Chapter 8

Classes at Bartley High School started at 8:20. The first day of school was always a fast intro to where classes were held and what books were needed. It was an early out day, so school was out at 1:30, which gave plenty of time for the cross country team to get dressed in their new uniforms and get to Lehigh Academy in time for the 4:00 race.

Dennis didn’t need to be at school until 9:45 on short days, since he was scheduled for classes at DMACC during the early blocks. He ended up walking his girlfriends to school and hanging out in the coaches’ ready room for an hour and a half before his US Government class. He was a little uncertain as to his welcome in the class taught by Grant Torvalds, the football coach. Several of his classmates looked at him strangely when he walked into the room. They thought they should know him, but couldn’t seem to place him. Then Natalie, Tori, Diane, Leanne, Debbie, and Sara Steinbeck came into the classroom and immediately surrounded Dennis, cutting him off from the rest of the students.

“And Speedy Gonzales is with us this term,” Torvalds said when he called the roll. Dennis dropped his head. “So you all know, this guy—uh ... Dennis—turned in a 5K on Saturday at under seventeen minutes and humiliated the entire football team. No problem, though. Now they are twice as committed to getting into shape as they were Friday night. Good luck in your race today, Dennis, and all the cross country team.”

“Thank you, Coach.” There were a few whispers as other classmates who had not been at the Saturday event or engaged in any sports realized this was the geek they’d been ignoring the past ten years.

There really wasn’t time for much more than handing out the syllabus and textbooks. They got their assignment for the next day and the next bell rang. Dennis made his way to Intro to Calculus, taught by the new varsity basketball coach, Neil Griffith. The intro was warm in that class as well, but Neil made it clear they were on a fast-paced track for the subject and that they all needed to read the introduction and study the formulae in it. They would start on Analytic Geometry in the morning.

Dennis had lunch with his girlfriends before they all headed off to physics and then English literature. In all, it was just another boring school day.

“Can you tape my ankles on the bus, Dennis?” Tori asked when they were in uniform and ready to go.

“Sure, sweetie. Let me make sure I have adequate tape in my kit.” He checked his red waist pack and also the traveling first aid kit that all teams carried. Then they headed for the bus. Since the entire team was traveling to this meet, there were over thirty people on the bus. A few of the boys had paired up with girls, but mostly the girls clustered together before the boys got on the bus.

Dennis set straight to work on Tori’s ankles and had them finished in fifteen minutes. He looked up to see Diane standing in front of him. “Me, too, lover?” she asked.

Of course, he taped her securely.

The Lehigh Academy cross country course was actually at a local golf course—a nine-hole par three course that was pretty flat. The running course looped up one fairway and down another. There were some nice trees along the route and a cool breeze was blowing when they got off the bus. Bags were left in the coaches’ circle and the girls were sent to the putting green where the race would begin.

The buzzer sounded starting the race and the hundred or so girls took off. It was soon obvious that there were runners and others in the race. The line of competitors stretched back the entire length of the second fairway by the time they made the turn to run the other direction. In the front, though, Dennis could see several of the distinctive maroon jerseys of their team. When they rounded the turn to head for the final stretch, Janice was far in the lead. She crossed the finish line and entered the chute in 20:54. The next runner was a minute behind her.

Diane came in sixth, Tori in fourteenth, and Judith in twenty-seventh place. Other Bartley runners took twenty-ninth, thirty-sixth, thirty-eighth, and several more, stretching out to eighty-eighth at 36:51. Team points were tallied and Lehigh Academy came in first with 48 points while Bartley got second with seventy-eight. The school was still jubilant to have won a high honor among eleven schools.

It was a similar story for the guys, but they did not have the depth of runners that the girls did. Dennis crossed the line in 17:00, a minute before his nearest opponent. Donnie Oswald was the only other Bartley runner in the top fifty, placing seventeenth. The other ten Bartley runners managed between 50th and 116th. In spite of capturing the top individual honors, the Bartley Wolverines placed ninth of eleven for the team.

It began to look like the Bartley boys would maintain their reputation as mediocre athletes, while the girls continued to excel.

On Tuesday, the school was buzzing with excitement over the first ever volleyball match that would be played in the Bartley gym. The match was slated against the Eagles at 6:30. Before the match, Dennis worked with the cheer teams. Janet had divided the ten cheerleaders into two squads because the rules for most sports indicated a maximum of six cheerleaders. Squad B would be taking the volleyball games. By and large, they were the younger cheerleaders, but they worked just as hard as Squad A, who would take the football games. They all seemed pleased about the arrangement because each would be leading a varsity team. And the two squads worked together on routines, supporting each other.

They were nervous about their first game and didn’t know if they’d even have fans to lead. The boosters, of course, had been out drumming up support and making sure the Angelines volleyball team had a houseful of fans.

“Don’t worry about a thing. You’ve got this,” Dennis said. “You’re strong and fit and you’ve been getting the athletes to follow you, so you can handle the fans. After all, team, you’re Angelines!”

“Right, Coach!”

“Dennis, can you come down to the locker room? Coach Fisher is asking for you,” Thoms said when she found him with the cheer squad. ‘They,’ Dennis reminded himself. Thoms preferred they/them pronouns and he wasn’t going to go against their wishes.

The locker room was the last place he imagined Coach Fisher wanting him. He’d worked with her team managers, but had not been invited to even observe a practice. He followed the freshman manager to the locker rooms and they pushed the door open.

“Everyone decent?” they called into the room. “Man coming in!”

No one screamed, so they held the door open and Dennis went into the locker room. Most of the girls were fully dressed in their uniforms. A couple—his girlfriends, of course—didn’t have their jerseys on, but they practiced in their spandex bras most of the time anyway.

“Ah, Dennis,” Pat said. “I’m sorry to draw you away from other duties, but you did an excellent job of taping Lana last week. I’d like you to do it again, if you will, and show Shelby and Thoms the process again. We have two other athletes that could use tape as well. Do you mind?”

“Of course, Coach. Lana, you know the routine, have a seat.” He looked around and spotted his stool in a corner. He pulled it up close to the end of the bench and Lana stuck her foot out over the end. “Shelby and Thoms, I’ve advanced some since I started taping ankles last year. A significant item is to start with pre-wrap—this blue roll. This prevents the tape from sticking directly to the skin. If you ever work on guys, they’ll really appreciate the tape not sticking to their hairy legs.”

The girls laughed with him as he told them it was much easier to remove the tape after the game with pre-wrap as well. Then he got the white athletic tape and did an anchor strip at the top and bottom.

“This can all be done with a single wrap, but Lana has been rolling her ankle a lot. So, we’re going to start with a couple of stirrup strips that pass under the arch and up onto the ankle. Next, we’ll do a couple of horseshoe wraps here at the base of the ankle, right over the Achilles tendon. That will lock out the roll. Finally, we’ll use a continuous strip to do a figure eight and a heel lock. Once you have this done, Lana’s foot will be prevented from pronating on her when she shifts her weight. I’ll make sure you two have plenty of supplies to practice on each other or other team members. Lana knows how to do a continuous wrap and will be picking up the type I just showed you before basketball season. Who else?”

The demonstration went so quickly and smoothly that Pat reached over to test the wrapping job herself and pronounce it good. Dennis was surprised that the next person to sit on the bench for wrapping was Daphne, the coach’s daughter.

“Daphne’s been complaining of pain in her ankle,” Pat said. “I can’t find anything specific wrong, but I don’t want to take chances with her. Do you think stabilizing with tape will work for her?”

Dennis pulled Daphne’s foot toward him and examined it carefully, wiggling it back and forth and up and down. He noted Daphne winced a little when he squeezed the back of her ankle.

“Coach, based on the pain point, I’d say she’s had a minor stretch of the Achilles tendon. It seems to be causing pain at extremes of flex and extension. If you don’t mind, I’d like to use kinesiology tape for this to support the tendon and limit the strain on it.” He looked up at Pat’s furrowed brow and waited for her response.