What You Work For

I sat in my stall in the locker room as the whole team waited for Dan to come in. It was the first day of training camp and I had no idea what to expect. That morning, I had arrived at the arena early so that I would be able to change before the guys started trickling in. But of course, that wasn’t what happened.

Just as I was pushing the locker room door open, Mitch emerged and steered me to the trainer’s room. There was a small bathroom that I was told would be mine for the season and as long as I was with the team. It wasn’t ideal, in my opinion, but I would work with it.

“You nervous?” TK leaned around the wall separating us and he smiled reassuringly.

“A bit, yeah,” I sighed. “Can you tell?”

“You’re hands are shaking and you’re looking a little green,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about though; you’ll probably kick all our asses.”

I laughed a little. “I don’t know about that. You guys know what to expect and I don’t.”

“But you’ve been working pretty hard all summer,” Jordan chipped in. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

I smiled. I’ve definitely developed a tight bond with Jordan and Tyler. Jordan and I were both the third out of four kids and had a tight bond with our families. TK and I both loved to jag Sidney about his butt. You could say the three of us were like a little family within a bigger one.

“Alright boys!” Dan said coming into the room. “Er, and girl. How should I refer to you all now?”

I sighed. “I played in a guy’s league up until college. It doesn’t matter to me, Coach.”

“Right, then,” he nodded. “I’m glad to see you all here and ready to go. You can all probably tell that you won’t be on the ice today-,” there was a collective groan from the room around me. “Instead, we’ll be having you guys doing some cardio outside and then in the gyms here. Good?”

The room’s response was to begin moving. Some of the guys grabbed iPods or iPhones, others water bottles. We began to file out of the room and out to the back of the practice arena and I was squished between TK and Jordan.

We set to work with the various trainers and coaches for a good 20 minutes as we got warmed up.

“Anybody know what we’re doing?” Dan asked.

“Trail run?” Geno asked.

Dan nodded and gestured to the walkway that was behind him. “Most of you know where we end. Get to it, team!”

*****

After a bit of running, I found I knew the trail better than I had originally thought. I had gone running this way a lot back in high school with my brothers and by the time I became captain in my senior year, I was running it almost every day. My feet reconnected with the familiar dirt and I hopped around familiar ditches or slopes.

“How do you know where you’re running?” James huffed.

“Use to run this everyday back in high school,” I panted as we all trudged on.

“All 5 miles?” Kris gaped.

I laughed. “Not usually. I tried to run after practice, so I was usually so beat I only got 3 in. But if I was running it in the morning, I did all 5.”

Jordan let out a low whistle. “Damn. I won’t say what I was doing with my free time in high school, but I will say that I sure as hell wasn’t running 5 miles a day.”

I shook my head with a smile on my face. “I don’t want to know, J, I really don’t. Ditch!” I jumped over the divot in the path as the guys stumbled around. I heard Geno trip.

He swore in Russian as he got up. “Yell early next time.”

“Will do,” I laughed.

*****

“See?” TK said as he clapped my shoulder as we came to the end of our run. “I told you you’d kick our asses.” James and Kris had challenged me to a race towards the end of our run and me being me, I couldn’t turn it down.

“Get used to it,” I told him. “There will be plenty more ass-kickings to come, I assure.”

“Hopefully,” Flower said. “Those will be saved for the ice and we’re all on the same team.”

“Eh,” I pretended to consider it. “We’ll see about that.”