“Older or younger?”
“Younger. She’s nine.”
“Cool.” Gabe sat next to me to pull his own cleats on. I stood up and stretched, then turned away for a second to make sure I was arranged okay in my compression shorts.
Chafing was no joke.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
HOT BEVERAGE POD EXTRACTION DEVICE
My old gym teacher, Coach Fortes, was the one who convinced me to try out for the soccer team, but over the summer his wife had gotten a job in Eastern Washington, so he followed her there.
Coach Bentley had been hired to replace him (and to teach History and Citizenship). She was a Black woman with warm, dark skin, a shaved head, and the kind of face that could go from glowing praise to nuclear rage in less than a second, especially if she thought you weren’t giving a hundred percent out on the field.
At her last school she led her teams to multiple Oregon State Championships, and now she was determined to make Chapel Hill High School Soccer a name to be feared. She had the determination of a Klingon warrior and the analytical prowess of a Vulcan scholar.
As I warmed up, kicking a ball back and forth with Chip, she kept shouting at us.
“Faster feet! Faster feet!”
I nodded and sped up our drill.
I was pretty sure I liked Coach Bentley.
Really.
But she could be a little intense too.
Across the field, the team from Crestwood High School,Chapel Hill’s district rival, warmed up in their white away kits trimmed with green and yellow.
I never really got the rivalry thing, which I suspected was because of our schools’ football teams, but their mascot was the Spartan, so I was genetically predisposed to dislike them.
Persians (even Fractional ones) and Spartans (even fake ones) are natural enemies. Whole epics have been written about it. Some racist movies too.
Coach Bentley blew her whistle. “All right, Chargers, circle up!”
Circling up is this thing Coach Bentley has us do before practices and games. We convene behind our goal and stand in a circle, arms crossed, holding hands with the people on either side of us. And we each go around in a circle, saying something nice a teammate did for us.
Coach Bentley brought it with her from her old school. She said it’s to promote team unity and fight the cult of toxic masculinity in sports.
I ended up between Chip and Gabe, across from Coach Bentley, who went first: “When we started off this season, you didn’t know me and I didn’t know you. But you welcomed me, and now we’re about to win our first game. I’m proud of you all.”
We went clockwise from there: Guys described favors someone did, notes shared, advice on footwork, even being a wingman for getting a date.
When it got to Chip, he said, “Ricky loaned me his charger when my tablet was about to die. Thanks, Ricky.” Ricky, our left wingback, nodded from across the circle.
And then it was my turn.
“Today in Conditioning, this guy from the football team was being kind of rude to me.”
I couldn’t name Trent, because there was this rule for Circle: You couldn’t say anything bad about other people. At least not by name.
Even then, Coach Bentley opened her mouth like she was about to correct me, so I said, “But Gabe and Jaden had my back. And that was really cool. It meant a lot to me. So, thanks, guys.”
Next to me, Chip shifted back and forth on his feet, and his hand twitched in mine.
