In Her Eyes

Chapter 2: Tryouts

Classes seem to blur on for the rest of the day, although the highlight was mostly when I got caught reading in Spanish class. Let's just say I learned a lot of new words in Spanish today.

Before I knew it tryouts were 15 minutes away. I got changed into an orange t-shirt and joggers, this was not my normal choice of gym clothes, but they seemed appropriate for the occasion. My stomach was wound up into thousands of knots as I carried my practice bag to the football field. I put on my cleats and lined up on the sidelines, not many people saw me but I was dreading the reaction of my peers. As if on cue Luke pops up beside me and flips his hair. He whispers to me so no one can hear, "Are you nervous?" I instantly knew that I was nervous due to my shaky hands. Luke saw the eye sore and said, "Better not fall on your ass princess." I rolled my eyes at the jerkwad and said, "I don't plan on it."

2 minutes in agony passed while the coach went down the line of big, buff guys, asking for their name. By the time I was up most of the students hadn't recognized me, on account of an enormous player standing next to me. The coach stared at his clipboard when he got to me. He looked up and nearly jumped when he saw me. He steadied himself and said, "Well, hello. Your name?" I replied with utterly no confidence, " My name is Scarlet and i've played football since I was 3." Coach smiles at me and walks over to Luke.

The majority of the football team was looking at me like I was a piece of meat, them being the hunters, and I being a tiny doe sprinting at full force to escape death.

Coach had us start with simple drills. We ran with tires over our heads, back and forth, for 20 minutes straight. I waited for someone to drop, that person was then eliminated, and cut from the team. I know, it sounds like a game show, but everyone expected it. We had 25 spots available. 47 people showed up, all prepared for sudden death.

Luke did the drill with uttermost grace, barely showing signs of exhaustion. Most of the guys on the team expected me to drop before 2 minutes into the drill, but as most people kept a fairly medium pace, Luke and I kept forward and ran together as the leading group of the line. I half expected Coach to cut me at the sight of I being a girl. To my surprise, that kept me going forward. My dad would have wanted me to.

We were at the part of practice where you were either a. dead, b. half dead, or c. anxious. I was a mix of b and c. Our next drill had us down to 33 people, 14 lovely people looked as though they dropped dead and had a muscle spasm.

We had to be stationed in multiple lines, two on each side of the field, one from each line would run down the field and throw it back to each other, if the ball was dropped on the ground you were eliminated.

I watched Luke toss the ball to his partner, they never once gave eye contact to each other, while their throws were perfectly spiraled to each other. They both crossed the field with zero mistakes and sprinted back to the end of the line to watch. As I took my position I watched my partner with skillful eyes and watched how he threw the ball. He not only supplied a cocky smirk, but he purposely threw the ball at max force, to try and make me drop it, little did he know, I for one would not drop that ball.

I threw the ball back perfectly to him and showed little pain when the snap of the ball hit my hands. I got to the end of the line with Luke smiling at me. He high-fived me and said, "That was awesome Scarlet. You're making it on the team." I was confused with the sudden change in attitude. Hadn't he just told me not to mess up? After a moment of consideration, I smiled then replied, "Thanks, you will too."

At the end of practice I was sore, correction sore is an understatement. I made it, I even got my jersey; #13. My dad wore this number for most of his Highschool and College life, I felt at home with the Jersey clinging to my body. I was bestowed the victorian of all gifts, the varsity letterman jacket. Oh, how the honor of wearing this jacket felt.