flipped. charlie conway

21

"let's go!" coach reilly yelled, throwing a finger into the air as he finished assessing gordon bombay. coach bombay let out his own yell of encouragement as the teams diverged to their benches.

"welcome to the minnesota state peewee championship, where we've got a game for you today!" the commentator announced over the speakers. half the audience began to chant the famous hawk chant: win, win, win, win! "the hawks, coached by jack reilly!" the crowd went wild with their chant as the hawks hit their sticks to the bench. leah rolled her eyes, feeling the eyes of coach reilly and the hawks boring holes into adam's and her helmets.

"ducks, let's fire it up!" coach bombay yelled over the hawk chaos, placing his hand into the centre of the group of congregated ducks. with a smirk, leah shoved her hand into the mix and rested her other hand reassuringly on adam's shoulder. the banks twins held a vendetta - an ambition to beat the hawks - and they were going to play like the heartless, merciless ducks they were.

the ducks grinned as they began to quack, "quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!" the remaining half of the audience joined in on the silly repeat of quacks, effectively hyping the team in green up. "go ducks!" they ended the build up of adrenaline, falling out of the group as adam and leah gently banged each other's helmets in their good luck tradition.

"hey cake-eaters! banksies," jesse called out as the two flipped their face shields over their faces, "don't forget what side you're on." the boy glared, snapping the two back to reality as they skated onto the ice.

"they're ducks, jesse," coach bombay defended, "they'll play like ducks." jesse made an affirmative grunt as he followed after the second pair of twins. jesse knew where charlie was coming from, but he himself knew thy were ducks. it was only a matter of keeping the banksies in check, whether they needed it or not.

jesse took left-center with a huff, goldberg already at his respective goal, dave in left-defence, connie in right-defence, and adam in center-ice. leah glided over to right-center, bumping shoulders with brown.

"we don't play nice for girls anymore." brown sniggered as he bumped leah's shoulder back. she didn't provide the satisfaction of a response, knowing perfectly well that she and brown knew no player ever needed to play nice for her.

the referee dropped the puck in front of adam and mcgill as the crowd continued to holler, awaiting the whistle from the man in striped uniform. leah watched as adam stared into mcgill's helmet ferociously, not backing down when mcgill snickered to himself and infuriatingly stared at adam in such a pitiful way. leah bottled her fury for the time-being, knowing it would come in handy soon enough.

the high-pitched whistle blew and the game began. to no one's surprise, adam swiftly knocked the puck towards jesse. jesse speedily skated away with the puck as leah followed. she didn't ignore how mcgill and larson sandwiched adam between their sticks, growling at the foul play yet chuckling at the fact they let jesse slip away with the puck. adam pushed himself back up, shaking the commentator's voice out of his head as the commentator reported on the shove.

as she skated past the hawks bench, leah heard coach reilly applaud his players. "nice hit, that's how i want you to play it!" leah growled to herself once again, speeding after brown as he swiftly stole the puck from jesse's possession. she knew the ducks would get too cocky: it wouldn't be that easy. they couldn't expect to skate around with the puck so freely.

leah chased after brown as he sprinted down the ice. it was a shame she didn't get to practise her sprints, because she was usually much faster than her current speed. fortunately, she caught up to brown in no time and skidded her way around in format of his path. when brown tried to dodge leah's attack by shuffling the puck to his left, leah quickly intercepted the puck and passed it to connie. brown shouldered her once again, even though he knew leah was unfazed.