Trouble started even before practice.
“Great way to become a team,” she said under her breath as Jamie Bronson pushed past her in the locker room prior to their first real practice as a team.
Bronson stopped and turned.
“Problem, Carillo?” she said, as if hoping Andi would challenge her.
“Haven’t got a problem in the world, Bronson,” Andi answered, and turned back to tying her sneakers.
She had plenty of time and decided to take a minute to relax before heading out for practice.
But instead of relaxing she found herself fretting about her grades.
Her parents were both successful lawyers who expected a lot from their three kids. Her oldest brother, Todd, was a junior at Penn and played on the soccer team there. Her second brother, Drew, was a sophomore at Columbia and played varsity tennis and intramural basketball.
Both her parents had always encouraged their children to take part in sports, but there was no doubt what the priority was in the Carillo home: school. Good grades were a given; great grades were preferable.
Andi knew if her grades slipped, she’d no longer have to worry about Coach Josephson or the mean girls on the basketball team because she wouldn’t be playing. Where that line would be drawn exactly, she didn’t know, and she had no desire to find out.
Her midsemester report card had four As and a B on it. The B was in math and it was because she had trouble staying awake in class. Her interest in numbers was limited to baseball box scores, football quarterback ratings, and basketball stats. Soccer stats were pretty simple to follow but Andi also knew who the leading scorers were in the National Women’s Soccer League, Major League Soccer, and the English Premier League.
Algebra? Not so much.
She was shaking her head, thinking about algebra homework, when she realized she was alone in the locker room. Everyone else was on the court, warming up. The girls had the three-fifteen practice, and as Andi jogged onto the court from the locker room, she heard Coach Josephson’s whistle calling everyone to the jump circle.
She breathed a sigh of relief that her daydreaming hadn’t made her late. The feeling of relief didn’t last long.
“Well, Ms. Carillo, I see we don’t feel the need to warm up like everybody else,” Coach Josephson said as Andi joined the circle.
“Coach, I’m sorry…”
Coach Josephson held up a hand. “No, no, it’s perfectly okay. You probably don’t need to stretch, either. Soccer season undoubtedly left you in better shape than everyone else. So, while your teammates stretch, why don’t you give me a couple suicides. Just two is fine. Shouldn’t tire you out too much.”
Andi had about a dozen answers for the snide tone and the crack about playing soccer, but she knew any of them would only make things worse. So she walked to the baseline, put her hands on her hips, and waited for Coach Josephson to start her.
“Is there something you want to say to your teammates?” Coach Josephson said.
She clearly wasn’t letting this go.
“I’m sorry I was on time,” she said. “I know that means I was late.”
“Okay, line up for stretching,” Coach Josephson said. “Coach Axelson, please make sure Ms. Carillo hustles through those suicides.”
Coach Axelson nodded, walked to where Andi was standing, and said, very softly, “Sorry.”
Then she said, “Take your mark,” and blew her whistle.
Jeff’s first practice as a full-fledged member of the boys’ sixth-grade team was a cakewalk—as he would learn later—compared to Andi’s.
The two coaches spent a good deal of the workout putting in plays, talking about how to set legal screens on the offensive end of the floor and how to get around them on defense. They would play both man-to-man defense and zone defense.
They then split into two six-man teams to scrimmage. It was pretty apparent to Jeff that Mike Roth and Eric Billings—the two players who began the scrimmage watching—were going to be the last two players on the bench. It was also apparent that the coaches hadn’t yet decided who the five starters would be. It seemed they had divided the two teams up evenly, and as the scrimmage went on, they had players flipping their shirts from white to blue and blue to white in order to see who played well with whom.
When play began, Jeff was the point guard for the blue team; Ron Arlow was the point guard for the whites. Later, Arlow was moved to the blue team to play next to Jeff, who had mixed emotions about that: He preferred playing against Arlow, especially because he was convinced he was the better player and wanted to prove it. Beyond that, he wasn’t in love with the idea of teaming up with Arlow.
Then again, when the season started, they’d be on the same side whether Jeff liked it or not. So, just as in soccer, he had to accept the fact that they needed to get along on the court, if not off it.
For the final phase of the day, Coach C had Jeff and Arlow switch spots—Arlow taking the point, Jeff moving to the shooting guard spot. At first, Jeff wondered why. But when he thought about it, it occurred to him that the coaches had been moving everyone around throughout the afternoon. That’s what preseason practice was for, especially with a brand-new team.
When they finished, the coaches called them together and Coach C told them how pleased he was with the way they’d worked.
“This is what we’re going to do most of the week,” he said. “We want to put all of you into different situations, playing with different guys. Don’t read anything into whether you’re in blue or white right now. I’m sure most of you noticed that just about everyone spent time wearing each color.”
He smiled. “I know coaches always say before the season starts that there are no starters, that every spot is up for grabs. Well, in this case, it’s true. Coach B and I are both still learning about you. We have six practices to decide who should start and where each of you should play. We open next Tuesday playing over in New Jersey against Camden Middle. If you go to the school website tonight, you can see our whole schedule. We’ll play two non-conference games and two conference games before winter recess and then play ten conference games after the New Year. We’ll play four conference teams twice and the other four once each. There’s not enough time to play everybody twice, so it’s just luck of the draw who we play once and who we play twice.
“Oh, one other thing, on Monday before practice we’ll give each of you a piece of paper and ask you to vote for one captain.” He smiled. “Everybody good?”
“Yes, Coach,” they all responded. A simple nod of the head wasn’t good enough when your coach asked a question. Jeff had learned that during soccer season.
“Okay, Ron, bring ’em in.”
He nodded at Arlow, who got a grin on his face that told Jeff he thought being picked meant that Coach C was somehow endorsing him for captain. He’d been the captain of the soccer team because Coach J had made him the captain. Basketball would be different.
Jeff had no idea who would be chosen. But he felt confident it wouldn’t be Arlow.
Arlow walked to the middle of the jump circle and put up his hand. Everyone surrounded him, one hand in the air. “Hard work!” he said.
That was harmless enough. Jeff and the others repeated “Hard work!” and they headed for the locker room.
This, Jeff thought, should be fun.