Higher, Faster, Stronger

"Sarah!"

"What! What did I do now!?"

"You can't put down your football things down for 5 minutes, even when you're sick?"

"Mom, it's just a play book and besides I need to know when I'm going to be needed as wide receiver."

You're probably confused by now. It was the following day from the fainting incident at school. I'd done a few things by now. And no, I hadn't stopped yakking by then.

1. Typed a letter to Hannah to give to the principle which demanded a retraction and an apology because of slander. It said I'd press charges if it wasn't retracted.

2. Heaved a lot.

3. Received an email from Neil with the news that I was being switched for a few games to wide receiver. He also sent apologies from Coach who said he hoped I felt better. Also, apparently the rumor mill is running slowly down.

-Gee, on common logic, who has ever actually seen us together besides on the field?

4. A call from Nate-who recovered-that said he accidentally hit Kael in the place where the sun don't shine with a wayward football. I thanked him.

5. Heaved a lot.

6. Slept a lot.

7. Watched TV and DVD's

8. Heaved. A Lot.

9. Got ahead of my homework.

Did I mention I heaved a lot? I did? Oh well.

Two days later with a very empty stomach I returned to school.

Nate greeted me with a huge hug. As did Hannah and Iz. I looked over at Neil, who promptly replied, "What? I'm not giving you a hug."

"Wow, Tina's a really lucky girl," I replied sarcastically. He just shrugged.

"Do you think Coach'll let me play in the game today?" I asked. He nodded.

"You're all better so I see no reason not to."

The bell rang so we got to class. I saw Terry on the way. She had her face down. I'd imagine by now she got a little note from the principle. You're playing hardball with the wrong person. Sorry, but you had your chance to back off.

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Fast Forward to the Game.

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While we were all in the boy's locker room, Coach came in looking mildly irritated.

"Ok, everyone listen up. These Bears, they like to do man to man coverage, so expect to have your own person to deal with. By reputation, they aren't the best. However, I did a little checking up and they gained some good rookies. Really good ones. Nevala and Irwin are some of ours."

The team grinned on that one. These two boys have a reputation amongst their peers.

And how. These boys nicknamed themselves the 'Crash Brothers' for their tendency to take down opposing teammates in a bone jarring tackle. Speaking of which, that was their positions, left and right tackle. And they were good at the tackling parts. Trust me; you want to tango with these two as much as you want to swallow a bomb.

We headed out in our crimson and gold glory and met these so called Bears on the field. I whistled low. They had us evenly matched for each position. Ok, so we didn't have the physical advantage. Their main points seemed to be: match all positions, and tackle often. If you can't beat them, beat the stuffing out of them. And if that doesn't work, then resort to real strategy. Oh, it's not like they were rushing in blindly hitting. But rarely, according to Coach, did they come up with a good strategy. I guess they figure if they covered every person and take all the good ones down, they won't have to worry too much.

Unfortunately for them, we have a genius (Steve), a prodigy (Derek), a loudmouth who never gives up (Nate), decent players (me and Neil and Keeg) and hard hitters (Crash Brothers). It's going to be close.

It must be noted however that the Crash Brothers talents reside on the football field. The school is still getting phone calls, and those preschoolers will remember that day for the rest of their lives…

Stretching, drills and then coin toss. Then the game started.

Coach had us rushing the ball downfield to gain yards. Nothing complex yet. Steve devised the plan. Don't play anything too major for the first two quarters. Pull out the big guns in the third and in the fourth quarter pull out our safety's as a diversion to the fact that we'd be doing all the most complex patterns.

Holding our men like coach said was harder than it looked. Sometimes I'd sidestep just out of the way of being killed by a guy twice my body weight.

In second quarter, we forced a turnover of them from offense to defense. Derek earned his stars that quarter because we didn't let a man through. Once they ran behind on the number of downs, (the number of chances you get to run 10 yards in offense), one of ours intercepted the ball and ran 10 yards toward our field goal before getting tackled.

Now, being wide receiver, I just came in after our defense played. Neil stopped me and whispered a play in my ear. I motioned to Derek and he almost smiled when I told him. We huddled up and explained it.

The play started. The ball was handed off to Derek and we formed a giant V (flying wedge formation) with Crash Brothers and some others. He charged into the end zone for the first touchdown of the game as the second quarter ended. We went in for a ten minute half time. Coach turned to Nate.

"Ease up or you'll kill yourself and him too." Remember what I said about not giving up? He's almost idiotic about it. He'd been trying to run his man to the ground all game.

I leaned over and whispered, "Seriously, knock it off. You look dead and he won't put you back in if you look like you're going to fall over in a breeze."

We continued talking for a little while longer until we trudged back onto the field. Ok, I can't say trudged because that makes us sound like beaten pansies. This could be further from the truth.

2 minutes into the third, the Crash Brothers proved their reputation. The affectionate term for the way they hit this guy is the 'slobber knocker'. In actuality they ganged up and pancaked the guy. He laid steamrolled on the ground not moving. And it didn't seem like his teammates really cared.

I trotted over and took a look. He was out cold.

"MEDIC!" I yelled. This guy had to be concussed. They hit him with the gross power of a couple of charging bulls. Wouldn't you feel it too?

Time was called as a couple of medical personnel took the poor kid away.

I ran to get to the Crashing idiots and Derek got there first.

"Get off my field, now!" he hissed. Coach stood on the sidelines arms crossed and emitting a black, raging aura. From what I heard on the people on the sideline, he simply said, "Go." They packed up and went home.

It wasn't going to be easy dealing with the two. They were mimicking Derek behind his back. I'm pretty sure it was about the 'my field' comment but heck, he's rich. He could buy the bloody field if he wanted too. His ego's big but at least he knows what he's doing. Ok, in retrospect it was probably a lame comment to make but you try being witty when you want to murder someone.

Derek, like me, was seething. "The point of this game is not to attempt murder on the other players!"

It didn't seem like the officials were happy about the thing either. They started calling us on all sorts of penalties, even when they were made up.

I thought Nate was going to lose it when they called him on pass interference. I thought that they had to be joking. These calls were complete crap! I nearly lost it, when in the fourth they called me on a face mask, which is touching the mask of an opposing player. I was reaching up to get the ball! Nothing more.

It's amazing they crap they'll call. For a time in the top of the fourth we were equal in score, 27 both.

They seemed eager for 2 things. Get the game over with and two, beat the stuffing out of us for their teammate. Aww, how cute. You feign nonchalance and yet you still want to murder us.

The last minute in huddle, I was so annoyed. They were trying to come up with some crap plan to score. It wasn't working and I was an irritated, PMSing female. Don't mess with me.

"Look!" I called exasperated. "Run a Hook and Lateral. They're all over me. Use me as bait and throw it back to Yeomans (our other wide receiver on the field.).

Everyone was tired enough to do it.

A Hook and Lateral is trick play in which case I'd run in a hook pattern and make it look like I'm going to catch it. The quarterback would then throw the ball to the other receiver, running a different direction.

The play was called and I started running. As I predicted, I had a few big guys running after me. I didn't want to get tackled, though it's part of the game.

After Yeomans scored, (no surprise, no one was covering him), I noticed we only had about 50 seconds left. There was no point in coming up with something spectacular for the end of the game. We just let the clock run down and be done with it.

They tired to rally, really. But more than a few of us wanted this game to be over.

When it finally was over, we'd kept our winning streak.
I had an idea though to make me cool down a bit.

I changed faster than I ever had and waited outside the locker room.

The boy I was looking for promptly showed up.

One short whistle later, he turned to face me.

"Want to get a burger or something?"