural athletic ability. I didn’t even know her, but I found myself wishing she were the eighth-grade captain instead of Mirabelle. Let’s face it. I’d want anybody to be captain over Mirabelle!

  Mirabelle looked around at everyone with a smug smile on her face.

  “Okay, Mirabelle. You’re our first captain. Any other nominations?” Coach asked.

  “I nominate Devin!” Jessi said loudly and with a defiant look at Mirabelle.

  I could hardly believe my ears. “Wh-what, me?” I sputtered out in surprise. “But I’m brand-new at this school! I hardly know you guys. Shouldn’t you be captain?” I asked Jessi. She was a great player.

  Jessi shook her head. “You’ll be great, Devin.”

  If I had been back home, I would have been happy to step up with Kara, but this wasn’t Milford or the Cosmos. I was still just getting the lay of the land here. And it was way too soon for me to be telling girls I barely knew what to do.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mirabelle studying me. “I’ll second Devin,” she said. “Devin for co-captain.” She smiled sweetly.

  My mouth dropped open. Why did Mirabelle want me to be captain with her? And why was she being so nice?