Airball

Chapter 10 - I Attend My First Practice

Coach Hendrix walked to the front of the bleachers and surveyed his team, focusing mostly on the younger players. He looked at each player individually and when he looked at me, I could feel his eyes boring into mine. I noticed that he wasn't sizing up anybody or trying to measure their physical strength. He was just looking straight into the players' eyes, looking for mental determination. I was going to give him some. Unlike some of the freshmen, I didn't blink or look away when his eyes fell upon me. I stared right back at him, trying my best to match his intensity without looking like I was constipated. Before he moved on to someone else, I noticed the coach nod his head in a quick motion that I almost missed. I wasn't sure whether he was impressed or not. If he was, he made no further notion to inform me of it. He simply continued on until he had convened a three second meeting with every player on the team.

The coach stepped back and motioned to two of the older players, who I recognized to be Gavin and Liam. The two older players jumped down the bleachers as the coach muttered something inaudible to them.

I felt a sudden pang of jealously, and I immediately knew why. I used to be the one that the coach would single out to give the practice plan to. But alas, it was a different situation now. There was no going back to middle school. That ship had long since sailed.

Gavin and Liam nodded to the coach and headed to the far right side of the court. Coach Hendrix muttered something to Coach Myers, the assistant coach, who also nodded. Hendrix looked down at some papers on a clipboard and traced his finger across the page, deep in thought. Then he seemingly finished and looked back up at the group in the bleachers.

"Okay folks," he said. "Welcome to the first practice. If you're here today, that means you've made it past tryouts and are on the team. I am going to read out a list of all of you, along with the team that you made it on. Varsity and JV will practice separately here for the most part, but we may combine occasionally for scrimmages. I will be focusing mostly on the JV team today to get them started but in future practices I'll probably spend more time with the older team. With myself and Coach Myers here, we should be able to efficiently coach both teams. Alright, here we go. On Varsity, we have Gavin, Liam, Alexander, Oscar, Enzo, Brian, Dan, Chris, Matthew, Dan, Carter, and John. On JV, we have Jackson, Chance, Wesley, Amir, Finn, Xavier, Nathan, Colton, Cameron—"

"Cam," said Cam from beside me. "It's Cam."

Coach Hendrix looked at him like he was about to give him a lecture on interrupting, but decided not to. He continued. "Colton, Cam, Zane, Max, Tucker, Levi, Diego, and Blake."

I let out a sigh of relief. For a moment, I thought that he wasn't going to say my name. That I hadn't made the team after all.

"I went over a lot of stuff at the tryouts, so I'm just going to get started here. If you made the Varsity team, join Gavin and Liam over at the back of the court. They'll gather your requested jersey numbers and sizes. JV team, take the other half of the court, get a ball, and start the layup drill. If you don't know what that is, you'll learn quickly."

I, of course, knew exactly what the layup drill was, so I started the line on the right side while Jackson grabbed the ball. Everyone else either lined up behind me or on the left side behind Chance. When Jackson returned with the ball I motioned for him to take the spot in front of me, but he just shook his head and tossed me the ball, jogging to the back of the line. Great, I thought. I'm first.

I dribbled down and thankfully made the layup. Layups were one thing that I could still do properly. I looked to see if the coach had seen that—he had—before making my way over to the left line. As I was heading toward the left line, though, I felt something hard hit my back. I turned to see Chance stick his hands up in mock surrender.