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"Tell me about my new kids"
Was what Lee assumed to be her new coach asked. The group of the six new players skated up towards the people that had just walked into the rink, most of them dressed in green and yellow. She also assumed that these were the 'Ducks'. It was in the letter that she received which told her about the Peewee team that was joining onto the USA team as well as the new coach but she had completely forgotten his name.
Mr Tibbles then pointed a finger at Luis and introduced him to the coach, "That's Luis Mendoza, from our Miami club." and instantly, he started skating around the rink, showing off his agility across the ice.
Mr Tibbles kept going, "Real speedster, incredible speed. I clocked him 1.9 seconds, blue line to blue line."
Ryleigh even heard a few of the Ducks say about him being a good-looking skater. And saw one of them being knocked to the ground.
Unfortunately, Luis's stopping problem got the better of him and Mr Tibbles, the new coach and the rest of the ducks saw as he crashed into the boards. The new players rushed over to help him as he stressed to them about how he almost got it that time. They all gave him looks of consolation and Ryleigh gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and said, "I'm sure you did bud."
Dwayne volunteered to go next by gliding out onto the ice with his exuberant personality and shouted out to the Ducks, "Yeehaw! How is everyone? Y'all ready to play some puck?". Ryleigh could hear three kids joking about his accent while he received a puck from Julie to show off his puck handling skills.
"That's Dwayne Robertson, from Austin. He's the best puck handler I've ever seen." Tibbles droned on. And the first time Lee ever heard his voice, the new coach asked, "You mean for his age?" To which Tibbles only shook his head and replied that he didn't.
Dwayne had been playing with the puck for a while and while it was incredible, it did make Tibbles bring up that he had a small showboating problem.
Mr Tibbles proceeded to call Julie to the goal as he was going to introduce her to the coach next. She put on her helmet and got into her position by the goal.
"There's Julie 'The Cat' Gaffney. She won the state championship for Maine three years in a row." The new coach said something about already having a goalie, but looking at the guy who was standing in the goal trying to hype himself up, she guessed that he wouldn't be nearly as good as she knew Julie was.
The coach sent out a couple of his best shooters to try and score against her, all of them failing. Ryleigh knew how to make her introduction to the team.
While the new coach suggested that they could use a backup (which she rolled her eyes to), Lee saw that there was one extra puck that hadn't been used to score against Julie. Ryleigh began skating towards it and proceeded to shoot it into the goal without any trouble.
In success, Ryleigh howled a "Whoo!" in delight before calling out to her friend, "Sorry I ruined your streak Jules!"
This didn't go unnoticed by the coach as he noticed that somebody actually scored against the goalie. He began to ask about the girl who was currently skating around her fellow teammates.
"Ryleigh Portman from Chicago, Illinois. One of the best scorers I have ever seen. She's got this talent of figuring out the best way to score against anybody and is quite a sneaky attacker too, can steal the puck away from you if you're not careful."
Kenny then came skating out from his place in the group seeing as Dean somehow disappeared somewhere after Julie was called to show off her skills. The new coach asked about his Olympic figure skating career.
"Ken Wu what can I say? I convinced him that hockey had more of a future. Put a stick in his hands, and nobody has been able to touch him."
Ryleigh could see him demonstrating his turns while holding his hockey stick. He looked like a tornado with how fast he was going.
Out of the blue, Lee heard Dean's voice as she saw he came back from what was probably the locker room to go and get his walkman. She remembered him repeating the words "Music is my life" after hearing Chop-Top say it in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and he just kept referencing it as time went on.
Dean then came out onto the ice, singing whatever song was playing in those headphones of his while pushing down the Ducks. Ryleigh heard Tibbles convincing the new coach that it was really Dean's teenage hormones that make him look like an older person. He wasn't wrong, Dean looked like an eighteen year old boy instead of a fourteen going on fifteen year old.
Dean kept going around the ice, pushing down the ducks and getting the newer players to sing along with him. He skated up to his sister and ruffled her hair while insisting, "C'mon Rye, ya know the lyrics, sing along!". Her only response was to retort, "Calm down ya metal meathead". In the end he just gave up trying and moved onto picking Kenny up and placing him on top of the goal.
Due to Dean pushing down the ducks, it caused a stir between them and the newbies. Everyone was arguing with everyone. Lee walked forward to back her friends up, but instead accidentally stepped on somebody's foot. The guy she stepped on getting annoyed with that and immediately started to argue with her.
"Seriously... Germaine?" Lee snapped, only pausing to look at the name on his jersey, "Just because I stepped on your stubby little toe, does not mean you can start an argument with me like the rest of your ducky teammates are doing". This only got them to argue more before a whistle blew and silenced it all.
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A/N - Speedy update for everyone! I also referenced Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the text above so I guess now you can look forward to Dean referencing Chop-Top's line quite a bit during this book.
So we have just met the ducks in this book! I think you could see my resentment for Bombay when making Julie a backup to Goldberg in there. I actually wrote this chapter really quickly at around 1 am so now I'm very tired.
