Sabotage Season

For my Cypress Elite teammates and coaches Sal, Dave, and Eduardo.

This is where it all began.

“Devin? Is that you?”

I set down the huge bag of soccer balls I was carrying and turned to see Coach Flores behind me.

“Hi, Coach,” I said. “I thought I'd set up the practice field early, since it's my turn to run practice today.”

Coach smiled at me. “Need any help? I was just doing some paperwork in my office when I heard noise in the equipment room, but I can finish up later if you want.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but there's not much to do. I kind of want to get my head ready too. Know what I mean?”

She nodded. “Back in the day, my mom used to bring me to the field an hour before we had to report for each game, but I didn't mind. It helped me to calm down and focus.”

“Exactly,” I agreed.

Coach headed back to her office, and I carried the balls from the equipment room out to the Kentville Middle School soccer field. I had to admit, I was feeling pretty pumped up. First, the boys' team was at an away game, so we got to use their practice field instead of our crummy field of weeds with garbage cans for goalposts. Second, Coach had said that the team co-captains could each run a practice this week to get leadership experience, and today was my turn. And the third reason was that I had figured out something awesome.

Our team, the Kentville Kangaroos (otherwise known as the Kicks), had a shot at making the play-offs! When I first joined the team, I never thought we had a chance. At the start of the season, we were pretty awful. We lost a bunch of games, but then we figured things out, and we got a lot better. We tied a game, and we even beat the Pinewood Panthers—a really strong team—the second time we played them. And now there was actually a chance—a small one—that we could make the play-offs. I knew if we worked hard, we could keep winning, and that made me happy. As co-captain, it was part of my job to make sure we were the best team we could be.

The afternoon sun shone down on the field, and I admired the perfectly trimmed green grass and the freshly painted white lines. I dumped out the balls and then started dribbling around the circumference of the field, just because I could.

“Hey, Devin! Don't tire yourself out!”

I squinted and saw my friend Jessi walking onto the field. She was the first person I'd made friends with when I'd moved to Kentville a few months before, and in addition to my friend Kara back in Connecticut, Jessi was one of my best friends.

I dribbled up to her. “You're here just in time to help me set up the cones,” I said.

She grinned. “Anything for my captain.”

“Co-captain,” I reminded her. “Anyway, I'm psyched for practice. I stayed up last night looking at some drills online. I've got some new stuff we can try out.”

“I don't know. I kind of liked Grace's last practice,” Jessi said, mentioning the eighth grader who co-captained the team with me. “Some dribbling, a scrimmage, and then done. Not too stressful.”

“Well, I've got some defensive drills for us,” I told her. “I know we beat the Panthers last time, but they had way too many scoring attempts in that game. I found a couple of drills that I think are really going to make our blocking and intercepting skills better.”

“Whoa, you're totally taking this seriously,” Jessi said.

“Well, I found something out,” I said. “After we beat the Panthers, I checked the stats in our division. The Panthers and the Vipers are pretty much guaranteed play-off spots. But the third and fourth places are open. If we keep winning, we could get one of those slots.”

Jessi raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? The Kicks? In the play-offs?”

I nodded. “It could happen.”

Jessi grinned. “Then bring it on!”

“I will,” I promised. “Come on. Let's go get those cones.”

We set up the cones to form two squares on the field for the first drill I had in mind. A few minutes later the other players started showing up. Emma and Zoe walked over to me and Jessi as we finished setting up. The two of them were good friends but they were also pretty opposite. Emma was tall and tan and athletic, and she could be a total klutz on the field unless she was in goal. Zoe was petite with short strawberry-blond hair, and she was super-agile and sure on her feet. She'd been playing forward a lot recently because she had this way of zigzagging through the other team's defenders and getting right to the goal.

“Yay! It's Devin's practice day!” Emma cheered.

“I found some new drills we can try,” I said.

“Devin says we can make the play-offs if we keep winning games,” Jessi reported.

Zoe cocked her head. “Us? Really?”

I laughed. “Why does everyone keep saying that? It's not impossible.”

Jessi patted me on the back. “Well, we can dream.”

“To dream the impossible dream!”

We all turned at the sound of someone singing in an operatic voice. It was Frida, of course. Besides playing soccer, she was a total drama nut.

“Bravo! Bravo!” Emma cried, clapping.

“Actually, it's ‘
brava
' when it's a girl,” Frida corrected. “But thank you.” She took a little bow.

Coach Flores blew the whistle, which meant it was time for practice to start. We ran to join the rest of the Kicks, and I was surprised to notice that it seemed not all the girls were there. I did a quick count—there were twelve of us, but there should have been nineteen.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

Coach shrugged. “They must be running late. But go ahead and start, Devin.”

I nodded. “Okay. Let's do some stretches to warm up.”

I led everyone in stretches, and then we ran around the field once to get our hearts pumping. As I ran, I made a mental list of everyone who was missing—three seventh graders and four eighth graders, including Grace. It was kind of weird.

The missing players still hadn't showed up when we were done running, so I went ahead and started the first drill.

“Okay!” I told everyone. “So this first drill is a variation on Monkey in the Middle. There are a few ways to do it, but we're going to focus on our intercepting skills.”

I counted down the line of players, “One, two, one, two,” until everyone had a number. “Okay, ones, please form a circle inside that square we've marked out with cones. Twos, form a circle inside the other square.”

My teammates formed the circles quickly, and then I pulled out two girls from each circle to stand in the
middle—Brianna and Taylor in one circle, and Frida and Jade in the other.

“Okay. Here's how this works,” I said. “Girls on the outside, you're playing offense. Your goal is to keep passing the ball to one another for as long as you can. Girls on the inside, you're defense. Your goal is to intercept or block the passes between the offensive players. If you succeed, the offensive player who made the pass has to switch places with you.”

I threw a ball to each circle. “Ready, go!”

Emma made the first kick in her circle, and it flew right over Brianna's head.

“Whoops!” Emma cried.

“Got it!” Maya, an eighth grader who usually played midfielder, stopped the ball with her knee and sent it skidding across the circle, low but fast. This time Brianna stopped the ball with her foot. Then she and Maya switched places.

Both circles got the hang of it really quickly, and Coach Flores helped me out by giving pointers to the girls trying to defend. After a few minutes you could start to see what everyone's strengths and weaknesses were. Jade, an eighth grade defender, easily intercepted the first pass that came at her. Zoe, who was a strong offensive player when she was dribbling, was having trouble passing to players across the circle. She just didn't have enough power behind her kicks. And Frida was stuck in the middle for a long time. She couldn't get where she needed to be in
time. But I knew that everyone was trying their hardest.

“Great job!” I called after we had played for about twenty minutes. “Let's clear the cones.”

“Hey, there's Grace!” Brianna called out.

I turned and saw Grace and the rest of the missing girls walking onto the field. They looked puzzled to see us practicing.

I jogged up to Grace.

“Did you guys start already?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, about a half hour ago.”

She frowned. “But Coach Flores e-mailed that practice was starting late today.”

Coach Flores had overheard. “I didn't do that. Are you sure it was from me?”

Grace and the other girls nodded.

“It came from your e-mail address,” said Sarah.

Coach shook her head. “That is so strange. Maybe it was an old e-mail that you saw? That happens sometimes. An old e-mail pops up out of nowhere.”

“Like it was stuck in limbo or something,” Emma added.

“Well, sorry you guys missed the first drill, but we're about to do another one,” I said. “Do you want to warm up first?”

“Just give us a minute to stretch,” Grace replied.

I was feeling a little impatient, but I didn't show it. “We might as well all stretch!”

After a few more minutes of stretching, I clapped my hands, eager to start the next drill.

“It's time for a shoot-out! Emma, take the goal!”

Emma was kind of all over the place when she was on the field, but I'd discovered that she made an excellent goalie. She jogged over to the goal, and I got the other players to line up in two lines, with the first person in line facing the goal—one line on the right, and one line on the left.

“This one is fast and furious,” I said. “Emma will start out as goalie. First player on the right will take a shot at the goal and then run to the back of the line. Then a player on the left will take a shot. Keep going until everyone has a turn, and then we'll switch goalies.”

Giselle, an eighth grader with curly blond hair, looked at me with wide eyes. “You mean we
all
have to take the goal?”

“On a well-rounded team, everybody needs to know how to play every position,” I told her. I knew that sounded kind of preachy, but I had done a lot of reading about coaching over the past few days to prep for this, and that idea had come up a lot. Giselle didn't look too happy, but I wasn't going to change the practice. We had to make sure we had a good backup goalie in case Emma couldn't play in a game.

“Ready, go!” I yelled once we were set up. Jessi ran up to make the first kick.

Wham!
She sent the ball flying high and fast, and Emma had to jump up to block it. She slammed it down just as the next ball came whizzing past her feet.

Emma proved what a great goalie she was, because the pace was intense and she blocked more balls than she let get past her. When we came to the end of the line, I sent Jessi into the goal. She got into it with more energy than I had ever seen, diving and jumping.