Things got worse, not better. Ron Arlow drew a yellow penalty card from the referee when he took Megan Tway down hard as she tried to clear a ball early in the second half. Tway got up after a minute, limping a little but insisting she was all right.
One of her teammates walked over to Arlow, pointed a finger at him, and said: “Do anything like that again and you’ll be carried off the field.”
Arlow laughed, but—not surprisingly—decided that was a good moment to move to the other side of the field as play resumed. Coach Johnston wasn’t the only bully who was part of the Merion team. And, like most bullies, Andi thought, he runs away as soon as someone stands up to him.
A few minutes later, the same boy who had come after Arlow got past Mike Craig at midfield and moved into the penalty area. Unsure who should try to cut him off, both Danny Diskin and Ethan Lewis went after him. That left the other forward wide-open. Just as he was about to shoot, Jeff charged at him from behind and dived at the ball—a brave, if unwise move. The two players went down in a heap.
The referee, having already witnessed one dirty play by a Merion player, decided this must be another one. He came in waving his yellow card at Jeff and pointing at the penalty spot—indicating that Main Line would get a penalty kick, since the play had taken place inside the penalty area.
The call angered Jeff. “I went for the ball, not the man,” he said to the referee, hands extended palms up to plead his case.
“One more word and you’ll get a red card,” said the ref, who apparently had seen enough of Merion’s tactics.
Andi knew that a red card would mean that Jeff would be ejected from the game and would have to sit out the next game. Jeff knew it, too. He turned and walked away, mumbling to himself.
The referee put the ball on the penalty spot. Anyone on the field could take the penalty kick. Megan Tway was Main Line’s choice.
“She never misses,” one of the Main Line players said to Andi as everyone lined up. “Just watch.”
He wasn’t kidding. On a penalty kick, the goalie can’t move until the ball is kicked. That means he has to guess which way the ball is going to go and hope he gets it right to have any chance at all.
Bobby Woodward actually guessed right—diving to his left. It didn’t matter. Tway’s kick went into the far corner of the net. Megan Tway had a strong—and accurate—leg.
“Best keeper in the world doesn’t stop that one,” Jeff said.
He was standing next to Andi, still shaking his head about the call.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You went for the ball, and the guy went down. Wasn’t your fault.”
She patted him on the back. Then came her least favorite sound in the world: the sound of Coach J’s voice.
“Carillo, Michaels, are you here to play or chat?”
Everyone was headed upfield for Merion’s kickoff. The exchange had taken about a half second.
Jeff rolled his eyes as they ran toward midfield.
“Least he’s consistent,” Andi said.
Leading 2–0—and no doubt surprised by the margin—Main Line went into a shell defense, keeping eight or nine players back most of the time to keep Merion from getting any open space in the offensive area of the field.
Andi had the best chance to score midway through the second half when she tracked down a long pass from Diskin in the corner, cut around one defender, and found herself one-on-one with Megan Tway. Andi made a good fake to clear some space, lined up the kick, and thought for sure her shot was going to find the upper-left-hand corner of the goal.
But she had rushed it a little, and the ball clanked off the corner of the goalpost and bounced away harmlessly.
Merion kept pressing, pushing more and more players toward the goal. Arlow had a chance but shot the ball wide. Andi made another good move and got the ball to Jeff, closing in on the goal, but Main Line’s goalie anticipated his shot well and made a diving save.
Jeff and the other Merion midfielders had pushed deep into the offensive zone to try to create a numbers advantage. That had led to Jeff’s being open.
But when the goalie made the save, he quickly leaped to his feet and, with the Merion players still pushed up into their attacking zone, boomed a kick to midfield. Merion had only two defenders back and the Main Line midfielders had sprinted back while the Merion players were still trying to figure out how Jeff’s shot hadn’t resulted in a goal.
Main Line ended up with a five-on-two break. The same player who Jeff had taken down to create the penalty kick executed a neat give-and-go, and poor Woodward ended up with two Main Line players closing in on him with Merion’s defenders sprawled helplessly on the ground after unsuccessfully trying to steal the ball.
That was the thing about defending in soccer: If you went for the ball and failed to get it, you usually left a teammate in trouble. In this case, that teammate was Woodward.
He tried to dive at the player with the ball before he could shoot. He simply slipped it back to Jeff’s tormentor, who booted it into an empty net to make it 3–0.
That was the last goal of the game. All the air went out of the Merion players after Main Line’s third score. The referee’s whistle as the clock hit zero was merciful. No one in a Merion uniform wanted to spend any more time flailing helplessly.
As the players went through the handshake line, Megan Tway wrapped an arm around Andi. “Your coach is a piece of work,” she said. “I’m not even sure why you want to play on his team.”
“We’re not very good, are we?” Andi said.
“I see some guys who have talent,” Tway said. “You’ve got more good players than we do. But I don’t see a lot of teamwork going on.”
Andi knew she was right.
They were now 0–3–1 for the season. Walking off the field, she could hear Tway’s words very clearly inside her head: “I’m not even sure why you want to play on his team.”
She couldn’t help but wonder the same thing.