Page 3 of Coach Me

Although, in retrospect, ‘impossible’ was the wrong word.

Anyways, they’d grown visibly more touchy over the past few weeks or so. He’d give Melanie little massages after practice or help her stretch in ways that nearly crossed a line. But even as their dynamic changed, the team avoided talking about it — which, for the record, was unusual for us. We spend a lot of time together, eventually covering nearly every subject under the sun, especially when the subject in question happened to be super salacious.

I think we all just knew that Melanie and Alan together was a can of worms we didn’t wanna open. Until now, that is.

Around me, the chatter picked back up. I could hear Max and Tanya conjecturing about the duration of the relationship, while Riri and Rose wondered aloud how far Melanie had gone with Alan. The din began to swell, and I could see that it was time to step in.

“Ladies,” I said quietly, and they all hushed. “Let’s not talk about this, okay?”

“But Catya—”

“Come on, now,” I continued, ignoring Sharon-Ann’s interruption. “Melanie might have left the team, but she’s still a Stallion. And we don’t talk about our fellow Stallions behind their backs, it’s just not how we do things around here.”

The girls hung their heads, ashamed. The “no gossip” rule was one I’d instituted within my first few days as captain, and one I’d stuck to firmly over the subsequent year. Having been the subject of some malicious gossip in high school and seeing how it divided people, I didn’t stand for that shit. Besides, it was hard for anyone to concentrate on nailing their headers if they thought the whole team was side-eyeing them.

That said, they were welcome to gossip about people outside of the team as much as they pleased. What? I’m not a saint.

I anxiously looked for another subject, and settled upon the obvious.

“Hey,” I said, distracting them with a verbal bright shiny object. “Who do you think the new coach is?”

“Ross Greenspan,” Rose replied, repeating her point from earlier. “Definitely.”

Nora shook her head, and jumped in the verbal melee to disagree. She picked mild fights wherever she could find them. In my experience, offensive midfielders are always looking for the next brawl.

I was nearly satisfied with my diversion tactics when I heard someone say, “Okay, that’s all well and good, but is he gonna be, like, hot?”

The team erupted.

“No way, college soccer coaches are never hot,” Max said.

“Yeah,” Grace continued, “especially not ones at this level. You gotta be old, have some prestige behind you.”

Sharon-Ann, ever the optimist, said hopefully, “Come on, let’s be optimistic. I don’t need a David Beckham, I’ll settle for a… uh… Scott Kay.”

Girls around her nodded thoughtfully, as if Scott Kay was a particularly thoughtful and wise choice. I snorted to myself. These kids were all incredibly smart — ULA was an academically competitive school, as well as an athletically competitive one — and between them, there were probably at least two or three future politicians, hedge fund managers and TV producers. But the minute you got them, even the gay ones, on the subject of comparing hot men, well, you could say goodbye to your afternoon.

I half-heartedly told them, “It doesn’t matter if he’s hot, just so long as he’ll take us all the way.”

A couple of giggles sprouted from the crowd, so I clarified, “All the way to championships. Geez, get your minds out of the gutter.”

“But we love the gutter,” Grace cried back, gleeful.

“I know you do,” I said, resigned to the subject at hand.

Their voices swirled in conversations about whether or not the new coach was, statistically as if this were a class at the business school, likely to be hot. I tried to listen, but my mind wandered. In truth, I was mulling similar questions. Who was this guy? What would he be like? We’d spend much of our waking hours with whoever he was, so it was only fair that we were pretty invested in his personality and, you know, his looks.

I shook my head, attempting to focus. It didn’t matter who this guy was, or how good his ass was in a pair of soccer trunks. I came to this school to win. With only my junior and senior season left, my time at ULA felt like it was drawing to a quick close.

I remembered, with fondness, the moment I was accorded the ULA Super Star Scholarship, a full-ride scholarship for athletes that was given to only ten men and women in each incoming class. My mom cried. So did my dad, though he did a better job hiding it. I reminded myself that come hell, high water or hot coaches, I was here to make my family proud.

But that didn’t keep me from staying up late that night, wondering who exactly was about to take over my team.

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