Team Manager 2: SPRINT!
Chapter 3
“GATHER ROUND, hurlers,” Coach Byers called. Twelve of the team, seven boys and five girls, came to stand around the circle. “I know you are all wondering how Dennis and Derek came so close to the same distance.”
“No kidding. How come he isn’t on the team?” Derek asked. Derek was definitely the biggest and beefiest member of the track team.
“Dennis has his own reasons. But did you notice Dennis and Derek used two very different throwing techniques? Which one was right?” Coach asked.
“If someone that small can throw that far, obviously he had the right technique,” Corrine said. She was feeling very encouraged about possibly being able to compete in this event after Dennis’s demonstration.
“For you, the answer is yes. But Derek’s technique was also correct. He just needs to work on optimizing it. You’ll all need to do that. There are two approaches to shot putting that are commonly in use: the glide and the spin. Derek’s been taught to use the glide, and for a guy his size, it’s the perfect approach. Dennis used a spin step. This is a great approach for smaller athletes, including you women,” Coach said. “I’m going to teach you all both techniques and you’ll be able to tell which is right for you. Remember, this circle is only seven feet in diameter, so you need to complete your moves without stepping out. Let’s start with the glide step.”
The boys had all been practicing for a week, but Coach Byers hadn’t been able to join them until the basketball team was eliminated from the tournament. None of the five girls—Corrine, Erin, Denise, Rita, and Jennifer—had ever held a shot. The instruction was basic, but took half an hour to get through. Then Coach Byers sent the girls to the weight room to work with Dennis as he took the boys to the discus event. They would switch out in half an hour.
“That ball is heavy,” Corrine accused when she saw Dennis. He grinned.
“You’ve got the power.”
“My first throw went five feet,” she complained.
“Don’t brag,” Rita said. “That’s at least a foot farther than either Jennifer or me.”
“I might have thrown farther, but I almost killed myself doing it,” Erin said. “I’m sticking with discus.”
“Me, too, I think,” Denise responded. “That’s more like throwing a frisbee, isn’t it?”
“Just think. That means that every foot is a new personal record. By the end of the season, you’ll be really working to set a better mark than your previous one,” Dennis said. “Now, you should be able to tell already which muscles we need to work on to build strength.”
“Arms.”
“Legs.”
“Back.” The girls recited the list Coach Byers had given them.
“Right. I’m going to start you on machines because I don’t want to risk you dropping a weight until you’ve built up your muscles a bit. Let’s start with the quads. Those are the big muscles in the front of your thighs that give you pushing power.”
“Are you calling my thighs big?” Corrine asked in mock affront.
“Not yet,” Dennis winked at her.
“Oh,” Leanne moaned in the locker room as she pulled off her shoes. “Why isn’t Dennis in here to rub our muscles?”
“He’s a boy, dummy,” Rita Longfellow sniped at her classmate.
“You’ll forget about that soon enough,” Amy said. “He’s like one of the girls.”
“You guys didn’t really have him in the locker room while you were dressing and showering, did you?” Debbie asked. The idea was definitely titillating, but of course, she’d never do that. She didn’t think.
“Not all the time,” Natalie sighed.
“We had a couple of all-night parties he was at,” Brenda said. “So, I guess you could say we all slept with him.” The basketball girls giggled, not mentioning they’d all slept with him in smaller groups, too.
“He’d have to dig through too much flab to get to my muscles,” Corrine said. Three of the five shot put and discus girls were a little on the heavy side, but Corrine was the biggest of them. “I did that spin approach in the circle. When I finished and launched the shot, my belly fat kept going like it was doing another rotation.”
“Nobody here is going to judge you for your weight,” Daniella said. “What Dennis is going to do, though, will give you the muscle to carry your body at any weight.”
“I admit I could use the help,” Corrine said. “I am going to be so sore tomorrow.”
“Did he really help change your body that much during basketball?” Debbie asked. “I mean, you were always beautiful, Brenda.”
“When we did the initial SPARQ test last September, I did that kneeling push throw with the three-pound medicine ball. I only got it like two feet. It was more like I dropped it and it rolled off my boobs. When we did it last week during testing, mine went eighteen feet.”
“I grew boobs!” Amy said.
“Me, too,” Judith joined in.
“You can’t give him credit for that!” Jennifer said.
“I don’t know about that,” Amy said. “You know. It’s like those pheromone things. Helps you mature.”
“I dunked a basketball,” Daniella said, cutting off speculation about how Dennis helped Amy’s boobs grow. “He helped me with the leg and ankle exercises and the positioning. I’ve got two sisters playing ball in college and neither one of them could dunk a basketball.”
“And the best part is he does everything with us that he wants us to do. All except, um… shower,” Leanne said as she went into the shower room. A lot of the girls just shook their heads, trying to decide how much of what the Angelines said they could believe.
Dennis waited outside the locker room for towels as the girls straggled out. Lana stopped and leaned against the wall beside him.
“Guess what,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I took a shower. With all the other girls. Naked.”
“Uh… Wow, Lana. Congratulations. Um… Why are you telling me that?”
“Because. Being with you and the Angelines has helped me be braver and more confident,” Lana said. “It’s not like I want to get naked and take a shower with you! Or around any boy. But I had the courage to be one of the girls today.”
“Then I’m really happy for you, Lana. Just don’t ever feel like you have to conform to what everyone else is doing. It’s always your choice,” Dennis said. For his part, he had no intention of getting naked in front of the guys in the locker room. Fortunately, he’d been able to grab his shower in the coaches’ shower room before anyone else even came in.
The attitude of the guys at practice was definitely different the next afternoon. They took the conditioning exercises seriously and the girls upped their performance to compete. He brought the girls in to the weight room in shifts to work on specific muscle groups. He’d set up machines for the throwing girls. He worked aerobic machines with the runners, climbing stairs, rowing, and running on the treadmill. In each case he worked on how their arms were moving as well as building strength in their legs. Most of the girls on the team were in running events. That was good as no athlete was allowed more than four events in a meet.
The jumpers were Dennis’s last group for weight conditioning. He focused on legs and the use of arms to propel the body. Ten girls were participating in the jumping events. They all participated in both high jump and long jump, trying to see what event they were best at. The first meet was to be a three-way and each team would be limited to two runners per event on the eight-lane track.
“There’s sure a lot to remember in track,” Lana sighed as she did squats with a forty-pound bar.
“Mostly, you just need to remember what affects your event. It will be tricky for you if the first event goes ridiculously long and they start the long jump before the high jump is concluded. That’s not common, though,” Dennis said. “That’s enough with the bar. I want to work on your lower legs.”
“I bet you do,” she giggled.
“Lana, you know I would never do something inappropriate with you,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. It’s just fun to think about. What are we doing now?”
“We’re going to do toe raises. Eventually, we’ll be doing them with weights, but I think you’ll find your body weight is enough to make these burn right now.” Dennis demonstrated the toe raises on a low step next to a barre. “Right now, you’ll need to use the barre to help you stay balanced. When you can do them without holding on, I’ll give you weights. Now, you’re going to go all the way from flex to extend. Toes on the step and sink your heels toward the floor. Now rise up on your tiptoes. We want maximum flex and extension. It’s easy to focus on the legs when you lift —especially the quads—and forget about what an important part your feet play in propelling you up and forward.”
“Um… These are hard after the first five or so. How many?”
“We’ll do them in sets of ten, go back to squats, and return for another ten toe raises,” Dennis said.
“I’m really going to hate you for this, aren’t I?”
“What’s the plan, Brisco?” Reg asked. “I’d rather not get in a shoot-out again so soon.”
“I’d rather we didn’t get in one at all.” Brisco looked at the map on the board in the conference room where he met with his team. “We’ve started tracking his contacts. He lives in a pretty expensive apartment just off campus. Better digs than you’d expect for a college student when the old man is depending on kickbacks to live on his sheriff’s salary.”
“Are they really going to let him out?” Thomas asked.
“Yes. But his days as a sheriff are over. The state patrol has taken over the county policing duties. It will stay that way until at least the next election.” He returned to the subject. “Now, we’re making progress in locating his other downstream dealers, but we don’t know yet where his supplies are coming from now that we wiped up the Chicago mess. And it’s obvious he’s looking for a new dealer in Bartley or a nearby town. You’d think these towns were too small to support a dealer at the level those punks were distributing. That tells us that the region he covers is pretty large. The demand is still there, but he can’t fill it right now.”
“Should we just let him keep the business and monitor it to keep it contained?” Reg asked. “The last thing we need is someone new moving in to fill the void.”
“I wouldn’t be concerned except this is such a crossroads for the traffic. We’ve got the Mexicans moving drugs from the south to Chicago and Minneapolis—and don’t go thinking we stopped it by busting one ring of traffickers. Then we’ve got traffic coming in from Canada through Minnesota. The pattern we’ve seen before is that it splits east and west on I-80 from there. Chicago in the east and Omaha and Salt Lake City in the west. The guys in Kansas City say they’re tracking similar movement and still seeing it flow both directions on I-35 and I-70.”
“Our damned interstates make it too easy to transport drugs and people across borders,” Thomas said in disgust. “I’m for closing Iowa’s borders and stopping all through traffic.”
“That’s a little extreme.”
“Of course it is! Damn it, Brisco, I shot a fucking kid in the head. Yes, he deserved to die. Yes, I saved lives. But I didn’t join this agency to kill people.” Thomas was more and more agitated lately. He’d held together pretty well through the inquest, but had become more upset as time went by.
“Nightmares?” Reg asked the younger agent. Thomas nodded.
“I wish we’d gotten to the still in the woods before they started destroying everything. I could have used a couple of those bottles.”
Brisco tried to prevent the mood from defocusing the meeting, but it was hard to get anything done when he had a member of his team who was this upset. He’d have to move Thomas strictly to surveillance and get the administration to send him more help. He was sure he could borrow a Fibbie or two, now that they’d shown kids were being trafficked as well as drugs. The faster they severed the connections completely, the better it would be.
Spring break began on Thursday. All three schools would meet at Treynor High School that day. That meant the meet could be held starting at noon on Thursday. The Bartley teams would travel on two buses for the two-hour ride to the meet. Boys and girls would travel separately, though Dennis was allowed on the girls’ bus as their team manager.
Wednesday after practice, Dennis had handed out the new uniforms and encouraged the girls to try them on before they went home. The uniforms looked good. Most of the girls had opted for the spandex shorts that were just long enough to cover the butt ledge. Other girls, like Corrine and the other shot putters, chose the fuller gym short style. “No one needs to see my ass wrapped in spandex. This is too exposed as it is,” she’d complained.
“Corrine,” Dennis had whispered to her, “don’t forget you can wear tights or yoga pants and a T-shirt under your uniform if you want. They just need to be plain, with no decorations.”
“Any color?”
“Technically, yes. Coach would prefer if they were plain white or black.”
“I think I need to get Mom to take me to the mall!” As it worked out, nearly all the girls wearing the fuller gym shorts had made a trip to the mall and bought matching undergarments. The teams were all to wear their uniforms and sweats to the meet because there would not be facilities available for changing and showering at Treynor.
The team gathered for the trip at nine-thirty and boarded the bus. Dennis made sure they had clearly marked bags for their lunches, tracksuits, and spikes for those who planned to wear them. They couldn’t wear spikes on the bus. Dennis handed out towels so the girls would each have a towel in their bags. He took his athletic kit with him and made sure he had a fresh supply of ice packs. Tape would be unnecessary unless there was an injury. And then there were the nine-pound shots for the shot put. The two shots were clearly marked with the school’s name so they wouldn’t get confused with others at the meet. Most meets required that athletes provided their own equipment, and it was carefully weighed before the event. His ever-present clipboard with event records completed his equipment list.
The bus ride was pretty quiet. Some of the girls just got on the bus and went to sleep. Dennis was nodding off against a window. Natalie leaned against him to get some extra sleep and a little contact with her boyfriend.
The performance of the new team was not stellar. None of Corrine’s, Jennifer’s, or Rita’s shots carried more than fifteen feet. One of Missouri Valley’s girls made a toss of nearly forty feet. That was the winning throw. Dennis assisted with measurements and retrieving the shots.
The first running event was the sprint medley relay. Brenda and Judith did well on the first two legs of 100 meters and were in the lead as Judith handed off to Debbie Stackhouse for the 200-meter leg. Debbie lost a few steps on the handoff of the baton to Tori McDonald for the 400-meter leg and even though Tori completed her circuit of the track in good time, she couldn’t close the gap with the other schools.
Lana was competing in high jump against two other girls from Treynor at 4'10". Nine competitors had been eliminated already. She made the jump, but missed at 4'11" to place third in the event. One of the girls made a five-foot jump. Rosie found her niche in the long jump and won the event with a jump of fifteen feet.
And then there were the running events. Brenda and Judith were the two Angeline entries in the 100-meter dash and Brenda outpaced the competition for the first track victory the Bartley girls got in the meet. It was only a few minutes later that Tori captured the 400-meter race. The school didn’t have much depth, even though it had a few very fast runners. Debbie anchored the 4x200-meter relay but the team didn’t fare well on the other three legs. When it came time for her to run the 200-meter dash, she was out of gas and placed fifth of six, with only her teammate Becky Davis behind her.
The last events of the day were the 4x100-meter relay and the 4x400-meter relay. Led by Brenda and Judith, the girls captured second in the 4x100. The big surprise of the day was Amy leading out on the first leg of the 4x400-meter relay. Tori brought it home for the Angelines’ first relay victory. With four first places and a number of miscellaneous places in other events, the Angelines still came out third best in the three-way meet. The boys fared slightly better and eked out a second place team finish. Combined, Bartley took the second place honors for the meet.
“Congratulations on the first Angelines’ performance of the new track season,” Ardith said as the bus pulled away. Two-and-a-half hours of a track meet and four hours riding the bus there and back were going to exhaust everyone. “Here are the ribbons you won today,” she continued. Dennis read out the names of the events and Ardith handed out the ribbons to the excited girls. They were much more excited and livelier on the ride home than they’d been on the way to the meet. Ardith spoke up to quiet them for a minute.
“With the long day and short events overall, I want you to simply pick up your gear and go home when we get back to school. No showers at school today. Don’t forget to wash your uniforms before you return to school Tuesday. We’ll have only two days of practice before next Thursday’s meet and we get the next meet after that on Saturday. Get some exercise in on your break. Dennis has given you all conditioning exercises. Do them every day. If not, you’ll go to Thursday’s meet as tired as you were today. We’re the home team Thursday. Remember, even though school is out for break, you can still use the track to run on. Do it! Who are we?”
“Angelines!” The girls fell back into their chatter as quickly as they’d ceased listening to the coach. Dennis was included in the jokes and jibes, like he was just one of the girls.
“Hey, big boy,” Brenda said when she latched onto his arm outside the locker room. “Want me to give you a ride?”
“Um… I thought I was going with Natalie,” he started. Then he saw Nat and she called out.
“See you for our date tomorrow night!” She turned and left with her sisters.
“Oh. I guess I could use that ride after all. It was just so sudden; you surprised me.”
“I’m a fast girl,” Brenda giggled. “And this is my fast girlfriend,” she said pulling Amy up beside them. “And we’re going to my house.”
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