Chapter 11

DENNIS HAD HIS BOOKS open, but wasn’t concentrating on calculus, English literature, US Government, or physics. He was working on an outline of what exercises would be best to warm up the volleyball team and how to condition them better. He nearly missed hearing a question from Coach Torvalds on the three branches of government.

At 3:15, he quickly dressed for cross country conditioning, and ran out to talk to the coaches. Ardith had already explained to Andy that Dennis would need to leave early to tend to the volleyball team. After half an hour of conditioning exercises, Dennis excused himself to go deal with the volleyball players.

The first in line to be taped were his girlfriends, of course. They’d all been at his exercise session for the cross country team and were ready to dress and catch the bus. Dennis went into the locker room with them to get them ready, but when the other girls began arriving about a quarter till five, he left the locker room and taped the remaining eight players on the bus. Neither Dennis nor his girlfriends made a big deal about where he sat on the bus to work on players. Pat and Renée watched closely but didn’t say anything. Shelby and Thoms worked next to him, doing the under-wrapping and then switching for Dennis to do the final taping. They worked well as a team.

At the gym, Dennis took the lead in getting the team warmed up and stretched, watching how the girls responded to having their ankles taped. Once they had put their knee socks on, the tape was not visible. The team was dressed in their burgundy uniforms with two girls in yellow jerseys to indicate they were the liberos.

Volleyball is an easy game to watch. The team serving is on offense. If the ball touches the ground on the defense side, the offense scores a point. If it touches the ground on the offense side, the opposing team receives the ball to serve. However, understanding all the nuances of the rules is another matter entirely. Not only who can block and spike, but which girls can dig and set. Whether the ball is properly above the net and whether a player crosses the plane of the net. And who the libero is substituting for and when. It is a very complex game.

Pat and the girls all seemed to understand it perfectly as they put the Tigers down in three straight.

It was a jubilant team that boarded the bus for the hour trip back to Bartley. On the bus, Dennis cut the tape from each girl’s ankles. He examined the first aid kit carried on by Shelby and Thoms and found several items missing.

“No one opens your kit but the two of you,” Dennis told them. “You always need ice packs, tape, and scissors. You have gauze pads, but haven’t replaced the elastic bandage we wrapped Daphne’s ankle in a week ago. There is a stock of supplies in the equipment cage. If you can’t get access or need help determining what supplies go in your kit, just tell me and I’ll get you whatever you need. You have a printed list of supplies on the lid of the kit, so you should be able to check off everything you need. And one item I’ve found needs to be in the kit that isn’t on the list is tampons.”

“Yes, Dennis,” the managers responded. He was firm but not unkind and when he mentioned the tampons, several players and both coaches burst out laughing. If they were going to tape up before every match, they were going to need a lot more tape. He made a note on his own list to check with the football guys and the cheerleaders regarding their usage, and order more tape and underwrap.

When they got back to Bartley, the girls headed to the locker room and Pat called Dennis into her office.

“Dennis, I owe you an apology and I’m not very good at them. I discounted your value to the girls’ teams because you are male and what would you know? I see that I was wrong about how seriously you take your responsibilities and how hard you are studying to design warmup and conditioning exercises that benefit the players most for their sport,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Dennis responded. “It’s a pretty unusual situation and I know it must look strange to know that several of your players claim me as a boyfriend. That has to look pretty suspicious.”

“It does, but to each his own. But when you wrapped Daphne’s ankle and I took her to the hospital, you mentioned your suspicion of female athlete triad. I know I dismissed it when you said it, but I kept replaying that idea on the way to the hospital. Not one doctor who isn’t specifically a sports physician would have ever thought to test for the condition when faced with a stress fracture. It was because you goaded me into it and I suggested it to the doctor that she ordered the tests. Daphne was hospitalized for two days for observation and analysis. It turned up exactly what you suggested. You might think I am a pretty blind mother to not have seen the signs in my own daughter. All I can say is that it’s harder to see as a parent than you’d believe. We adjust to what is happening gradually and it seems less significant than it is. All that’s the long way around to say I’m sorry and I hope you will help get my team managers up to peak performance and will help guide the conditioning of my athletes. I’m going to move them all into your conditioning exercises with the cross country team and the cheerleaders immediately.”

“Thank you for your confidence, Coach. I’ll do the best I can for you and your team.”

Dennis left the office and grabbed a lift home with Natalie, Daniella, and Roberta. He thought about how difficult it must be for a mother to identify things that just gradually appear in their children. Like him and his twelve girlfriends sleeping over together and engaging in sex. Once Dot realized she’d given permission for them to all be together it was way too late to do anything. Well, he supposed she could have put her foot down and forbade gatherings, but it would have been a source of intense conflict. Like Daphne’s feeling about her needing counseling and getting fat.

In all, Dennis decided he needed to be more supportive of his mom, Daphne and her mom, and his girlfriends and their moms. It was a heavy burden, but one he would take on willingly.

With the rearranged conditioning exercises after school, the cross country team and cheerleaders moved into the gym with the volleyball players. The weather had cooled suddenly and they were looking at a forecast of rain by the weekend. There were still forty members of the cross country team, but most of them were there to get or stay in condition before basketball season. The coaches didn’t have any difficulty choosing seven to nine for each team, boys and girls. The rest were happy to work out each day and not worry about competing. With the volleyball team, the cheerleaders, the team managers, and six coaches, there were well over sixty in the gym for conditioning exercises.

Dennis worked especially hard with the cheerleaders, who had become his team for leading conditioning. Once they moved indoors, they piped their exercise music over large speakers. The conditioning class became almost a dance class and everyone had fun in the exhausting hour-long session. Dennis watched closely to see that everyone was doing the exercises correctly and that they were not straining themselves more than was required by the exercise. The coaches scattered themselves among the athletes exercising and helped with form as the cheerleaders led the routines.

Starting Wednesday, Dennis noticed Olivia in the bleachers with a video camera. Thursday morning during his free periods, Dennis reviewed some footage and the mockup of his new website. She demonstrated the link to a video site where he could get subscriptions and possibly earn some income from the advertising. It was looking more and more like it would be a successful launch. He gave her his first blog post to include.

Friday night, they got to see how the Wolverine football players handled rain. The answer was: Not very well. The crew sat in the stands holding a large sheet of plastic over their heads for most of the game, stubbornly refusing to leave their team and their cheerleaders. The field started out slippery and eventually turned muddy. There was no thunder and lightning, so the game wasn’t suspended. The Bulldogs still managed to put the ball in the air—something the Wolverines had not yet mastered. Bartley’s ground game averaged less than a yard gain per play. At the final buzzer, the Wolverines were down 0-30, and both the fans and the players were relieved to leave the stadium.

Dennis congratulated the cheerleaders on lasting the game and keeping the fans cheering even in adverse conditions. Then, despite the rain, he walked out to the field and looked at the condition it was in. They needed to get out there and reseed before the ground dried out fully. There were places that were pretty torn up.

Saturday morning, the cross country team was on the bus to go to the Panthers when Coach Andy got a call. It was raining hard at the Panthers and showed no sign of letting up. The meet was canceled.

It seemed that rain had settled in. Randy had to delay the remainder of the corn harvest until either the ground dried out or froze so he could safely get the corn picker into the fields. Other farmers were in the same situation. So far, the harvest wasn’t lost or damaged, but it was delayed.

Dennis continued to lead conditioning in the gym and traveled with the volleyball team to the Trojans. The volleyball managers were becoming more proficient at wrapping the athletes’ ankles. On the bus, they did all the under-wrapping and Dennis did all the taping. Everyone was ready to warm up when they got to the school and took exaggerated care to stretch appropriately before the game. Pat split the team and dressed ten for a JV game and ten for the varsity game. Everyone got a chance to play. Something seemed to have gone right because the Angelines took the JV match 3-1 and the varsity went 3-0.