Team Manager COACH!
Chapter 7
“LANA, I WANT to check your ankle before we get started. You’ve got it taped,” Pat said before they started practicing.
“Yes, ma’am. Last spring, I had a bad high jump and it twisted a little. I felt it getting weak today and asked Dennis to tape it for me. It really helped stabilize it and he’s given me some exercises to strengthen it more,” Lana said. Pat examined the ankle and the taping job. She couldn’t find a fault with it. The tape was smooth and tight enough to hold the ankle steady without cutting off the circulation.
“You should take a break without the tape between activities and get retaped before practice. It’s not good to just wear it all day,” Pat said.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll ask Dennis to tape me just before practice.”
Pat looked around at the team, waiting to start practice and then zeroed in on her managers.
“Do you know how to tape like this?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. But we’re learning. Dennis gave us each a couple of rolls of tape and a video, so we’ve practiced on each other a couple of times,” Shelby said. “He’s going to test us tomorrow morning before the race.”
Dennis again. Pat wondered if he wanted to take over coaching the volleyball team the way he coached the basketball girls. Even she recognized that thought as being catty and probably the result of her being new and trying to establish herself at this school. Ardith had embraced his assistance with the basketball team. Perhaps she should do the same.
“After warmups I want to get straight into drills. I expect you all to get your conditioning exercises in with the cross country team tonight. Strength and endurance are key elements in volleyball. Some of you think volleyball is lazy compared to basketball. Wait until you’ve played six matches in an afternoon. You’ll find out how taxing the game can be. Now, team managers, lead warmups,” she barked.
Shelby and Thoms were shocked to be called upon for this task. They’d been attending the workouts in the evening and always warmed up with the team, but didn’t expect to be called on to lead anything. They gamely got in front of the team and started them in on the loosening up exercises and stretching. Thoms couldn’t do some things with the brace on their right leg, but they could do most of the stretching exercises.
Natalie, Lana, and the twins stepped to the front of the formation and helped Shelby and Thoms with the sequence and what was next. Before long, they were all moving with confidence.
Pat had a quick conference with Renée and divided the roster for their scrimmage, while all the time watching how the team responded to the team managers. Yes. Perhaps she’d had too narrow a view of team management responsibilities. She’d try to be more inclusive.
Nearly everyone from the four teams—cross country, volleyball, cheerleading, and the not yet formed basketball teams—along with their six coaches attended the Friday night workout. Friday was a full workout with a light run. In the morning was the big Bartley 5k Challenge with the cross country team against the football team. And all comers, apparently.
Ardith had long since adopted the team’s mode of dress for workouts. It was pretty much the same as she’d worn in college and she didn’t need to go shopping to get spandex sports bras and short shorts. Frankly, she felt she looked better in the outfit now at twenty-five than she had at eighteen. She had a trim athletic figure and mature breasts and hips—something lacking on many of the high school girls. She only wished the school had hired at least one single male for the staff.
Renée and Janet were similarly attired. Pat was slightly more conservative, opting for more full-cut shorts. She looked good, though. What amused Ardith was seeing Andy and Neil in tight shorts and singlets like Dennis wore. And they looked pretty good, too.
The cheerleaders were appreciated by the other teams. The new conditioning routine was set to music, piped over four or five mini-speakers set around the group. The music lightened people’s spirits as they worked out. Nonetheless, by the end of an hour the entire sixty-plus athletes were practically passed out on the turf next to the track. Andy got up and started them moving again.
“That was a heck of a workout!” he shouted. As tired as they were, they all started clapping. “We have almost a third of the school here? Combined with the football team tomorrow morning, half the student body will be on the track to run. The other half is going to be envious of the condition you’re all in. We’re going to have the fittest student body in the state. Good work and thank you, Dennis and the cheerleaders.” There was more clapping and Ardith stood up with Andy.
“We’re not done yet,” she said. “You all need to experience the course since it has been freshly mowed. So, we’re going to run. And walk. You all know the course markers now. We’ll do interval training today, but none of it is going to be super strenuous. This is to make sure your muscles know what they are going to do in the morning. We’ll start at a walk until we reach the 500-meter marker. Then it will be an easy lope from there to the 1k marker. Walk again to the fifteen-hundred marker and run to the 2k marker.”
Surprisingly, nearly everyone who had worked out joined in the five-kilometer run/walk.
“I can’t believe you’re taking me out tonight!” Leanne said when Dennis knocked at her door. She was ready and waiting. Her sister had shouted to her as soon as she saw Dennis leave his house for the walk across the street.
“I suppose I should have driven to your door instead of making you walk across the street to get in the car,” he laughed.
“Drive carefully out there,” Drake Vining said from behind Leanne.
“I will, Mr. Vining. And we won’t be late tonight. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow,” Dennis said.
“So I’ve heard. I think we’ll come over to watch the festivities.”
“Oh. It’s not a very thrilling sport to watch. Really,” Dennis stammered. Leanne pushed him out the door before he could get caught up in a long conversation with her father. They walked to his mother’s car and he opened the door to seat her before rushing around the car to the driver’s seat. He checked seatbelts and mirrors, then started the car and carefully backed out of the drive. He could see Drake Vining still watching from Leanne’s doorway.
“I was sure you’d take Natalie or Brenda or Amy or Judith or Tori out on your first date you get to drive on,” Leanne continued. She reached across to touch his leg, but Dennis didn’t take a hand off the steering wheel.
“Um… I kind of see them a lot. Amy just shows up whenever she wants. Diane and Judith go out with me when they want. Natalie, Brenda, and Tori all drive. I thought I’d like to take out a girlfriend I don’t get to spend as much time with. You were at the top of my list.”
“I love it! I’ve never been out on a real live date before!”
“See? It’s a first for both of us.”
It wasn’t a super romantic date, nor one that would be considered memorable by most people. They went into County Seat for a burger and played a round of miniature golf. The evening was memorable because they held hands and talked a lot—mostly about mundane things, like school schedules, and sports. But it was important to both of them. Their attention was focused on each other, not on other members of their group.
Dennis did nothing to hurry things along in their relationship. It was fun to just relax with his girlfriend and devote his attention to her. When they got back home, a little after ten o’clock, he parked in his drive and walked her across the street to her door. There, they had their first real kiss of the evening, letting it go longer and deeper than they might have under other circumstances. He waited until she was inside before he crossed the street back to his own house.
The Bartley 5k Challenge was well-attended. The Boosters had developed the idea into a festival. Several older runners ranging from nineteen to sixty registered for the event as they arrived. The sports teams were already registered by the coaches, including the volleyball team and the cheerleaders.
“This event was set up as a challenge between the cross country team and the football team. We welcome all the other runners this morning,” Coach Byers said over the football field address system. “The course begins and finishes here in the stadium, but there are other places where you’ll see them on the course and they’ll finish here in the stadium. Food and beverage stands have been set up at both ends of the bleachers and proceeds go to support the Wolverine and Angeline Boosters clubs. We want to thank our sponsors, AgCentral, Dietz Chevrolet, and Bartley County Co-op, for providing the timing devices and promoting the event.”
There was a cheer from the crowd and by ten o’clock, some 150 runners were lined up on the track.
“Dennis, you need to pay attention to the field and run a good race. We know you can run the course under eighteen minutes. That should be enough to beat any of the competition out here, but a sixteen-minute time would be a slam dunk,” Ardith said as she walked across the field with him.
“There’s so many!” he said. “I’ll get lost in the crowd.”
“You just need to think of them all as feral hogs. They have your scent and are chasing you. Just stay ahead of them.”
“Thanks, Coach. That was real encouraging,” he laughed.
“Strip out of your sweats and give them a show,” she said walking him up to the front of the starters. The guys on the cross country team had held a place for him on the line next to Dave Overman and Donnie Oswald, who had emerged as the team’s other best runners. Close to them, Janice Goodman looked over and smiled at Dennis. Diane, Judith, and Tori completed their side of the track. On the other side of the track, the football team snarled. Dennis pulled off his sweatpants and shirt, leaving him in the spandex running shorts and singlet with the number ‘1’ displayed on his chest. There were a few hushed exclamations as people tried to work out who he was. He didn’t look anything at all like the Dennis Enders they’d seen last spring. Several of the football guys were wondering if the cross country team had brought in a ringer.
“The first running of the Bartley 5k Challenge will now commence,” Coach Byers announced.
“Runners, take your mark!” Andy yelled. “Set!” He fired the starter’s pistol in the air and the race was on. Dennis took off ahead of the 150 runners who would chase him all the way around the course. He took Ardith’s words to heart. He needed to outrun the feral hogs. He led out onto the county road and made the turn up the lane next to Abernathy’s farm. The old farmer and his wife were sitting on their porch and cheered as the runners began to stretch out with several still on the track in the stadium, 500 meters behind. As Dennis made the turn around the hayfield, he forgot about the other runners. He’d run this track just yesterday morning and knew every inch of it. His feet seemed to fly. He could only vaguely hear the stampede behind him as he crossed the meadow to enter the woods.
Dennis was not a strategic runner. His opinion was that if he had enough in him to have a kick at the end of the race, he hadn’t run the rest of the race hard enough. He settled at a pace he knew he could maintain and let the world slip away. When he came out of the woods and began the circuit around the cemetery, no other runners were immediately in sight. In three more minutes, Dennis entered the stadium for the final lap around the track to the finish line. A buzzer marking his finish echoed across the stadium and out to the woods before the next runner entered the stadium.
The next runner, two minutes behind Dennis, was the starting quarterback for the football team, Jake Larsen. He was hard-pressed by Donnie Oswald, who took third. Three more football players and two men who had registered for the race that morning crossed next, but Janice Goodman paced well ahead of the rest of the football team. Then the numbers picked up as good runners filled the next two minutes entering the stadium. Then the masses. About twenty-five minutes after Dennis crossed the finish line, the last of the other runners straggled in, some doing very well for their age group. Or weight group as the case might be. The football linemen all came in at thirty-five minutes or more. One hadn’t finished and walked back to the stadium across the meadow.
“Not bad, Dennis,” Ardith said as she welcomed him. Boosters were lined up on both sides of the chute taking the numbers and times as people crossed the finish line.
“Pigs!” Dennis panted and then laughed as well as his empty lungs could manage.
“Well, no pig can hold three miles in 16:53. I think you can cut another minute off that time by State finals.”
“Oh, wow! I’m just a trainer. I’m not an athlete.”
“It’s time you changed that opinion of yourself.”
“We all like to support our local schools, but aren’t you taking it a little far in Bartley?”
“This isn’t just support of a school,” Lon said. “It’s establishing our place in the community where we’ll expand our operations.”
“And you think this will smooth the road for our expansion?” the CEO of AgCentral asked the marketing group. They’d attended the race at Lon’s invitation and he pointed out the site of their new farm factory. They’d met stiff resistance to acquiring land. People were happy to eat the pork but didn’t want the pigs anywhere near them.
“The public will bend over backwards to get us in their neighborhood once we carry this out. I tell you, they’ve gone apeshit over the sports program. One winning season of a new girls’ basketball team and suddenly the school hires five new coaches and quadruples the size of their athletic department. They need equipment, maintenance, uniforms, transportation, and even food. Getting behind the teams and joining the boosters, will make them do anything to keep us happy,” Lon said. As Vice President of Development, he had a lot riding on this deal.
“What about the environmentalists? And how do we avoid the animal rights activists?” the VP of Operations asked.
“One word. Organics. Whisper the word in the ear of an environmentalist and she has an orgasm. Liberals fall over themselves to have ‘locally sourced organic farm products.’ Humanely raised and cared for food for our tables,” Lon said, making a note to explore more catch phrases like that.
“We need to be running a million hogs through that facility inside of three years. The wind in that area shifts regularly enough that there won’t be anyone exempt from the smell,” VP Ops said.
“Money,” Lon responded. “Nothing smells as bad as money smells good. And think of our name as sponsor on the biggest sporting events of the year in Iowa.”
“I like it,” the CEO said. “Let’s get a budget together. Maybe we need to expand their gym, too. Find out where we can put our name on their uniforms. Naming rights to their stadium? What does it take to slap an organic label on a pig? Even if only half of the hogs we run through the facility are organic, we’ve fulfilled the promise. Ha! Probably at a tenth of them. I want that facility up and operating by summer. Get started.” Once the CEO made up his mind about something, he expected it to be done immediately and didn’t waste more time on meetings. Lon liked that about the guy. Now he needed numbers.
“I got a compliment from one of the coaches on how well you are working with their managers,” Jim said when he met Dennis after the race.
“That’s good to hear. The managers seem to be doubling down on their own fitness, too. The volleyball and basketball managers have all been showing up for conditioning practice. They’re really looking strong.”
“Which reminds me. I’ve taken a look at your proposal for a blog on the school athletic website. I’m going to suggest that you investigate creating a personal blog instead of a school blog. I think you could get subscribers from a broader base than just our school and that you might want to take it with you, so to speak, when you leave Bartley High. If you put it all on the school site, it would stay the school’s and you wouldn’t even have access to post on it once you were no longer a student. No sense in creating something of value and not being able to get anything from it. We can always link to it from the athletics page.”
“Thanks, Coach. I don’t really know anything about how to create a site or a blog or anything, but I’ll look into it,” Dennis said.
“You might talk to Olivia Factor. She is a whiz on the computer. Frankly, we’d have been screwed on a whole lot of things with the football team if she hadn’t been on top of it. I’ll bet she could get you set up with something in pretty short order,” Coach said.
“I’ll talk to her and see what comes of it. It looks like people are clearing out. I think I’ll get going, too,” Dennis said.
“Good run today. I tried to talk Grant out of making a big thing out of this, but he has his own way of motivating his team. I have to admit, they are suddenly a lot more serious about their conditioning after seeing the way you ran away from all of them,” Coach said. He shook Dennis’s hand and headed off to the coaches’ office while Dennis went to join his girlfriends and head home.
“School starts Monday,” Natalie sighed. The crew had settled on her house for their end of summer sleep-over. They’d chosen to cook an elaborate dinner together as their activity this night. They’d all gone grocery shopping and started cooking at the Armors’ house.
“Must you mention it?” Diane moaned. “I’m not ready to go to school. I just want to keep running around with my girlfriends—and my boyfriend.”
“I want to run, jump, and play!” Rosie said. “I’m getting into volleyball finally.”
“I don’t know when they expect us to have time to study with everything else we have going on,” Leanne said. “Dennis, you aren’t really going to take on mowing all the sports fields, are you?”
“I had to tell them no,” Dennis answered. “We’ll continue to have the regular conditioning program after school, but it’s going to be a madhouse in the locker rooms and training room.”
“And don’t forget we start at DMACC on Wednesday,” Brenda said. “We’ll have two classes together and then we’ll have to get you back to BHS and I’ll have a couple more classes, including my own sports conditioning classes.”
They sat around the table enjoying the massive pile of pasta and red sauce. They also had fresh pesto, a huge Caesar salad, and hot garlic bread with melted cheese. A normal girls’ party might have some delicate eaters at it, but thirteen athletes at the table spelled huge helpings. At the end of the meal, there was nothing left.
“Ugh. I can’t move,” Judith said. “Let’s wait for dessert.”
“I’m with you, sister,” Diane said. “We need to get the table cleared and dishes washed before we can sit and go to sleep. We promised Momma Lily.”
After cleanup, Roberta found a sappy rom-com on their cable and then she and Daniella settled in next to Dennis to lean against him.
“Do you still love us?” Daniella asked.
“You know I do,” Dennis answered. “It seems like we never have quality time together lately.”
“It will only get worse this fall,” Roberta said. “We just want you to know that we still want to be with you. You know, we might not always act like it or be as available as the rest of the girls. But we love you, too.”
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