Practice on Monday wasn’t very long. They had now been playing together—including tryouts—for almost two months and were full of self-confidence.
As Andi engaged in a passing drill with her fellow forwards, Ron Arlow and Mike Craig, she couldn’t help but think how fast the season had gone, especially considering how much had changed from mid-September to late October.
That included the weather. Coach J warned them after practice that the predicted high for Tuesday was fifty degrees and there was a good chance it would be accompanied by a cold rain at some point in the afternoon.
“Put on a warm layer under your uniforms,” he said. “Not too much, you don’t want to be weighed down, but an extra T-shirt or even two might be a good idea.”
It wasn’t raining when they got on the bus for the ride up to McKinley, but a cold wind was whipping around.
Andi was glad she had heeded Coach J’s advice and dressed warmly.
“My dad says once the game starts, we won’t notice the cold,” Jeff said. “You get some adrenaline going, you forget about it.”
“I hope he’s right,” Andi said. She was thinking she’d rather stay in the locker room during warm-ups to wait until the last possible second to go back outside.
McKinley was smack in the middle of the conference standings with a 3–3 record. They had lost to the three teams ahead of them—other than Merion obviously—and beaten the three teams behind them. So it was hard to know what to expect.
When the game started, Andi kept waiting for the adrenaline Jeff had talked about to kick in so she would warm up. It wasn’t happening. By the ten-minute mark, she was literally shivering. And then it started to rain. Just what we need, she thought.
Both teams played as if all they wanted to do was get back inside. The game was sloppy and there were few scoring chances in the first half. The more it rained, the muddier the field became and the harder it got to cut and move, not to mention control the wet ball, which seemed to get heavier by the second.
It was scoreless at halftime, and both head coaches opted to take their teams in to the locker room to warm up a little, Andi included.
“I know it’s tough out there,” Coach Johnston told his team. “But it’s just as tough for them. You have to forget the weather. There will be plenty of time to be warm and dry after we win the game.”
Easier said than done.
The rain continued in the second half, cold, steady, and drenching. No matter how often the referee brought a new, dry ball into play it quickly became slippery and heavy.
Coach J kept changing the lineup, bringing fresh players in to try to give his team a boost. The McKinley coach did the same. When Andi came out for her mandatory five minutes, Coach C told her not to sit on the bench but to keep moving to try to stay warm.
There was only one way to get warm: Go inside. That wasn’t an option.
McKinley actually had the best scoring chance when Danny Diskin fell down in pursuit of a loose ball and one of their midfielders took off on a run all the way into the penalty box. He drew the defense to him, then slid the ball to the kid who was clearly McKinley’s best player—a very tall striker who scared Andi whenever he touched the ball.
Now, he had a clear shot at Bobby Woodward, and Andi cringed as he lined up the shot. But the wet ball squirted off the side of his foot and rolled harmlessly wide of the goal. Everyone on the Merion side exhaled.
It was still 0–0 with the clock ticking under five minutes, and Andi was thinking the whole season was about to be wiped out by the rain, the cold, and the mud.
And then, luck intervened. Ron Arlow had rifled a long shot that had gone over the goal. That gave McKinley’s keeper a goal kick, and everyone dropped back, anticipating a long boot.
This time, though, as he made his run to the ball, his left foot slipped and instead of hitting the ball solidly, he kicked it off the side of his foot. The ball rolled to his right, in the direction of Andi and one of the McKinley defenders, both of whom had been expecting the ball to fly to the midfield area.
The McKinley kid, who had marked Andi all over the field throughout the game, had turned his head as the goalie approached the ball. Andi hadn’t, remembering something she had read once in a book about Johan Cruyff, who had been a huge star for the Dutch national team years ago.
“Never assume anything in football,” Cruyff had said. “Never take your eye off the ball.”
Which was why Andi was looking right at the goalie when he kicked the ball and saw it coming right at her as it squibbed off his foot and the keeper ended up facedown in the mud.
Andi stopped it with her left foot, quickly transferred it to her right and then back to her left, and was running at the goal before her defender knew what had happened. The goalie had sprawled in the mud as he flubbed the kick.
He was trying desperately to scramble to his feet as Andi ran toward the net. He was too late. For a split second, Andi had been tempted to kick the ball from outside the penalty box with the goalie still trying to get up. But she remembered what had happened to the McKinley striker when he tried to line up an open shot minutes earlier.
Instead, she sprinted around the goalie as he was getting up and attempting to dive in her direction. Then, having gone around him, she got to within five yards of the goal and easily kicked the ball into the empty net.
The goalie, having only grabbed hold of empty air, lay with his face in the mud, pounding his fist in frustration. Andi had her arms in the air as much in surprise as celebration.
“That was the luckiest goal ever,” the goalie said as he pulled himself to his knees.
“Still counts, doesn’t it?”
Andi laughed. The comment had come from Arlow, who had raced in from behind and also had his arms in the air.
“I think you just saved the season,” Arlow said as he pounded her on the back, the rest of the team coming to join them.
“Lucky,” Andi said.
Arlow grinned. “Like I told the guy,” he said. “Still counts.”
Merion killed the final four minutes, mostly playing keep-away when it got the ball. There was no need to attack, so they just kept the ball moving—backward as much as forward—to whomever was open.
When the clock hit zero, the teams wearily congratulated one another, covered in mud, shivering, but very happy—and relieved.
When Andi got to the goalie in the handshake line, she patted him on the shoulder and said, “You’re right. I was lucky.”
The goalie shook his head. “Like your buddy said, still counts,” he said, and gave her a pat in return.
Andi giggled at the comment. Ron Arlow her “buddy”? Who’d have thunk it?
What’s more, they were now going to play for the conference title on Friday. Who’d have thunk that?