My afternoon tests were easy. American History was just memorization. AP Physics might have been hard, but I called Suzanne, and she helped me study. Finally, World Geography was about capital cities. Thankfully it was multiple choice, so you could at least eliminate a couple. Why I would need to know the capital of Yemen was beyond me, but somehow, I remembered it ended with a weird ’a, so it wasn’t hard to pick Sana’a.
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Lakeview was our opponent tonight; they had lost their first three games. The problem with a game like this was it was hard to get excited about playing them. It wasn’t that they’d lost three games, it was that they had lost them by sizable margins. I felt very confident we would win this one easily. The only worry was the weather. The news forecasted showers on and off through Saturday. When I pulled into the school parking lot, it was just starting to rain. I put on my raincoat, grabbed my duffle bag, and went to the locker room to put it away.
I arrived early as usual so I could eat beforehand. I jogged over to the hospitality tent and found it full. Lakeview had gotten here early as well, and Mrs. Sullivan was being a good host and feeding the opposing team. It seemed that college recruiters and reporters were a bunch of wimps and didn’t want to get wet. I was happy no one recognized me with my raincoat hood up except Mrs. Sullivan.
She pointed to a table, and I walked over and sat down. She brought over two of my favorite dishes to eat: catfish, and ham and beans with cornbread. She joined me, and I got us glasses of iced tea. It was a nice change from the typical grilled food.
“This is new,” I said.
“We got a new food distributor, and he showed us some other options. We spent a little extra for the catfish, but the ham and beans are cheap and filling. The Lakeview kids hit it hard, but the recruiters wanted the standard fare of brats and hamburgers.”
We had a nice meal until Jeff saw us and sat down.
“Can’t you see that I was having dinner with my lady?” I teased him.
“Now that would be a story. I bet Mr. Sullivan would have something to say about it,” Jeff said.
“He might be okay if it were David,” Mrs. Sullivan said with a cheeky grin.
“Can I quote you on that?” Jeff asked.
“Of course you can.”
I shook my head ‘no’ because who knew what Jeff might do. She took my plate and hers and left Jeff and me alone. He was busy showing me pictures of his newest grandson when Brandon showed up.
“I got us a party bus for the weekend,” Brandon blurted out.
“Maybe we should talk about this later,” I suggested.
“I’d love to hear about this,” Jeff offered as he got his phone out to record our conversation.
“Not happening,” I said and gave Brandon a hard stare.
“Next you’ll be telling about the cocaine and hookers,” Jeff said, and we both looked confused. “A reporter in Michigan was sent to a convenience store to do a story about the Lotto being at $500 million. She was live, and randomly asked a guy what he would do if he won it. He said he’d spend it on cocaine and hookers. Turns out he’s married, with three kids under the age of five at home. It was lucky for him that his wife had a sense of humor. So, tell me what you need a party bus for.”
“You do realize that he’s a reporter, right?” I asked Brandon.
“We’re going to the Alabama–Georgia game this weekend. I’m in charge of driving these knuckleheads around, and I figured it might be better to rent a small bus and have a driver take us. When I told the saleslady what I was doing, she said they had a new party bus. They offered it to me for the same price as a regular bus because they wanted to test it out,” Brandon explained.
“Does it come with cocaine and hookers?” I asked.
“No, and there’ll only be age-appropriate beverages provided,” Brandon said, which made Jeff laugh when he saw my shocked face.
Brandon was 21 and could buy us beer. Of course, it was no secret that I didn’t drink during the season, most of the time. Jeff realized that we would leave right after the game, so he needed to get his interview out of the way. He was sneaky in that he didn’t invite his brethren to join him. He would get an exclusive.
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The ‘off and on’ part of the rain turned out to be only ‘on.’ That didn’t stop our fans from coming out in force. The cowbells started clanging as we came on the field to get the game started. This time I won the coin toss, and we deferred to the second half. Before the kickoff, the chant started for ‘Our House.’
The kickoff was to tell the story for the rest of the game. Lakeview received the football at the 5 yard line, and their returner dropped the ball. Instead of picking it up, he must have panicked, because he downed it right there. On the ensuing play, they handed the football off to the tailback on a dive play to give them some breathing room. Wolf tackled the running back who then fumbled the ball. Yuri spotted it and ended up recovering the football.
Coach Diamond called for me to run the option play and keep it. He knew it would get the jitters out of my system if I hit someone. Jake came in motion from right to left before the snap. On the snap, I faked the handoff to Ty and followed Jake around the left end. Jim sealed the defensive end, and Ed managed to get in the way of the linebacker. Jake blocked the safety, which allowed me to walk into the end zone.
I wondered how many points we would be up by the end of the half if we scored this fast. By halftime, I had a different outlook when the score was still 7–0. Right before halftime, the managers had found gloves for the skill players. We had fumbled the ball four times compared to five by Lakeview. I was glad this game wasn’t on the televised schedule because if it had been, everyone would decide we were easy to beat.
Besides the football being slick, the turf hadn’t held up. Even with our longest cleats, no one could get traction. It was almost as if we were on ice skates. The final problem was, with all the mud, it was hard to tell which team was which. The coaches gave us some extra time to change uniforms. I took a quick hot shower to get all the mud off me. Even though we were all wet, muddy, and cold, we were having a blast.
We waited until the last minute to come out of the locker room to start the second half. At halftime, we’d provided dry footballs to the referees. We started our first drive knowing it would only be a matter of time before everything would be a mess again. Coach Diamond called a pass play to start the second half. Wolf did a little buttonhook for a completion.
I ended up throwing the ball nine straight times to move us down to the 5 yard line. Lakeview set up to defend the pass. Coach Diamond had called a play-action pass, so I just checked the call to the run play. Ty took the football and followed the block of Johan into the end zone to score.
At the start of the fourth quarter, we were up 21–0 on a short pass that Roc managed to turn into a long score. Our fans had to be miserable, but they hadn’t left yet. It was at this point Coach Hope started to insert the backups and told me to go sit on the bench.
At a timeout, they put on Shake, Shake, Shake by KC and The Sunshine Band. One of the cheerleaders shouted it was time to dance. That got the crowd on their feet. Heck, I wasn’t missing this. I jumped up on the bench and faced our fans. I had to laugh when some of the guys began to join me. Soon the whole team got into it. They usually only played a song during a timeout, but the referee held up the game and started to dance too. Even the Lakeview players were dancing. The guys who videoed the game caught the whole thing.