Team Manager CHAMP!
Chapter 22
AFTER MORNING CHORES, most of the team headed for Salter to watch what was billed as the Conference Championship game between the Crusaders and the Spartans. It got off to a bad start. The Spartans opened up a ten-point lead before the Crusaders fought back to close it to four points at the end of the first quarter. Then, Brenda and Grace entered the game to ignite the Crusaders on a twenty-two-point spree to lead 39-36 at the end of the half.
The Spartans closed to two again before the end of the third quarter and immediately tied the game at 51 in the first twenty seconds of the final period. The score seesawed back and forth for another two minutes, being tied three times. Then Brenda and Grace came off the bench again to combine for a sixteen-point unanswered scoring binge. With the lead opened to fourteen, the Crusaders maintained control for the rest of the period, ending the game in a 79-65 victory.
The victory clinched a disputed regular season conference championship for the Crusaders. The team would become the first seed in the conference tournament when it started in two weeks. They were presented the trophy after the game, but some of the Spartan fans were protesting. The Crusaders were sixteen and six for the season, but none of their early-season losses had been in conference competition. The Spartans had an overall better record of twenty and two, but both their losses had been to the Crusaders in conference play.
The Bartley fans were jubilant as their former coach and teammate came out of the locker room after the game.
“Another championship!” Dennis crowed, leading the applause.
“You keep winning and we’ll keep winning, babe!” Brenda yelled as she hugged her boyfriend. She went down the line hugging girlfriends and former teammates, eventually getting to even the younger girls who had come to the game.
“You and Grace are like a machine!” Natalie said.
“Are you kidding?” Brenda asked. “Grace is the dynamo. Did you see her steal the ball? Nine times! And she scored on seven of them.”
“And still, she led everyone but Laura in assists. Including two to you,” Ardith said. “I’ve never been so happy to have seven starters on my team. We’re going to keep marching on. Two more games next week before our tournament starts.”
“We’re thinking of stopping at the Roadrunners’ this evening for the round one game that will determine who we play in the quarterfinals on Tuesday,” Dennis said. “We’ve played against the Roadrunners before, but we’ve never seen the Tigerhawks play.”
“Just don’t try to second guess your strategy based on what you see,” Ardith warned. “Play your game the way you play it and keep your team focused.”
“Thanks, Coach,” Dennis said. He subtly put an arm around Ardith and gave her a squeeze. She grinned and winked at him.
“How about dinner before the game tonight?” Brenda asked. “We might get Grace and a couple others to join us.”
“Sure! That sounds great,” Amy said. “Grace is my hero.”
“Honey, to get up in Grace’s strata, we’ll all have to learn to run faster!” Eve said. “Hey, Makayla. Come join us for dinner. You can give this guy of Brenda’s some coaching tips.”
“Hey, I’m still learning from Coach Graves. But food sounds good!” The bubbly woman rushed to join up with the Angelines. She’d played the last minute of the game and managed an assist and a rebound in the fifty seconds she was in.
“So, little cutie,” Grace said as she sat on the other side of Amy from Brenda. “I hear you have a reputation at your high school and you’re likely to be with us here next year. Glad to have you aboard. We’ll have to figure out how to integrate you with Bren and me. If we can extend our range to a triple threat, we’ll have it made.”
“I can’t believe how well you and Brenda work together,” Amy said. “I’m jealous.”
“Oh, don’t be. Your girlfriend is beautiful and smart and talented, but I just don’t have a taste for pussy. Now your boyfriend looks like he’d be fun. Problem is, there’s too much competition there. I guess I’ll stick with Ham.”
“Who’s that?”
“My boyfriend since freshman year in high school. He’s at Drake and we maintain limited contact during basketball season. Once the season is over, though, I’m going to show him how much faster I’ve gotten this year,” Grace said.
“That’s cool. Is he an athlete?”
“No. Can you believe it? A total brainiac. I’m just arm candy.”
“Don’t let her kid you about that. Our fast girl is an A student,” Eve said. “And we love her for it.”
“Hey, I noticed Tori isn’t with you today,” Brenda said. “Is everything okay?”
“I have a feeling Tori is playing a different game today. I saw her and Brandon leave PJ’s together last night. I just hope she isn’t too sore to play ball on Tuesday,” Leanne said.
“See? Now that’s why Ham and I have limited contact during the season. Can’t run fast if you’re bowlegged, if you know what I mean,” Grace said.
“Girl, most of us couldn’t beat you in a footrace even if you were bowlegged,” Makayla said.
The conversation was lively and Ardith felt comfortable with her high school boyfriend and girlfriends in the crowd of players. When they left, though, Brenda joined their girlfriends and Dennis while Ardith went to her house in Bartley alone.
That evening, the Tigerhawks fell to the Roadrunners 38-30. It was a low scoring game, but not for lack of trying. Neither team hit more than one of five shots from the court and only a handful of free throws had been made. Still, for the level of talent on the two teams, it was a good match-up. The Angelines were ready for Tuesday.
“They were just so cute!” Natalie said as they cuddled up at Amy’s house. “I felt so bad for the Tigerhawks. They looked like our junior high girls.”
“That’s not so far off,” Dennis said. “Half those girls are freshmen. They only have one senior on the team. And I don’t think any of them are over five-nine.”
“Wouldn’t you just love to take over a team like that and really make something of them?” Brenda asked.
“I’m not ready for that,” Dennis laughed. “You know who is, though? Makayla. If that girl got hold of a team like the Tigerhawks next year, she’d take them all the way to the State Championship.”
“I wonder if they’re hiring,” Brenda said. “I don’t wish ill on their coach. He was doing the best he could, but he was really coming off as a man-dude. I’ve no doubt there’s some hero-worship where he’s concerned, but it’s hurting his ability to coach.”
“You guys are so observant!” Natalie said. “You need to help me get ready to coach girls like that. I really think I could do well with a junior high team. I’ll let you guys run the varsity.”
“Well, what we saw tonight should clue us in a little on what to expect Tuesday. The Roadrunners are more mature and they’re aggressive. They’re going to be after the ball from the opening buzzer,” Dennis said. “I think they’ve adapted their game since we met them in December—probably to make up for their height deficiency. You notice they weren’t towering over the Tigerhawks, they just played with more maturity. No one on the team is over five-eight, but they’ve got four seniors and have been starting two sophomores and a junior with them. They’re on a five-game winning streak, including three of the teams we beat, and until tonight, all those games have been away games. They are going to press and try to get under us right away.”
“Um… Coach? Can we let up on the game talk and fuck?” Lana said. “I’m really, really horny.”
That was all it took for Dennis and the three other girls to focus all their attention on Lana. Between kissing, sucking, licking, and fucking, they made sure her hornies were well-taken care of. Natalie dove in to lick Dennis’s semen out of Lana’s pussy while Brenda mounted his cock and Amy rode his face.
By morning, Amy and Natalie had also had their pussies reamed by his prick, but the girls did as much to love each other as he did to love them.
The team had a good practice Monday. Dennis had them play short against tall in a scrimmage to get them used to the height difference and made sure Lana and Josie were brutal about blowing the whistle on any foul the tall team made against the short. Dennis was pretty sure there would be a subconscious bias against the taller team running into the smaller one. They needed to make sure they were playing cautiously and still connecting for points. He also wanted to do more substitution of shorter players into the lineup. He’d keep Natalie in as long as she kept scoring and snatching rebounds. He planned to always have either Janice or Diane in the lineup. But he’d be swapping Tori, Amy, Judith, Leanne, Carrie, and Karen on a regular rotation. He hoped to overcome the subconscious bias by not having five girls on the floor who towered over the other team all the time. He was still undecided as to whether he’d play Rosie. He thought she was still favoring her ankle and didn’t want to risk injuring her when they might really need her when they went up against the Wolves again.
There was a pep rally during the last period of school on Monday. The boys’ team would be playing the Wildcats in their first round game Monday night. They’d beaten the Wildcats soundly in an early season game and there was a lot of excitement around the boys moving to the next level. Both first round games in their district would be played at Bartley, with the Wolverines in the second game at 8:00.
After dinner, the Angelines joined the junior varsity teams to create a cheer block for the boys as the Wolverines pushed through to a victory over the Wildcats 66-49. Brandon still started and played well with six points. He also made a solid contribution with rebounds and assists. The Wolverines would move on to meet the Chargers on Thursday in the quarterfinals. They had lost a tight contest to the Chargers early in the season and then came back to dominate them in a later game. They were looking forward to the next game.
Tuesday night, the Angelines dressed to meet the Roadrunners. The team had certainly changed since their first meeting. They were fast and aggressive, just as Dennis had said. They still had poor shooting, however, hitting only twenty-percent of their shots. The Angelines beat them based on three-pointers alone. There weren’t many fouls, though, and neither team went into a shooting penalty. The only free throws were those made when there was a foul in the act of shooting. The Roadrunners made one of four and the Angelines sank four of four.
Friday night, they’d host the winner of the Cardinals/Trojans game.
The girls didn’t go down to Salter Wednesday night to watch the Crusaders crush the Prairie Wolves by forty points. Brenda led the scoring with nineteen, but four other Crusaders were in double figures near her. She’d hit four of four three-pointers and even had six rebounds.
The Angelines were busy preparing for their game against the Cardinals, who had defeated the Trojans 54-47. The Cardinals were another team they hadn’t met in regular season and Dennis had them review the recording on Wednesday.
“These girls do not give up. They came from behind in the fourth quarter and won that game,” Dennis said. “They might have the best fourth quarter game that we’ve faced all season. We’ll need a big margin going into the last quarter.”
“What is it they do?” Amy asked. “I didn’t think girls… well, that heavy could move so fast.”
“Don’t depend on body types. You know Makayla down at Salter. She looks heavy, but she’s every bit as strong and fast as the other girls,” Natalie reminded her.
“Except Grace. Grace is lightning.”
“There’s an exception to every rule.”
“So, what’s our strategy, Coach?” Janice asked.
“We need to rack up as many points as we can in the first half,” Dennis said. “I know you girls. You start feeling sorry for an opponent and slack off when you get ahead. Don’t do it. Whatever we score in the first half, this team is capable of scoring in the second half. Don’t let up.”
They ran drills and scrimmaged and headed home.
The Bartley County WAGs—Women in Agriculture—met monthly. It was normally a social time with a guest speaker. The women often met in the home of one of the members, or at a local church if the group promised to be too big. There had been only seven attending at Doris Albright’s house the night Kristen Conway had come to gather support for her public decency movement against the girls at Bartley High. Too many of the women had teenage daughters, had raised daughters, or were looking at daughters who would be teenagers soon. They were not impressed by Kristen’s arguments.
There were a surprising number of woman-owned farms in Bartley County. Added to that, farm wives were all welcomed as equals since many farms were jointly owned by husband and wife. Then there were the women who worked in other parts of the agricultural industry, like at the AgCentral farm office, at the elevator or feed store, and at the Co-op. Mostly, they welcomed anyone who had an interest in the rural life in Iowa.
The second Wednesday of February meeting was held at the White Center Grange Hall to hear District Attorney Madeline Courtney talk about the prosecution of crime in Bartley County and why that qualified her to become the State Attorney General. The meeting was well-attended. Madeline had had some high profile cases come before her recently and had done well in getting convictions. She’d also had a couple of embarrassments.
“I don’t want to just point out my record of getting convictions in some notorious local cases. The murder trial of Bart Conway was prosecuted swiftly and his first appeal has been rejected by the Court of appeals, who found no irregularities in the trial. Our team who investigated, made the arrest, and collected the evidence did so with great care and were flawless in their execution of warrants. It’s a new standard in criminal justice that I want to continue at the state level,” Madeline said. Winning the April primary looked like a safe bet, but the incumbent AG was popular with liberals in the state.
“Rather than these notches on my belt, I want to talk to you about something I consider far more dangerous to each of us. I believe the fabric of our society is beginning to unravel. Nowhere is that more evident than here in Bartley County and in the State of Iowa. I am not casting blame on anyone in particular, but elevating the awareness of all of us. I’m sure none of us can forget the invasion of Federal authorities in our small town of Bartley to execute warrants for the arrest of our community’s teens with extreme prejudice. Were all those who died, both in that night’s events and in the aftermath, guilty? We will never know. Justice was taken out of the hands of local authorities and placed in the hands of unknown Federal agents. Why? Because information that surfaced during the investigation was turned away by the Attorney General who left the investigation and arrests in the hands of the DEA and FBI.”
She wasn’t winning any friends with this tack, she could tell. Everyone in the area had been relieved when the gang was busted and were all dead.
“I’m not casting doubt on the legality or rightness of the actions, but I am saying this is the kind of thing the State Attorney General should be dealing with. More recently, a local event investigated by our County Sheriff involved the massive extortion of the entire Bartley High School sports program by another school, funded by an Iowa corporation. I’m happy to say the boys involved who live in the Bartley School District were exonerated, but what concerns me is that the investigation has been removed from the hands of the County or the State and is being investigated as fraud by the SEC and FTC. We have a rock solid criminal case and, instead, it is being pursued as a financial crime rather than as a criminal corporation through its representative subverting the youth of our county and setting them upon one another.”
There were some nods at this. Everyone knew about the boys’ brawl a year ago that hospitalized several and resulted in charges and disciplinary action at both schools that were involved.
“I am not certain why, but Bartley seems to have been a center of attention for these attacks on our society. I was recently contacted and pursued a lead to the school board regarding a coach in the school having sexual relations with his players. I took the allegation directly to the school board only to find out that the Coach is a student and is explicitly excluded from the laws governing student-faculty relations. That doesn’t mean it is right, though. Multiple young girls have been identified as having a regular sexual relationship with the young man. And what should we expect? The same school has a faculty member and coach who reportedly has two wives.”
There were a few gasps as this was news to several of the women.
“I bring these items before you, the community of Women in Agriculture, because they are illustrative of what I mean when I say the fabric of our society is unraveling. Perhaps not all our problems can be prosecuted, but the State Attorney General needs to be more aggressive in the enforcement and prosecution of laws in our state than he is in trying to get federal infrastructure regulations reversed. We have problems right here in Iowa that should be addressed by our state’s leaders. We put them in office to deal with local problems, as I have done in Bartley County and promise to do statewide as your new Attorney General.”
Madeline concluded her remarks and left, pleading that she had another engagement and could not stay for dinner.
“She’s right, I suppose. We’ve certainly had our share of upset over the past two or three years,” Doris commented as the women sat for the carry-in dinner.
“Did you know they arrested that coach who was fired three years ago? At the time, the school board just said he had been negligent in supervising his athletes and letting hazing and abuse get out of control. It turned out he was… having sex with some of the boys!” Mira added.
“Frankly, I thought once they killed those three boys that would put an end to it,” June said. “I think the DEA just saved the taxpayers a lot of money. It’s too bad about Will Enders, though.”
“His son’s doing well.”
“That must have been who Madeline was talking about when they had a report of a coach having sex with players. I mean he is only seventeen or eighteen. The girls aren’t any older.”
“I heard both Maria McDonald and Elsa Brown’s daughters were involved with him. And two school board members have daughters in bed with him.”
“Then they hired that new coach who has two wives. I’d have to say the problem started with the school board. We need stronger rural voices on it. If Madeline wanted to change things, she’d run for the school board instead of for Attorney General.”
“Abigail, don’t you have a daughter on that team?” Doris asked Abigail Larson.
“Uh… Yes. They all love Dennis, but she hasn’t seen anything inappropriate in anyone’s behavior. I’m pretty sure I’d know if anything inappropriate was going on at the school,” Liz’s mother said. “Right now, the important thing is their march to the State Championship. Liz might not get a chance to play in it this year, but she’s sure she’ll get to dress for it.”
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