Team Manager 1: SWISH!
Chapter 2
DENNIS’S MOTHER knew that if there was to be a girls’ basketball team, the Armor girls would be on it. Their older sisters never had the opportunity to play in high school, but were already making their mark at State. Mrs. Enders knew their parents supported their athletic endeavors but their pleas to the school board for a girls’ team had gone unheeded. If Coach Graves was successful in getting a team started at Bartley High, the Armor girls would be a part of it.
She also knew her son had a crush on the youngest, though she was equally certain the girl was completely oblivious to it. Ah, to be fifteen again. The first person she called to ask about the proposed team was Lily Armor. She hadn’t heard about the team yet, but was excited to get behind it and listened carefully to what Dot had to say about it.
“Natalie, Roberta, Daniella, please come to the living room for a family conference,” Lily called. John laid down the book he was reading and turned off the television. He’d agreed to the family conference after his wife’s conversation with Dennis’s mother. The three girls wandered into the living room and took their customary seats on the sofa. Family conferences weren’t unusual. They were thinking it might involve vacation plans for Christmas break. Maybe they’d get to go somewhere besides their grandparents’ house. When everyone had settled, Mrs. Armor began.
“I know you girls all have your eye on following your sisters to State. And you know I’ve petitioned the school board every year to get a high school team started. Their excuse has always been they didn’t have a coach or a budget for girls’ athletics. This year might be different.”
“Really, Mom? That would be so cool!” Roberta said.
“It’s not definite yet, but there is a coach now and she’s willing to go to the board to fight for a team.”
“Ms. Graves? She is so cool!” Natalie said.
“Yes. I spoke to her a few minutes ago and she’s enthused as well. You three might think you are a shoo-in for starting on the team, but you’ll need to prove yourselves. And remember, it takes more than three players on the court. You’ll need to truly work with a team and be sure everyone gets a chance to play.”
“We can do that, Mom,” Daniella said. “We’ll stop and see Coach Graves after school tomorrow. We’ll make sure she knows she can count on us.”
“Yes, I thought you would do that and that’s what I wanted to discuss.” The girls were almost comical in the way they cocked their heads at the same angle. Sometimes, Lily thought they must be triplets but one waited a year to be born. “When you talk to Coach Graves, you’ll also meet your team manager.”
“She has a team manager already? Who? Diane? She should be on the court. Who is she?” Natalie asked.
“She is a he.”
“A boy is going to manage the girls’ team?” exclaimed Daniella. Unlike her sisters, she had very little interest in or use for boys. “If one of those dumb jocks gets in my face, I’ll rip his balls out by the root.”
“You will do no such thing,” her father said. John hadn’t lived with six women for this many years without learning how they thought. His daughters were fairly predictable. “You will treat your manager with respect and he will treat you with respect.”
“Um… who is it?” Natalie asked quietly.
“You might not know him. It’s Dennis Enders. He is not your average jock,” Lily said.
“I know Dennis,” Natalie said. “He’s been in my class for like ten years. He’s like almost invisible and sometimes gets picked on because he’s so little.”
“Please try to use fewer ‘likes’ in your sentences. Good English elevates your standing in the eyes of others,” Lily said.
“Isn’t he the guy who was getting picked on by Lee Smith and his cronies last year?” Roberta asked.
“Yeah. I never saw three guys turn tail and run like when the three of us stepped in,” Natalie said. “I just felt bad for Dennis. They picked on him just because he can’t defend himself.”
“That’s what this conversation is coming down to,” John said. “I expect you girls to set the example regarding not bullying. You’ve been raised to be better than that and stepping in to stop it last year was exactly what I expect of you. It takes a lot of courage for a kid like that to step into a role where he’s been bullied before. And as socially backward as he may seem, it takes a lot of courage for a boy who is small in stature to accept a position working with girls who are all taller and outweigh him.”
“This could be the opportunity we’ve been trying to create for all five of you girls,” Lily said. “We’ll go to the school board meeting Tuesday and back Ardith in getting this done. But if we hear of any bullying by the girls—on the boy or each other—we will just as quickly ask that it be disbanded. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Mom.” Daniella and Roberta looked to Natalie. Even though she was a year younger, they often deferred to her as their spokesperson.
“We’ll be responsible, Mom and Dad. Nobody deserves to be treated the way Dennis was last year and I’m glad Coach Rogers got canned for it. We’ll make sure the other girls get the message,” Natalie said.
“Okay,” Mrs. Armor said. “I knew we could count on you but we had to hear it explicitly stated. Now, remember, this isn’t public news yet, but knowing this town, I doubt there is a hermit left who hasn’t heard by now. Talk to Coach Graves and Dennis and see what you can do to help.”
The family conference was over and three very excited girls headed for bed.
By 2:30 when the final bell rang, the school was buzzing with the rumor that a girls’ basketball team was forming. Opinions ranged from excited enthusiasm to a shrugged ‘who cares?’ Dennis nearly came in his pants when Natalie looked at him in their English class and gave him a thumbs up. She’d never said a word to him since intervening on his behalf last year. The incident with Lee had been the spark that ended with Coach Rogers being fired and the three worst bullies getting expelled. Natalie and her sisters had shrugged it off as just being decent people and didn’t expect anything in return. They weren’t sure if there had been any bullying so far this year. They hadn’t heard of any.
All three arrived at Coach Graves’s office at the same time Dennis did. Dennis held his breath when he saw the three Amazons approaching. He quickly rushed to open the door and stood aside for them to enter.
“Ladies,” he said as he motioned them in.
“Thanks, Manager,” Natalie said. Dennis followed them into the office. There weren’t chairs for everyone so they stood in front of Ardith’s desk, almost at attention.
“Well, news travels faster in this town than wildfire,” Ardith said. “Dennis, we’ll get to our meeting in a minute. What can I do for you ‘ladies,’ as Dennis so politely called you?” Dennis could tell by the amused expression on Ardith’s face that she was playing with the girls. He still held his breath. Roberta and Daniella looked at their sister.
“We wanted to thank you for working at getting us a basketball team,” Natalie said. “And volunteer to do anything we can to help. We also wanted to let you know that we have no problem at all with Dennis being our team manager. Not that you need our permission, but we thought Dennis should know that he has our support.”
Dennis nearly melted as he managed to say, “Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you,” Ardith reaffirmed. “There can’t be much secret that I have my eye on you three to help get us started. But you have some others who have been playing in your scrimmages. We’re going to need a full team, not just three women. I’m glad you’re willing to help recruit. As you spread the word, be honest with the girls. It’s likely they’ll break a fingernail. This isn’t a place for beauty queens.”
“Yes, ma’am. When can we tell them we’ll have tryouts?”
“I don’t really have a schedule yet. I need to go before the school board Tuesday.”
“Coach?” Dennis said. “I checked the calendar and we could have tryouts two weeks from today. It fits the schedule and there is a precedent for having a new team begin practice ahead of the official date set by the IGHSAU.”
“Good work. Let’s make that our tentative date. Remember, you can’t post anything prior to the board meeting. They could shoot the whole idea down.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve made a list of parents and boosters we can call to help us at the board meeting. I figured I was going to need the list for recruiting scorers,” Dennis said. Ardith pulled back in surprise.
“That’s… good thinking, Dennis.” She looked at the girls. “Any doubts about why I want him as our team manager?” All three girls grinned and looked at Dennis. He could feel his face heating up.
“No, ma’am. Dennis, we could help by splitting up the list and making phone calls. I know our parents are already planning to attend,” Natalie said. Dennis wondered a bit about Roberta and Daniella having not said a word since they came into the office. Well, they were juniors and probably were just leaving things to Natalie because she was his classmate.
“I can email a list if you’ll give me your addresses,” he said.
“Um… Let us give you our phone numbers so you can text them to us,” Roberta said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d checked email. Dennis dropped his head.
“I don’t have a cell phone,” he mumbled.
“What? How do you text anyone?”
“I don’t… I’ve never had anyone to text to and smartphones are expensive,” he said.
“I’ll fix that as an official expense of the department. In the meantime, you ladies do have email accounts, don’t you?” Ardith asked. The girls nodded. “We’ll have official communications via email, so start checking it regularly. There will be some attachments like the schedule, permission forms, health forms and such. Dennis, we’ll need to send those out in advance of tryouts to anyone who signs up. We’ll especially need the permission slips to be turned in at tryouts.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Dennis sat in a folding chair by the desk and opened his laptop to make some more notes to himself. Ardith and the girls were all surprised at how fast his fingers moved on the keyboard.
“Okay, girls. I think you and I both got what we wanted from this meeting. Dennis and I have some more work to do. Good enough?”
“Yes, Coach. You can count on us.” The girls turned and left the office to Dennis and Ardith.
“You seem to be a step ahead of me,” Ardith said to Dennis when the girls were gone. “I like that. Why don’t we start with what you have and I’ll add to it or subtract as we go?”
“Okay. I hope you don’t mind I did some work on this without discussing it first. I made a chart with dependencies and a timeline. It shows what needs to be done first and what we can do on a parallel path. I need to add getting permission slips sent to everyone who signs up for tryouts.” He turned his laptop screen toward Ardith and went through his flow chart. Ardith was suitably impressed.
“Sponsorship,” she said. “We need a booster club for our Lady Wolverines.”
“Angelines,” Dennis said automatically.
“What’s that?”
“A female wolverine is called an angeline. I kind of like the fact that they have a reputation for being ferocious, but they have ‘angel’ in their name. It also means a talkative and fun woman. In ancient Greek, it meant a messenger from God.”
“You are a font of miscellaneous information,” Ardith said. “The Angelines it is.” Ardith used some of the time they had together to further get to know Dennis and his interests. She was impressed with his knowledge of sports conditioning. They worked for about an hour and took off. Ardith was satisfied with the results but also more determined than ever to get her team approved.
To her credit, Ardith realized the boy she’d been convinced to recruit as a team manager was a treasure equal in value to the team itself. She needed to make sure he had the tools to be successful. So, Saturday morning she headed into Des Moines to do some shopping. It was at a discount store that she found what she needed. What Dennis needed.
He wasn’t going to spend hours talking on the phone or web surfing, but his classmates, who would become his team, communicated almost exclusively with text messages. She picked up a generic smart phone for $50. She wasn’t rich, but she was living within her income since she moved to Bartley. She looked at the screen and thought about those thick glasses. He seemed to see okay when using the laptop, but maybe… She put the phone down and selected the next model up with a bigger screen. It was $20 more for the phone, but she wanted to be sure he’d actually use it. Then she bought a $15 SIM with unlimited talk and text and 4 gigabytes of data. She was out of there with a smartphone for her team manager for under a hundred bucks. Each month, she’d log on and put another month of service on his SIM. She walked through the mall, intending to hit the sporting goods store, just to price out team uniforms. She stood staring at the beautiful uniforms on display, designing the perfect one in her head.
She really needed a sponsor and it was a cinch that she wouldn’t find one in Des Moines. She was simply too far out of town. The same would be true of Ames. No, she needed a local sponsor. She was trying to identify who the potential businesses might be when she passed the Eyecare Center. Like all mall stores, it had huge posters advertising its services, including Lasik surgery. Wow! Almost $2,000 per eye. Well, she wasn’t his sugar momma. She liked the kid but that was just too much.
She thought about stopping for a nice lunch but she’d just spent almost a hundred dollars and some of her dreams. She headed home.
Once there, she sent an email to her new assistant, knowing now that he didn’t yet have a text-capable phone. She asked simply if she could visit Dennis and his parents on Sunday afternoon.
It was evening before she got a response back.
The email sent Mrs. Enders into a tizzy.
“Mom, Coach Graves sent a message asking if she could visit us tomorrow afternoon,” Dennis said, carting his laptop with him. His family wasn’t well-off, but his mother had found the money to get him a laptop computer when he started high school and added a cable modem to it so he could do his studies and research online. It wasn’t a top of the line model or the fastest on the market, but Dennis had it with him all the time, it seemed.
“Us?” she asked.
“Coach said me and my parents. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if Peg was there, too. I hope it’s not a problem with me being the team manager. Everything seemed okay yesterday. I even got to speak to Natalie.”
“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Enders went through the list of things she needed to clean and prepare for a guest. The house wasn’t dirty but one always wanted to put the best foot forward when someone came to visit. It so seldom happened. “Give me a few minutes to think about it. You don’t have to answer immediately. She doesn’t know if you even got the message on a Saturday afternoon.”
Dennis went back to his room and finished the task he was working on: sending the contact list to the Armors.
Cleaning was the least of Dot’s concerns. She immediately went to her bedroom. Will had not come out today at all but that could be a good sign. He often stayed in bed when he dried out.
“Will, I need to talk to you a minute, honey. Okay?” she wasn’t shy or cowed by her husband. He was a big man but wasn’t domineering. She just didn’t want to startle him or wake him up if he was asleep.
“It’s okay, Dot. I’m awake. I’m just thinking about what a mess I’ve made of my life. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not concerned with that right now. Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah. Hardly shaking now. Give me a few hours and I’ll be back and go find more work.”
“Honey, our son needs us,” Dot Enders whispered. Will sat straight up in bed.
“What is it? If that Smith kid has been after him again, I’ll…”
“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. There’s no trouble. But his coach wants to visit with the family tomorrow. It would be nice if you could join us.”
“Of course I’ll join you. Who is his coach? They fired that last guy, didn’t they?” he asked.
“Yes. This is a different team altogether. He’s going to manage the girls’ basketball team.”
“Girls?” Will chuckled a bit. “Maybe that will help him grow up a bit. What does the coach want?”
“I’m not sure. She and I talked Thursday night when Dennis brought home the permission slip. I wasn’t going to sign it until I was assured she would look out for him and protect him like that other coach didn’t. She probably wants to drum up our support for the school board meeting Tuesday night,” Dot said.
“Hmm. That sounds reasonable. Don’t worry. I’ll be ready.”
“I knew I could count on you when the family needs you.”
“I need to get some more sleep. Why don’t you invite this coach—her?—to Sunday dinner? We have enough to feed one more, don’t we?”
“There’s always enough for one more,” she said, smiling. Will lay back down and shortly started snoring.
He was a good man, Dot reminded herself again. It was just bad luck that had ruined their chance at farming. She understood why he needed to hide at the bottom of a bottle. With a mentally challenged daughter and extremely nearsighted son, she sometimes took a nip late at night herself before she went to bed. But as soon as Will understood that his family needed him, he would be sober instantly.
She softly kissed his unshaven face and went to see what she had that she could fix for Sunday dinner.
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