Part III: Tighter Links
Chapter 13

Bree was back in Blair that Friday night for the football game. It was the first away game she’d gone to, and she’d been a little leery about going alone on the fan bus, even though she wanted to support her friends. But she happened to mention it to Jared in one of the lunch-hour sessions the four regularly shared, and it didn’t take much more than that – that evening, Jared talked his parents into inviting her to go with them. “It’s the least we can do for our son’s girlfriend,” Mrs. Wooten said in their car on the way down to Blair.

“And quite a girlfriend, too,” Mr. Wooten added. “It’s nice to see him friends with a girl who can inspire him like you do.

“Come on, I’m just a normal kid,” Bree protested.

“Some normal kid,” Mr. Wooten laughed. “How many other kids do you know who fly gliders and want to go to the Air Force Academy?”

“Well, uh . . . I didn’t know you knew about the Academy.”

“Jared has told us a lot about you,” Mr. Wooten grinned. “You really have him impressed.”

“Jared is good in sports,” Mrs. Wooten said, “but he hasn’t been quite as good at setting goals. You’re setting a standard he’s having to reach to keep up with, and it’s been good for him. We’re just very happy you two got involved.”

Bree wanted to protest that she and Jared really weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, but she figured she’d better keep her mouth shut. Although the four kids had pretty well agreed they were just going to be friends and not let it get any further than that, they’d also agreed they were going to look like they were boyfriends and girlfriends. While it hadn’t exactly been their intention, that seemed to be the message the parents had picked up. Now that she thought about it, there had been comments from the other parents involved that seemed to indicate that was how they looked at it, too.

“Look,” she said, “I have to be honest with you. While Jared and I are friends, we’ve already come to an agreement that this is just going to be for high school. If I can make it to the Academy, I won’t have much time for a boyfriend for years, and he knows that as well as I do.”

“That’s wise of you,” Mr. Wooten said. “I made the mistake of getting latched up with a girl in high school and wound up marrying her. It was a total disaster, the worst mistake I ever made. We would have both been a lot better off to wait till we matured some. That’s not saying that some of the pairing off you see in high school won’t last, but the odds are often against it. You have other things to do with your lives, and there will be time for a serious relationship when you’re ready for it.”

“Oh, boy, do I ever know that,” Mrs. Wooten added. “I wound up getting married to Jared’s birth father in college, and I wasn’t any more ready than Jim was in high school. And it was a horrible disaster too. If you’ve ever heard the song, The Second Time Around, I’m just glad Jim and I got to make our mistakes the first time around. High school is a good time to make mistakes, so long as you don’t let them turn into disasters. I’m glad you two have realized you’re probably going different places in your lives and neither of you seems to take things too seriously.”

“Thanks,” Bree told them. “I’ve already seen how getting too serious too soon can really mess things up. It’s a mistake Jared and I both want to avoid.”

“All the more reason to be impressed with you,” Mr. Wooten smiled. “It’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out.”

Jared’s parents proved to be a lot of fun. Bree didn’t know much about football – the Rochester game the week before was the first one she’d actually been to, or even watched, and the only reason she’d gone to it with Becca was to support Howie in his hassle with Misty. The long, loving kiss she’d shared with Jared after the game was intended as an act, but still it had been the first time she’d actually kissed a boy, and she found she’d liked it. She and Jared had kissed a little since, but mostly in public when there were people looking on, mostly so it would look like they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Now, Mr. Wooten took the time to explain some of the real ins and outs of the game to her. The Marlins still only had five wins on the season when the game started – they’d taken a close loss at McAlester the previous week. The Marlins had been in scoring position to win in the last couple minutes but the clock ran out on them. Fortunately it had been a non-league game, so Rochester losing the same night for the second week in a row left the Marlins tied for the league championship.

The Marlins felt a little humiliated about the loss, and didn’t intend to lose to Blair. As always, it seemed to be a game with a lot of mistakes on both sides, which everyone had come to expect out of the Marlins; it was just that the Marlin mistakes were less costly. The Erikson-to-Wooten pass combination was working well, and accounted for three touchdowns as the Marlins slowly pulled away from the Bobcats. For only the second time in the season, Lyle Angarrack’s kicking wasn’t the difference between a win and a loss.

The most important thing about the win, as far as everyone in the stands was concerned, was that the Marlin victory gave them six wins on the season. That assured them a playoff spot for the first time in several years longer than any of the players on the team had been alive. While it may not have been very pretty football, at least, according to Mrs. Wooten, a Spearfish Lake High School graduate and a former cheerleader herself, it did the job. This, she said, was the team that was going to turn the corner and put Spearfish Lake back on the map!

Jared rode back to Spearfish Lake on the team bus, mostly because he wanted to share the high spirits with his teammates, and Bree couldn’t fault him that. They picked him up at the school, and headed over to his home; the post-game pizza party had been planned for there that week anyway. Right in the middle of the whole thing Bree gave him a big kiss, telling him that a receiver like him deserved his reward.

The next morning was the Athletic Booster Invitational for the cross-country teams at the high school. Bree was there bright and early on the crisp, frosty morning; so were Becca and her folks – and Autumn, Howie, and Jared, along with his folks!

Bree had been running with the team every night all week, even on Friday before she went to Mr. and Mrs. Wooten’s for the ride to the game, and she was starting to think she was getting a little better with her running. The meet was about as big as the one at Blair earlier in the week, but this time, as she stood at the starting line in her Marlin uniform, Bree wasn’t quite as nervous. She may not have been the fastest girl on the course, but she felt like she wasn’t so slow as to humiliate herself either. Once again Mr. Emerson told her to just to get comfortable with it, run her own race, and not worry about where she was finishing. Next year, with some seasoning, she’d be able to contribute more to the team. That was good enough for her; she realized everything couldn’t come at once.

Once again, the fastest girls in the field stretched out in front of her as soon as the gun went off, but Bree was trying harder than ever, trying to pace herself so she went as fast as she could but not wear herself out too early. It was the trickiest part of the whole thing, she’d been told more than once, so for the first half of the race she was perfectly happy to run with a group of several girls. Once again, she heard her cheering section at about a third of the way around the course, then again farther on. About halfway, several girls of the group she’d been running with started to break away a little, and Bree thought she’d better go with them. The smaller group of five girls started passing runner after runner, and Bree was content to let this group pace her. Only in the last few hundred meters did she start racing against the group, and she managed to pass most of them, the last one right in the finish gate, with her supporters cheering her on.

Bree was exhausted when she pulled to the side once she was through the finish gate. This wasn’t like the finish gate on her triple silver badge flight; there it had been just her family cheering her on, that she was aware of, anyway. Now she could see she had other people who were happy for her as she was doing it. It felt different somehow, although she was a little too tired to figure out just why; it would be food for thought, though, she realized in some distant part of her mind.

She was starting to get her breath back when Mr. Emerson came around to her. “Great run, Bree!” he told her. “That was about five seconds under your personal best, and you were fourth fastest on the team, so you scored us some points!”

“Huh?” she replied, a little confused. “I hadn’t realized I’d been going that fast!”

“You were twenty-ninth overall, so that puts you into the top half of the field,” he said. “That’s a really stellar performance for only your second meet and two weeks on the team.”

Bree stood up a little taller. “I just did my best,” she said. “That’s all I could do.”

“Be that as it may, I’m a little sorry the season is almost over,” he said, “but I’m sure looking forward to watching you next spring.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. Emerson,” she told him. “And I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had some friends who pretty much pushed me to coming out for the team in the first place.”

“They deserve the credit for that,” he told her, “but you were the one who found it in yourself to succeed. And you did, by proving to yourself that you can be better than what you thought you were. That’s the real victory, Bree, and you won it.”

The capstone didn’t come till a couple of weeks later, following the league championships, held on the course at Coldwater. Bree finished in the twenties again, but third fastest among the Marlin girls.

“All in all, it was a pretty good season,” Coach Emerson told the girls as they gathered around after the meet. “I’m just sorry it was over with so soon. Everybody on the team improved this year over the beginning of the season, and it makes me look forward to track next spring. While everyone improved, I have to point out Bree Gravengood. She came to us late and she came to us green, but she learned fast and she really proved to be a strong part of the team. I expect she’s going to do better than that next year. You all did great, kids.”

“I think we had a pretty good season,” Laurel said, “but I’m not looking forward to having to get back in shape for track in the spring. It’s hard to get out and run in the winter, and there’s not much we can get from working out in the weight room, even if we could get in there for all the football players.”

“That’s always been a problem,” Coach Emerson said, “but maybe next year it won’t be as much of one. Mrs. Wine, the principal and the athletic director has always been aware of the issue. I’ve been working with her and with a couple other people, and we’ve been able to work out a discount for you kids to work out at the Women’s Fitness Center downtown. It won’t be free, but it’ll be a big discount. If you want to do it and can’t afford what’s still being charged, see me and I’ll work something out. They’ve got a small running track down there, several good fitness machines tuned for girls, and Mrs. McPherson, the women who runs it, has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about keeping women in shape. If you listen to her, we ought to be able to do some good next spring.”

Several of the girls were very interested in the idea, and Bree, a little to her surprise, was among them. However, she waited until they were headed back on the bus before she got a chance to talk to Coach Emerson alone. “Thanks for your support,” she said. “It turned something I was really dreading into something I found rewarding.”

“That’s what they pay me for,” he smiled at her. “And they don’t pay me much, but I do it anyway because I enjoy it. Bree, you can learn some important life lessons in running, and I think you’ve learned a few these last few weeks.”

“I think I have too,” she said. “And I really need to thank you for it.”

“Look, Bree,” he said, “your boyfriend told me what you really want to do. He asked me not to tell you that he told me, but I think you need to know it. I can’t guarantee I can get you into the Air Force Academy, but if you work with me, your athletic background isn’t going to be a weak point. I did some time in the Air Force long ago, and anyone who wants to try to get in the Academy is worthy of my respect.”

“Mr. Emerson,” she grinned. “You’ve got a deal.”

While Bree had been exploring new territory in her spot on the cross-country team, the football season was moving on. Bree was still learning about football, so she didn’t fully appreciate what was involved in making the miracle that was taking place with the team, but she was starting to pick it up. She got a lot of guidance from Jared’s father and the talk around the table in the corner of the lunchroom that the four of them shared most days. The friendship of the four had only deepened over the period, along with the determination to try to support each other any way they could. Bree didn’t feel like she could be much actual help, but at least she could offer moral support by being there.

The Marlins played their last game of the regular season at home. Though Spearfish Lake was regarded as a football-crazy town, with this team the madness was reaching heights not seen for years. The stands were packed on the chilly October evening, with the night sky spitting flakes of snow. It was the largest crowd to witness a Marlin football game in years, and it was even more amazing that it was a young, small, inexperienced team to have pulled off the miracle of the unbelievable season. Only a few weeks ago people had been hoping that the young team, mostly freshmen and sophomores with only a sprinkling of juniors and seniors, would manage to survive without too many serious injuries. Those days were long gone, and the players were just about as amazed over it as the rest of the town. Granted, luck had played a big part in the deal, but drive and a determination to prove everyone wrong had been a part of it, too.

This Friday night the game was against Kremmling, and after Coldwater’s loss the week before, if the Marlins won it, they’d have the league championship for the first time since the late eighties; even if they lost it, they’d have a share of the title. It was something else no one would have dared predict at the season opener only a couple months before.

The Marlin team wasn’t aiming for just a part of the title. As luck had it, Kremmling was one of the weaker teams in the league, and the Marlins took the lead early. The strange thing that several people commented on was that the Marlins barely passed the ball at all; it was all a running game. Howie Erikson threw the ball a few times, just to keep the Kremmling Badgers loose, but the passes weren’t big, risky, all-or-nothing passes, either. In the end, the Marlins had a two-touchdown victory, the second largest they’d managed all season.

Sunday afternoon the first round of playoff pairings were announced, and no one was very surprised to find they’d be facing Moffatt Eastern, a school just north of Camden. Once upon a time Eastern had been in the same league and usually had been the annual season closer, but in recent years they’d changed leagues. But, no matter which league they were in, they were a football power, and they’d not only been in the playoffs the last several years, but they’d won the first round of the playoffs, called the “pre-regionals” the last five years in a row.

Because of the better record of the Moffatt team, the pre-regional game was held there, and a lot of people thought that considering the record, the Marlins were going to have their hands full. But once again this season, an old friend who had helped the Marlins in several games this season came to help them again: the Marlins’ lousy record of almost the last two decades. To be honest, nobody in Moffatt was taking them very seriously, and most of the discussion down there seemed to center around who the home team would be facing in the regionals.

That was the reason that Eastern hadn’t bothered to scout the Marlins very well, or if they did, they didn’t listen to their scouts. The Moffatt Eastern Cougars came onto the field prepared to stop the running game the Marlins had played against Kremmling the previous week, only to find that Howie was catching up on the passes he hadn’t thrown the week before. There were, of course, a lot of mistakes made, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the Marlins had displayed early in the season. The Cougars made plenty of their own as they struggled to cope with a totally unexpected airborne assault that was nothing like what they’d faced all season.

The end result for the all-conquering Cougars was pure humiliation by the upstart young Marlins. In the final quarter the Marlins were so far ahead that Coach Kulwicki pulled most of his starters for the game and let some of the second-stringers and benchwarmers into the game.

If the truth be told, none of the Marlins had looked very far past the Eastern game themselves, considering the record and all, and until into the second half they were about as surprised as their opponents, although considerably more pleasantly. Still, Coach Kulwicki had made the precautionary move of sending scouts to the other pre-regional game, so they had a little more information on their next opponents, the Forestville Falcons.

Again, because of the respective records, the Marlins had to travel the hundred and twenty miles to Forestville for the regional championship game. It was played in the middle of the afternoon, at least partly because of the distance. The Forestville coaches knew from the Eastern game that the Marlins liked to go to the air, but they’d practiced pass defense so little they had no real idea how to handle it. But they were a big team with a good running game of their own, so the Marlins had trouble hanging on to an early lead, and it slipped from them in the third quarter. In spite of a desperation field goal attempt at an unprecedented distance for high school football, it wasn’t enough to save the day in the end.

Naturally the team was dejected when they got on the bus for the long ride home, but Coach Kulwicki put things into perspective before the trip began when he called for order. “Don’t think you lost,” he told his team. “Yeah, this game may have been lost, but you win some and you lose some. You guys are winners, every one of you. I’ll tell you something that Mrs. Wine told me when she put me on as football coach. She said, ‘I don’t think you or Vince Lombardi’s ghost can make a seven and two team out of the two and seven we had last year.’ She was right! We went nine and two! That’s more winning than the Marlins have managed in the last three years combined. That’s not a bunch of losers to me. That’s a team of winners who just got outpointed in the last game of the season. You guys have nothing to be ashamed of, and don’t let anyone try to tell you different. You guys accomplished a lot this year and you’re going to do even better next year.”

By that point most of the guys on the bus had perked up considerably. Kulwicki was dead right, and they knew it. “Next year!” several players called back at him.

“Darn right,” Kulwicki said when the noise on the bus died down. “We got through this year on a lot of luck. There was luck I don’t even want to think about. But you guys got a chance to make your rookie mistakes this year. Next year, almost all of you are going to be back, and the Marlins are going to be bigger, stronger, and better. That is, if everybody gets started on it now. Next . . . year . . . starts . . . right . . . now!”

Now there were downright cheers that filled the bus. “Monday right after school, in the gym,” Kulwicki said. “We’re going to have a team meeting, and get started making plans about what happens between now and the time practice starts next summer. That’s going to mean a lot of weight room, a lot of skills training, a lot of getting in shape, and staying in shape, so when practice starts we hit the ground running. We’re not going to depend on dumb luck next year. We’re going to do it the way it’s supposed to be done! Let’s get on home and get started!

Howie and Jared were sitting together toward the middle of the bus, and they’d been about as dejected as anyone, but Kulwicki’s comments perked them up considerably. “Next year,” Howie said to Jared, “might be interesting.”

It was a long trip home, and things started to settle down on the bus after they’d been on the road for a while. Howie and Jared spent at least some of the time talking about the game, and a little of it talking about the girls and the things they planned for the upcoming months. The girls had given them a lot of support the last few weeks, and had helped a lot with homework and things like that while the guys were preoccupied with football, and it seemed like it was time to start evening things out a little. But, almost inevitably, the talk drifted back to football.

“You know, Coach was right,” Howie said. “I was one of only a handful of guys who did much training to get ready for the season, and I didn’t really do much. It would have gone a whole lot better if I’d been ready.”

“Hell, you’re one up on me,” Jared snorted. “One day considering getting ready for wrestling season three months off, and the next day I’m on the football team. Talk about starting from scratch! But yeah, we should have a pretty good team next season, and we’re going to have the fact that we’re only losing a few guys to graduation. Most of the core people have got a couple seasons left, and that doesn’t happen very often.”

“True,” Howie said. “But we are losing one senior I think we’re really going to miss. I mean Lyle.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jared sighed. “That’s going to be a tough one. His right foot bailed us out of an awful lot of holes this season, and he’s going to be hard to replace.”

“Yeah, and when he actually ran a play, he made a difference,” Howie agreed, “even if it was just drawing off the other side. The heck of it is, while a lot of the guys we have now ought to be a bit bigger and more skilled next year, we’re just not going to have anyone with any size up front. We’re going to be losing Rusty to graduation too, and that really shrinks things. The one thing I can’t believe is that other teams haven’t tried to throw more sacks at me, since that’s one real big weak point.”

“Maybe you ought to talk to Coach Reardon about it,” Jared suggested. “Maybe even Coach Kulwicki. I mean, if nothing else, work out a way to use the option more, and prepare to scramble if a sack gets thrown at you.”

“Yeah, worth thinking about,” Howie agreed. “But still what it comes down to is that we’re really going to miss Lyle’s right foot.”

“Yeah, that kicking game really changed a lot of things,” Jared said thoughtfully. “I wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“I’ve never tried to do much kicking a football, except just screwing around, mostly when I was in elementary school. I wonder if I’d be any good at it.”

“Beats me,” Howie shrugged. “About all I know is what I heard Coach Reardon say one day last fall, that they didn’t have time to develop a kicker since they were trying to teach everybody the basics. The only reason Lyle became a kicker at all was that he didn’t have the breath to do a lot of the drills.”

“It’s getting a little late in the year, and the weather is getting pretty crappy to be screwing around outside,” Jared said. “But maybe if we get a halfway nice day, I could get Lyle to go out to the football field and give me a few tips. At least I could find out if I had any talent for it.”

“Sounds like it might work,” Howie said. “Maybe I could come along and hold for you. It would help in a hurry-up game if we didn’t have to exchange a couple players when we have to kick.”

“Yeah, that’s part of what I’m thinking,” Jared agreed.

“Maybe you ought to talk to Coach Kulwicki about it,” Howie suggested.

“Yeah, maybe I will,” Jared agreed. “But only if we can get out with Lyle or something first and find out if I have any talent for it at all.”

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