False Start

Everyone was nervous and amped up as we suited up in the locker room. Our fieldhouse was behind one of the goal lines in an older style building, but we could already hear the noise of the crowd outside. We were all freshmen, being the freshman team, so even though most of us had been […]

Monday, we were playing our first full scrimmage in pads and everything, trying to get as close to a real game as possible against our defensive linemen. Our first game was on Thursday, which didn’t give us much time to get ready. How fast the schedule was between our first practice and our first game, […]

The rest of my first day went well, even though I did not have a single class that did not have one of Elijah’s group in it. Notably, Miguel and the rest of that group were not in the remedial classes. Only a handful of the other freshman players were in all the remedial classes, […]

I was lying on my bed, the playbook Coach Heidemann had given me open on my chest. In middle school, we’d just kind of learned plays and run them. There hadn’t been all this homework. I’d forgotten how much work it was at this level. The thought almost made me laugh out loud. The thing […]

We managed to finish practice with no more incidents, although it was a rough finish. Everyone was icy toward each other, even the kids not directly part of the conflict. The vibes were just off, and the coach wasn’t having it. We’d ended up having to run laps for the last ten minutes of practice, […]

I was lying on my bed, listening to the ceiling fan go round and round, both tired but also not wanting to just lie here because I would have to sit with my own thoughts too much. Today had been another brutal practice, so much so that one of the sophomores had gotten heat stroke […]