Snap Decision, page 7
Their offense fought hard, but couldn’t move the ball. Chase tried repeatedly to throw passes, but kept getting sacked by the defense before he could do so. In the fourth quarter, with the Bobcats leading, 20 – 0, Coach Preston had Chase repeatedly hand the ball off to Nick Wood. Running plays. They weren’t going to win if they kept running the ball.
Chase grew frustrated. Utilizing their ground game here just kept the clock running and Carr would soon run out of time to score enough to win the game. Was Coach Preston even trying to win anymore?
He ran over to the sideline between plays and yelled to Coach Preston.
“What are we doing? Are we even trying to win?!”
Coach Preston waved him over.
“No,” he said. He looked sad and kind of upset. “Coach Skalaski doesn’t want you guys getting hurt — I mean, I don’t either. Look, we’ve lost. Passing the ball means the clock stops and the game takes longer. The more you get tackled, and the other guys too. The more we run the ball with Nick instead of passing, the sooner this game will end. We could try for a miracle, but . . . I’m sorry. Coach doesn’t want you guys getting hurt. It’s what we have to do.”
Chase apologized. He understood, but at the same time, he wasn’t particularly pleased at simply giving up. Minutes later, the clock was at 0:00, and they were headed back to Lincoln. The bus was quiet, as it always was following a loss. But Chase was really excited in the dark of the bus. He was almost totally done with JV and the varsity had three more regular season games, starting tomorrow night against Jacksonville Raines.
He could hardly wait.
Game Day. His first varsity game was tonight!
Chase woke up and started to climb out of bed, when he realized he was not alone.
He saw his sister’s light brown hair, tussled around her pillow, lying on the floor next to his bed. Ordinarily shoulder-length, after a night’s sleep it was mussed.
He sat at the edge of the bed and reached down, touching Hannah on the shoulder.
“Hannah, hey,” he said softly. “We’ve got to get up for school.”
Hannah’s eyes fluttered open then closed again. She was in her pajamas, but had no sheet, blanket, or any covers, only her pillow. “Ugh. Is it really time? I’m so tired.” Her eyes still weren’t open.
“Yes, it’s time. Did you have that dream again?”
Hannah nodded, finally opened her eyes, and sat up. She stretched her arms, and looked at Chase with her blue eyes.
“Maybe you should switch with me or something, when this happens.” He would have said that he hoped it wouldn’t happen again, but he didn’t think that was possible. The dream, although maybe occurring slightly less frequently recently, still came all too regularly. Hannah shook her head.
“I’m not gonna take your bed,” she said.
“Well, maybe we should at least keep a couple of blankets in here for you to use if you need them again.” He knew there was no “if” about it, but did like the thought of maybe putting that possibility into her brain. Maybe her subconscious would hear that and quit tormenting her. When it did torment her, Hannah always came looking for Chase.
Hannah had always been close to Chase, especially after their father left. Hannah was six, and Chase was five years old, turning six the next week.
They were living in Atlanta where their dad was an attorney with Frazier and Wolf, a huge law firm with offices across the country. One day, dinner had grown cold while they waited on their parents to finish talking in their bedroom. When Mom and Dad had finally come out, Dad had a suitcase in his hand, and the four of them had never eaten as a family again.
“We’d better get out to the kitchen and eat,” Hannah said. “We’ll get a blanket, or figure out what to do next time, later.” Just then, as if on cue, their mom’s voice came down the hall, calling them to get dressed and come to breakfast.
Of course, it was Daisy who had the great breakfast. She was stuffed with bacon and pancakes. Hannah was still upset, and Chase kept thinking about the game that night. As he was about to leave, his mom came in and sat down.
“You hardly ate. Are you okay? Can I get you something else? I can tell Daisy ate most of your breakfast.” His mom always worried like that.
“No, I’m fine. Just excited.”
“So are we. We’ll be there. Can’t wait to see you out there!” She kissed him on the cheek and asked again, “Are you sure there isn’t something you’d eat this morning?”
“No, Mom. Thanks, though.” Daisy hardly raised her head when Chase left the house. She was that stuffed.
Chase quickly forgot about Hannah’s dream. In fact, he didn’t remember a thing that was said that day in any of his classes, either. The only time he took his mind off of that night’s game against Raines was when he looked over in algebra and saw Kate glance at him.
School ended, and Chase and Tripp raced home. The team was meeting back at school in an hour for their pregame meal from Morgen’s BBQ. Chase’s mom warned him not to have too much of the spicy barbeque sauce before the game, but she also said that he needed to eat. They headed into their own houses for a few minutes. Chase kicked off his shoes and lay on his bed for a while, trying to read but it was hard for him to concentrate. He was wired for the game to just start already!
Chase locked his bike up next to Tripp. They’d ridden back to school together and Chase followed him into the cafeteria. He didn’t want to admit that he wanted Tripp to show him everything, but he suspected Tripp could tell what he was thinking, anyway. Tripp walked in first and Chase followed, looking around at the pre-game meal as other players began coming in. Guys looked a bit different this day as the seniors, most all suntanned — well, some still sunburned — were trickling in.
He and Tripp were at their table eating barbecue when he heard a voice. “Is this seat taken?”
JB.
Chase was thrilled to have JB wanting to sit by them. Of course, he was kind of disappointed that JB was even there. He hated to admit it, even to himself. Then again, JB seemed to always do everything the right way, and Chase realized he would have been let down if JB had disobeyed Coach as well as the principal.
“Yep, no skipping for you,” said Chase by way of greeting.
JB laughed. “No chance. My parents would have killed me.”
“So, you didn’t want to miss the game tonight?” said Chase.
“Well, that too.” JB laughed. “Apparently, you haven’t met my mom and dad. Oh, wait, you did.”
“They’d have killed you?” That didn’t fit with what he’d seen at dinner.
“Well, no, not exactly. But they have clear rules, and we keep them. Why not? Disobedience sometimes seems harmless, but it’s not. No thanks.”
JB paused. “Hey, do you know all your plays for tonight, Tripp?” Chase listened while they talked about plays for a few minutes, and then he got up to head to the locker room. He had too much adrenaline to sit still any longer. He needed to be on the move.
Not only did Chase not have too much of the spicy hot sauce, he didn’t have too much of anything. He was so nervous that he hardly ate at all.
Chase walked out of the school cafeteria, across the dull tile that used to be white, down the hall, and into the Carr gymnasium, decked out in blue and green. Across the basketball court, passing the girls’ volleyball team. He was so focused on his steps across the wooden court that he didn’t even realize that Kate and the other volleyball players were going through practice drills. As he entered the locker room, he was strangely comforted by the musty smell of sweat hanging in the air in the heat of the locker room in the middle of fall.
He found his blue jersey with green numbers — they had given him number three, thankfully — and he began to put on the rest of his uniform. His locker was in between numbers one and four. Megan Brown wore number two and dressed in her own locker room, over in the girls volleyball and girls basketball locker room. He sat in his cramped locker for a few minutes, despite it being made of unforgiving metal. It was really hard and uncomfortable, but today he didn’t notice. He had never sat in it before because it was too hard, but today he did. He listened to Lecrae on his MP3 player and took deep breaths. Lecrae, his new favorite, after the dinner at the Browns’ house.
Other players, including Tripp and then JB, began filing in while he continued to sit in his locker.
He finally walked out of the locker room, trotting onto the field with Tripp for pregame warmups. The sun had set, and the temperature had finally started to drop. A little, anyway. The Raines Vikings players were lined up on the far sideline, and as big as Chase thought that his new varsity teammates were, the Raines players were even bigger.
It looked like the uniform trucks at Ohio State and the Minnesota Vikings had collided. Raines wore white jerseys with red numerals, and dark red pants trimmed in gray, looking just like Ohio State. Their helmets were a deep red, also, with a silver Viking horn on each side, like the Minnesota Vikings.
Along with their size, it was a daunting sight.
Coach Skalaski gathered the team in the locker room one final time before they headed out for the opening kickoff. Chase, along with the rest of the twenty-eight guys who were dressed out, was kneeling on one knee, resting his elbow on his other knee, looking straight at Coach.
“Guys, this is a good team. There is a reason they are undefeated and ranked number two in the state. They are good. They’re big and they’re fast and they’re strong.
“But I’m not asking you to do anything amazing. Champions do the little things well, they don’t have to do the extraordinary things. If you’ll just do the ordinary things over and over, that you are capable of doing, we’ll be just fine.
“After all, we’ve had some success ourselves this year” — unlike the JV version of the Loggerheads, the varsity team was rolling along, at 7 – 0, ranked number five in the state — “and we’ve gotten there by doing the ordinary things better than anyone else.”
Apparently they didn’t do enough of the ordinary things very well that night.
Raines had everything that you would expect out of a team ranked that highly. The quarterback was not as big as JB, but he was a good passer. He spread his passes around to several different receivers, all of whom could run and had good hands catching the ball.
Raines won easily. The stands were full, because Raines brought lots of fans to go along with all of the Carr supporters. Being a home game, most of the fans in attendance were in blue and green, and most left the stadium disappointed.
In spite of the loss, JB’s rushing totals were especially amazing. It made sense since Carr had a lot of trouble blocking Raines and keeping them away from JB. Too many of Carr’s starting offensive line were in regular clothes on the sideline, so the younger replacements, like Solomon, were outmatched. Coach moved his best lineman, Will Kingston, from Left Guard to his brother’s position of Right Tackle in an effort to shore up the right side of the line, but Carr’s line still couldn’t protect JB. In addition to the seniors, Chris Kingston had tagged along to St. Augustine Beach, even though he was only a junior. His absence was sorely missed as well and as a result, JB was running for his life much of the night, being chased by the Raines defense.
Chase was excited, even though they lost. He hadn’t played, but it was thrilling to be out there in front of the big crowd and bright lights.
Coach Skalaski gathered the team in the locker room following the 35 – 9 loss, and took a different approach than what Chase expected. He figured Coach would be angry. Chase was wrong. Every time Chase had seen him talk, he was trying to keep them sharp, pep them up. He did again, but not how Chase thought. Coach Skalaski could see tonight that his team needed a big pat on the back.
“Wow. They’re pretty good, aren’t they? But, then again, so is Megan Brown.” He tossed a football toward Megan, who grinned, and then tried to look embarrassed. After all, she didn’t want to look too happy after a big loss.
“Three field goals. All of our points. Made all of her attempts, and two of them were from over forty yards!” Megan had made kicks of 30, 41, and 44 yards. “At this rate, when she’s a senior, she’ll probably be making 70-yarders!”
The team cheered.
“Listen up, y’all. When we put Raines on the schedule, we weren’t sure if we could make it through the season undefeated. We knew they would be a good test for us. And that was with our full roster — all of our players. We were missing seven guys tonight — a lot of them starters, good players. I’m proud of you all, you fought, you battled, you scrapped. JB, my word. Young man, you were on the run all night, and are just a remarkable player.”
Everyone cheered again.
Coach Skalaski quieted them back down. “But the rest of you did some good things out there too. There will be some things that the coaches and I will see on film that we will point out to you that we can do better, of course.
“But I love the effort. And it was an important lesson — more important than going undefeated this year — learning how to deal with adversity. And there’s no doubt, we’re not done with adversity. I’m sure it will be back. And how we deal with it will define us as a team and as young people.”
None of the team realized how right Coach Skalaski was, or how much adversity would ultimately test them. For Chase and Tripp, what lay on the horizon would put their friendship to the test.
CHAPTER 10
The tapping was quiet but urgent on Chase’s bedroom window. He was still groggy but quickly scooted over to the window even as he came awake. He stuck a couple of fingers between the blinds and lifted them up far enough to see out, figuring it had to be Tripp. Tripp was the only person who tapped on his bedroom window. Plus, Daisy wasn’t barking. In fact, she’d gone back to sleep on his bed after lifting her head.
Sure enough, Tripp had his face pressed against the glass.
“Are you ready?” Tripp asked through the windowpane.
“Not quite. My alarm didn’t go off.” Chase realized in his tired state that he’d forgotten to set it, since it was usually his mom who woke him up on Sunday mornings for church. “I’ll be right there.” Chase raced around the room, dressed in a pair of jeans and a gray and black T-shirt with “Destroyers” printed across the front and raced outside. Tripp and his dad were waiting for him.
“Chase, old buddy, we’re going to see the Tampa Bay Pirates play the Indianapolis Mustangs. You probably don’t want to wear the Destroyers shirt. It’s okay to take a minute — we’ll wait for you.” Mr. Stevens grinned as he spoke.
Chase face-palmed himself, pivoted on his toe, and headed back inside, trying not to wake his sister or his mom. He found a neutral bright blue golf shirt and before long they were on the highway, heading south, talking about all kinds of things on the three-and-a-half-hour drive down from Lincoln to Tampa. College and pro football, the World Series that had just ended, and school. And girls, but only a little.
Chase really enjoyed hanging around Tripp and his dad. It made him feel, well, more like he had a dad around too.
Eventually they took the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive exit off of Interstate 275, and headed a couple of miles to the stadium. Mr. Stevens pulled into a parking lot in the shadow of Raymond James Stadium, less than fifty yards from the entrance.
“Wow. This is a great place to park,” Chase remarked. Tripp and his dad nodded.
“I think it’s because all of the pro teams have to send scouts back and forth to visit each other,” Tripp said. “If they send a lousy pass to you — or don’t send one at all — they figure a lousy parking pass will be sent back to them as well. At least, that’s my guess. We’ve always had great parking at these games. But I guess Dad would have more experience.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Stevens. “I think that’s exactly it. We all send good parking passes to each other. Even the colleges send us good parking passes, because they know it would be easy enough for us to skip their game, and head to another school. If we skipped their games enough, we might not draft as many of their players — we wouldn’t have seen them play.”
Mr. Stevens reached across into the back seat and grabbed the light windbreakers that they had thrown in at the last minute. Clouds were rolling in, and cooler air had finally settled in across Tampa. “A number of times we’ll have flights to catch or we’ll have to drive to a second game, so we’re always on a time crunch. If there’s another option that’s more convenient, we may end up taking that one instead. And colleges, even though they might protest about pros hanging around and distracting their players, know that their players love having pro scouts hanging around.” Chase nodded.
By now, they were approaching the gate, and as the security officers were signing them in, Mr. Stevens handed the boys their Official Passes. Tripp looped the string on the pass through one of his belt loops, and Chase, watching Tripp, did the same.
“Where’s our ticket?”
Tripp smiled. “This is it. This gets you anywhere, anytime. The Official ones do.”
Chase was full of questions. “Is this a gate? I don’t see any other fans coming this way.” They’d always used tickets and gone through a regular gate in Jacksonville.
“No,” replied Mr. Stevens. He looked back down the hallway toward the table where they had checked in. “This is the entrance for the media — sportswriters and broadcasters and stuff — and also for the players, coaches, and their families. Michael had told me to come in this entrance before — it’s easier.”
During the drive, Tripp’s dad told them that Michael Lamberson was one of his teammates from college, and was now the general manager of the Pirates. It was hard to believe that there were already thousands of people in the building, because it looked totally empty. They continued down the deserted hallway. As they reached a connecting hallway, Mr. Stevens held a hand out on either side for Trip and Chase to stop before entering the new, wider hallway. “Hang on, guys. You’ve always got to keep your head on a swivel around stadiums — you know, look in every direction. Just like on a football field!”
