Chapter 15: Charging Ahead

IN CASE YOU were wondering, this was not the beginning of a torrid affair with an older athletic woman. After all, I had a girlfriend and for all I knew, Chantell was married with children. Not that it would have made a difference, because I had a girlfriend, you know.

It was the beginning of a rumor that I could help in the training room as well as on the gym floor. Of course, none of the women who were playing a game or two a week wanted to be sore when they played, I often ended a training session with a six-foot-something Amazon stretched out on a massage table as I worked the kinks out of her shoulders, back, butt, and legs.

“Paul, I need to speak with you a minute,” the manager called me away from the gym. I hustled to her office.

“I need verification that you are indeed a certified massage therapist and not just a nineteen-year-old getting his kicks on my players’ naked bodies.”

“I wouldn’t do that. I have a girlfriend. I assure you that my attention has been strictly professional.”

“So the women have indicated. Can you get me a copy of your certificate so we can display it in the massage room?”

“Of course,” I said. Whatever. I finished my work day and the next day brought the GM my certificate. She nodded and smiled as if she were very pleased with something.

“Your work here the past month has been exemplary, and we have seen you expanding your responsibilities steadily. Therefore, I’m pleased to announce the end of your probation and establishment of a new pay rate of $25.00 per hour.”

“That’s great. Thank you.”

“That does not cover massage. As I indicated when you started here, the pay scale is set by agreement with the union. You are to log your massages and turn that in with your time card. You’ll be paid $50 per massage, assuming that each massage is approximately fifty minutes out of a one-hour session. Will that be satisfactory?”

“Um ... Yes, ma’am. That’s very kind of you.”

“You have worked on five of our women so far and I expect that number will increase to the entire team soon. We had a therapist on staff who decided the work was too irregular and there was really nothing else we could have her do between massages. Also, the team complained that she was too weak to do them any good. I hadn’t gotten around to having her replaced until you came along. So, you’ll be filling both roles as a training assistant and as a massage therapist. I will be monitoring the number of massages and to whom so I’m sure no one is abusing the privilege. You needn’t worry about that. I’ll remind anyone who is having too many massages.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay. To work.”

I felt like I’d fallen in a pile of shit at the Hennepin Gym and swam my way to the surface of a rose-scented pool at the basketball gym.

“That’s because you are talented and a hard worker,” Tara said that weekend. She was assisting with my Saturday morning tumbling class again. This gym paid us enough that we both got a nice pay packet each weekend. “I’ve been making do teaching some other elementary gymnastics here, but it’s too far for my pairs to come for training. The work is good, but it’s not where I want to be. I trained all my life. I’d like to coach a pair or two to a national championship.”

“I’m hardly fulfilling a life dream, though I’m making twice as much money as I was at Hennepin Gym. There, half of what I made went to pay for gym time and coaches—which I understand you paid for, too. Geez! I had no idea how sleazy the business was. I’m working now and it’s good, but I’m not training for gymnastics,” I said.

“I think we need to continue our search for someplace to get what we really need. You need to look for a coach. I need to look for a place where I can coach a winning team. And I need to be someplace where I can hire a part-time assistant. Jennifer has accepted a new position with a D3 college in Iowa. She’s leaving me.”

“I’m sorry to see her go,” I said. “She really helped me a lot. What will you do now?”

“We’re only nineteen and twenty years old. We have dreams.”

That gave me pause. My dreams had been interrupted by the catastrophe at Hennepin Gym. Tara’s dreams had been destroyed by an accident in Geneva. She was building a new life with new dreams. I owed her my support.

For that night, we supported each other in the most physical and loving way we could. I was seriously thinking that maybe I should ask her to marry me. We’d known each other for nearly a year now. I didn’t want to face the possibility of her leaving to go somewhere else.

Things were going well at work. I was a suitable obstacle on the court and the women were learning to kind of bounce off me in a new direction. Their shots were gaining altitude as they arched more. I was able to block fewer and fewer of them. That was especially true when Chantell started stepping back just before her shots.

The step-back three was not new. There were players who were known for it. But it was not all that used except by that handful of players. Most got as close to the three-point line as possible before they launched their shots. The coach commented on it and investigated the new training she’d been doing.

Chantell told her I’d been working on building her upper body strength and she was definitely feeling stronger.

I could verify that she was feeling stronger. I was seeing her the day before any game for a good massage. Most of the women who wanted a massage saw me the day after a game. No matter how much they practiced, playing for two hours against competition that was as determined as they were was a lot different than practicing against a padded dummy or even the several men who were actually basketball players and provided training. They’d evolved an interesting method in which the opposition at either end of the court in practice had six players. They had the normal five and me. I was simply there to create a moving obstacle on the court, so most players found themselves double-teamed.

It was during a break, when I’d stripped off my pads, that a ball simply rolled up and hit my foot. I saw Chantell grinning under the basket.

“Shoot it!” she yelled at me.

That was not something on my job-list and frankly, I’d seldom actually handled the basketball other than to swat it or nudge it over to a player. She was grinning at me in a real challenge, though, so I figured I’d have to do something. Several of the other players had turned to look. I decided that if I was going to make a spectacle of myself, I’d do it my way.

I trapped the ball between my feet, launched myself into the air in a forward flip, and sent the ball toward the goal with my legs.

This is no fairytale story about how I swished it or anything. I was fortunate that I managed to launch it in the right direction. It fell just a little short and Chantell picked it up. The rest of the team started clapping.

“That isn’t how it’s supposed to be done,” Chantell laughed.

“I’ve never played basketball,” I said. “I was a cheerleader.”

That was only a little stretch of the truth. I was on the cheerleading squad, but I’d never joined them at a game. I was strictly there for competitions when they needed an acrobatic base for the flyers.

“Show us!” one of the other players called.

I figured since we were all on break, it would be okay, so I set off on a tumbling run across the floor, doing flips and twists, tucks and layouts. It was far more difficult than it would be on tumbling mats. The basketball court was not a sprung floor, but I’d worked on the hardwood before.

“Go team!” I yelled when I reached the far side, landed my jump, and raised my hands.

“Thank God he doesn’t do that when he’s blocking us,” another player said.

It was kind of a moment of acceptance. We were headed toward the playoff season.

The first round, in fact, was the next week. The top eight seeds at the end of the season played against each other on September 22 and 23. The four winners went to the semi-finals the next week. From that, two teams would emerge for the championship series. While the play-in was a one-and-done elimination tournament, the championship was a best of seven series.

In the same position our team was in the previous year, we were going against the number three team in round one. As the lower ranked team, we were traveling to our game and I was asked to go with them. I wouldn’t be doing much in the way of workouts with them, but I was taking my massage table.

We got there on Sunday for the Tuesday game, and I had a massage with each of the twelve team members by the end of Monday. The team was feeling good when they went to their shoot-around Tuesday morning and then dressed for the game that evening.

I’ll keep it simple. We lost.

It was a good game, but we just couldn’t pull it together for the win in the last few minutes. Everyone crashed in their hotel rooms after the game—at least I did—and we headed to the airport first thing Wednesday morning for the trip back home.

“It was a good run, Paul,” the GM said when I met with her Thursday morning. “You were considered on the clock for eight hours of massage on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. So, your final check shows a little more than you might have thought. What are your plans next? Will you be available next season?”

“Uh ... Next season? You mean I don’t have a job during the winter?”

“We don’t have a team here again until May. I’d be happy to have you back with us, then,” she said.

In all the time I’d been working with the team, it never occurred to me that they didn’t continue to practice during the off-season! I was officially unemployed.

As time permitted, I’d been doing searches for gymnastic training that I could afford. There are not that many training programs for senior elite gymnasts and precious few coaches. The truth was that Hennepin Gymnastics Center was one of the lower tier facilities among those few that were available. It, like most of the gyms across the country, specialized in children’s gymnastics, assuming their senior elite gymnasts would either go to a college with a gymnastics program or would be recruited by another training center. I hadn’t had enough exposure in competitions to attract the attention of any other gym.

I made a list of three places I’d like to train at. I decided I’d tell Tara about them to see what she thought at dinner that night.

I picked her up when she got home from her lessons in St. Paul. We went to our favorite restaurant—a little bistro-style place just off Hennepin in Uptown. We could eat there for a reasonable price and the food wasn’t all covered in fattening sauces.

Tara seemed a little reserved. I hadn’t seen her since the previous Saturday before I traveled with the team. I had to start off by telling her I was unemployed because the season was over for our team. That drew a sympathetic pat on the hand and a loving kiss.

“You’ll find something. Are you thinking of going to one of the clubs to offer massage?” she asked.

“I’ve been looking at resuming my training somewhere. I brought along a list of places to see what you thought of them. Anyplace you’d like to go to train?”