Cuts and Bruises

Chapter Nine

Sorry it's been awhile since my last update, but I've been really busy with the end of my school year. However, it's finally over, and you can expect more regular updates from now on :) 

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PS: Not edited

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"It's a fucking hand off, O'Donnell! It's not that hard!" Vincent shouts from the sidelines, red in the face as he screams at Brady, who had, yet again, fumbled the ball.

We were playing Rutgers, a team we've beaten with ease in the past, and we were losing. The score was 7 to 17 and we were minutes away from half time. You could see the frustration practically pouring out of the coaches and the players on the sidelines, but most importantly, from Vincent.

On more than one occasion, he turned to me and practically begged me to let him go out for a few plays, and I had to tell him no every time. With each rejection, his frustration just grew, eventually to the point that he walked over to the water bottles and, with one sweep of his arm, knocked them all off of the table.

"Bradshaw!" Coach Baxter had turned from the edge of the sideline to shout. "If you don't go sit down and shut the hell up, I'm going to throw you out of this stadium."

That was only ten minutes into the game. But now, with two grueling long minutes left before halftime, our team was doing embarrassingly poorly. Brady had been sacked three times already in the second quarter, fumbled the ball four times, and threw two interceptions. Now, we were on the third down with eleven yards to go, and it was safe to say that nobody expected much.

Brady managed to hand off the ball successfully and get the first down, but by the time the clock stopped to signal halftime, we were still on the opponent's side of the field. All of the players trudged off the field looking exhausted and disheartened by the score, and filed into the locker room while cursing Brady O'Donnell's name.

I leaned against a locker in the back of the room and watched as the players hung their heads, discouraged from how the game was going, as they awaited the Coach to come talk to them. Vincent was standing beside me with his jaw clenched and murderous glare set on the back of Brady's head, who was staring hard at the ground silently.

Coach Baxter walked in and throws his play book down on the ground before looking at the boys with anger clear on his face. "What the hell is going on out there, boys?"

"It's not our fault O'Donnell can't throw," Someone grunts from the front.

Coach whips in the direction of the voice and growls, "Who the hell said that?" Slowly, one of Max's friends, Jaden, raises his hand. "Jaden, tell me something. Is a team made up of one player?"

Jaden visibly gulps at Coach's hard tone and mutters, "No."

"You're right about that," Coach snaps. "A team isn't made up of one player and a football team isn't just made up of the quarterback. There's a lot of fucking work we need to improve out there, and it doesn't all fall on O'Donnell." His gaze sweeps across the locker room of exhausted players and he continues. "Is our O line asleep out there? Why the hell are you letting O'Donnell get sacked? And I need the running backs to go their routes and make their touches or else we're going to lose by a hell of a lot more than what we're losing by already."

Coach Baxter crafts a new plan quickly and manages, somehow, to boost the team morale. He offhandedly draws up a few plays that require Brady to make short passes or hand the ball off. And by the time halftime is almost over, everyone thinks we might actually be able to pull a win out of this.