Junior Year Box Set

At lunchtime, the cheerleaders and my female friends took over our table, and the boys were told to get lost. Brook was among the other cheerleaders; amazingly, she hadn’t been sent home yet. All I could think of was she must have had all male teachers this morning.

I walked over and sat down next to Alan. I wasn’t talking to him yet but didn’t want him to feel ostracized like poor Mike, who sat at a table by himself. I heard Mike had made a date with Piper, one of the JV cheerleaders, but she had publicly told him she’d changed her mind after what Brook had said.

“Are you and Brook going out now?” Yuri asked.

I had a little inner smile when he didn’t spout off some sexist remark. Yuri showed that hanging out with me last year had rubbed off. We’d had several conversations about that very subject.

“No, she just wants to go do something fun tonight.”

“Yeah, right,” Alan snorted.

That got all the guys laughing. Who could blame them? I just let their taunts wash over me and winked at Yuri, who just nodded.

“I bet Brook plans to go do something fun that isn’t just sex,” I added.

“Notice that he didn’t rule it out. I know I’d have some impure thoughts if I was on a playdate with her,” Jim said.

“I like the ‘playdate’ jab,” Ty said. “We all know that David’s a ‘Player.’”

Everyone groaned as I sat up straighter as if claiming the ‘Player’ tag.

“What? I thought that was pretty clever,” Ty complained.

The debate then took a turn I wasn’t happy about. The guys all rated my success and failures with women and whether I deserved the ‘Player’ moniker. I ruined their fun when I turned the tables on them and exposed their own failed attempts with the stronger sex. It occurred to me we needed to up our game, and the best way to do that was by example. It had been a while since I felt like going out and playing.

◊◊◊

Our game this week was against Bloomington, a much larger school. Someone needed to talk to our athletic director about scheduling some cupcakes! I’d looked on the website for upcoming games, and there wasn’t a weak nonconference opponent on the schedule. Our traditional end-of-year travel game now showed TBD (To Be Determined). When I asked Coach Hope about it, he said that we were in negotiations to play a team from out of state. I had a bad feeling about what they had planned for us.

When practice started, Coach Stevens announced that Johan would move from center to left guard next to Jim, and Brock was shifted to center. At first, I was worried that Johan wouldn’t be able to run the plays where the guard was asked to pull, and either run the trap or be the lead blocker on a power sweep. I soon realized that if he had a big defensive lineman in front of him, Johan was a bulldozer. He was a big, strapping farm boy who was used to using his brawn to move things. With him and Jim on the same side of the football, and if we threw Wolf in at tight end, we could run power football to the left side all day long.

Brock was quicker and could get on the linebacker better. Later in practice, when Coach Zoon started to run line stunts at us for pass plays, Brock really showed his worth. His added mobility allowed him to help out wherever he was needed. I think we were all happy with the results.

Ty just made me smile. He had a feel for running between the tackles. Where Mike and Bert seemed to attract tacklers, Ty was able to see the play develop in front of him and recognize where the crease would be. I loved to watch him take his time as he moved to the line of scrimmage, and then he would explode when he saw an opening. Ty also had thick thighs that allowed him to break arm tackles. He was turning two- and three-yard runs into five or six, and if the linebackers missed, he was gone.

Coach Zoon also let me play some safety. He wanted me to be available at critical points in games or obvious passing situations when we dropped into our nickel coverage, where we replaced a linebacker with a defensive back.

I was sure the coaching staff wasn’t done making changes, but so far everything was looking up.

◊◊◊

When I walked out to my car, Brook was there waiting for me. She’d put on jeans, a pink t-shirt, and Lincoln High baseball cap, with her hair in a ponytail. I read the t-shirt and laughed. It read: ‘I heard you were a player. Well I’m the COACH!’ Someone from our lunch table had opened their big mouth. I was impressed she was able to get it made in time for our outing.

“Where to, Coach?” I asked as I got closer.

“Give me your keys,” Brook ordered.

The only other people who had driven my Charger were Tami and Chuck. For some reason, I didn’t hesitate to toss her the keys. I wondered why as I got into the passenger seat but soon forgot all about it when Brook smoked the tires as we left the student parking lot. She laughed hysterically while I white-knuckled the dash. This girl was crazy!