Chapter 21: Posturing and Assaults

I know, I know, you don't have to remind me. I'm a dickhead, I'm an asshole, I'm about as stupid and immature as a guy can be. Heard it all before, I'll have to hear it all again before I die. It doesn't have to make sense; it just is.

After the implosion of our season, we all cleaned out our lockers. We would be back in February to prepare for spring soccer camps, but until then we had about two months to recuperate. We needed it.

After our last game, the debacle against Clemson, I dutifully wrote up my report and handed it in, just like always. I didn't hear anything from Pick about my reports, but I really didn't expect to, either. Even so, something interesting came out of that project. I discovered that my love of the game hadn't been extinguished. I found myself really studying the tapes, and I enjoyed dissecting the games with Eddie. On the days I didn't have any duties to perform for Eddie, I took a couple of my soccer balls out to the field and worked on my skills by myself. Sometimes Spencer or Jesse came with me, but I was happy to work on my own. I'd done it before, and I had found that it was good therapy for me. I wanted to continue to play the game, play to win, and regain my competitive edge. The flame was still burning. Soccer was important to me, even if I never played another game for the University of Florida.

Then, about a week after the NCAA championship game, when I called Eddie to find out what he wanted me to do that day, he told me Coach Pick wanted to see us.

"Really?" I said, a little surprised. He had pretty much ignored me at the end of our season. I was assuming I wouldn't be back the next year, even though I had yet to let my parents know what was going on. I wanted to wait to spring that little disappointment onto them for as long as I could.

"Yeah," said Eddie. "When's your last class on Wednesday?"

"It gets out at two-forty-five."

"Okay, I'll meet you at the fieldhouse at three-fifteen," he said. "I'll let Pick know we'll be in his office by three-thirty."

It gave me more to worry about. Pile it on, I said to myself. Let's get it all over with sooner than later. It was strictly a defensive mechanism, though, and even I, in my muddled mental state, could recognize it. I was posturing for nobody but myself.

I met up with Eddie on Wednesday afternoon. He didn't have any more information on what Pick wanted with me than he did before, but I was ready to hear the worst. In fact, I was kind of looking forward to finally feeling the hammer descend. Anything was better than the dreadful anticipation I had been under.

Once again, Pick kept us waiting by Eunice's desk. My anxiety level was still sky-high, but being resigned to hearing the bad news made the wait easier. Eddie Whitehead was slouched in the chair next to me with his eyes closed, seemingly asleep. If it had been anybody else, I would have assumed he was listening to his own soundtrack in his head; with Eddie, I had to think he was reliving soccer plays he had observed over the past few months.

Finally, the intercom on Eunice's desk buzzed. Eddie's eyes snapped open and he stood up even before Eunice said anything.

"Go ahead," she said as she waved us toward Pick's office door.

Eddie opened the door and strode in, and I followed, closing the door gently behind me. Nobody could accuse me of not having learned my lesson from a previous visit to that office. I stood by the door and waited for instructions from Pick.

"Sit," he said. "Both of you, please sit." He gestured toward the two chairs opposite his desk. I took the right one, and Eddie sat down in the one on the left. The reports I had worked so hard on were stacked on the side of his desk. Had he even read them? I was mildly curious, even though it really didn't matter much to me at that point.

Pick waited a long time before he said anything. I was getting a little restless, and it took a real effort not to squirm in my chair. Eddie, on the other hand, sat there motionless, as if he could sit and watch the endless loops of film in his head forever.

"When I give you that assignment," Pick finally began, gesturing to the stack of reports, "I was tryin' to come up with a way to make you focus on what's important here, Mr. Porter. To tell you true, I was expectin' you to scribble somethin' up and staple it together. I was not anticipatin' an actual presentation like what you gave me."

He paused. Perhaps he was expecting me to say something, but I stayed silent. No sense leaping in when you don't know where this is heading, I reminded myself. It occurred to me that maybe Pick really had read my reports.

As if he could see my thoughts, Pick patted the stack by his side. "Yup," he confirmed. "I read every damn page." He looked straight at me, but I couldn't decipher his expression. "I'm assuming Eddie Whitehead helped you with this."

It was a statement, not a question. I nodded anyway.

"You two was analyzin' that film after every game, wa'ant you?"

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Why?"

"Why?" It confused me. He had assigned the work; he of all people should have known why.

"That's right, son. Why? As in, why did you go to all this extent?" He was still staring right at me. "I asked for a report. You give me an in-depth analysis."

I got nervous. "But ... Isn't it what you wanted?" I asked. Maybe I don't want to hear the answer, I thought disjointedly.

Pick barked a short, humorless laugh. "Well, son, it surely ain't what I asked for."

"I ... I'm sorry, sir, I could..."

He waved me off, and my jaw snapped shut. Keep quiet, idiot, I told myself.

"No, hold on," he said. "What I asked for was just busy work, a punishment. What I got was a lesson of my own."

"Sir?"

"Eddie Whitehead, here, prob'ly helped steer you in this direction, Sean." He glanced over at Eddie, and then shifted back to me. "Hell, I'm just a simple ol' boy. I see somethin' in my way, I either move it or I get around it however I can. Eddie's much more sly than I could ever hope to be." Pick dug his fingertips into his eyes, his elbows propped up on his desk, and rubbed for a moment, and then he sat back in his chair and looked me over once again.

"Mr. Sean Porter, you continue to surprise me, son. I knew you was a helluva player - hell, anybody who knows the game can recognize that right off - and very good players seem to know, almost by instinct, what constitutes a well-played game. The best ones know which other players on the field are their peers, and they tend to focus on them. Whether they're teammates or opponents, the best ones key in on the players they think are the quality athletes."

I nodded. "Yes, sir," I ventured, though I had absolutely no idea where this conversation was going.

"Good." Pick's expression had resolved into something more intense. "Now, let's take all these here really good players as a group for a moment. Think of it like a pyramid. First, we've got all the soccer players, and the best ones are at the top layer of the pyramid. Not many of them, right? Okay, now we're takin' them top layer players, and we're setting them to the side, and they form another small pyramid."

He grabbed a blank sheet of paper from his desk drawer, and he drew a long pencil from an old coffee can on his desk that served as a holder for his pens and pencils. He quickly drew two triangles, one larger and one smaller, on the paper. He tapped his pencil on the smaller triangle. "They're all good players, but now they're separated by some other qualities. F'r instance, some of these players, but most assuredly not all of them, will have the temperament to be team leaders." He drew a line near the base of the triangle, and tapped the point of his pencil on the next layer of his pyramid.

"As we move up the pyramid, here, we might find a smaller group who have an innate feel for the game, and can express what they see so others can understand." He drew another couple of lines, each time indicating a smaller segment. "Others might be able to change the essence of their team's game, simply by their presence. That's a rare one," he said, almost to himself.

He colored in the top part of the triangle. "Now, don't get me wrong, I know there's some of all these qualities in all the top players," he explained. "I'm just talking about the strongest capabilities here. There are a few players I seen who are such students of the game, they seem to be able to draw conclusions out of the air, almost like the best chess players. They can watch a game, and go back to a play ten minutes prior to a goal and explain how it was all set up that long ago."

Pick continued doodling on his triangle, drawing arrows up and down through each of the layers he had made. Gazing down, only half seeing his doodling, he said, "And then there are a few players, very damned few, who can mold a team around them, so they have almost created a living entity. That entity moves with purpose and coordination, and it's a thing of terrible beauty."

He looked up at me. "That's another rare one," he said pointedly.

Eddie shifted in his chair, and I glanced over at him. He was nodding. What did all this have to do with me and my reports?

Pick tapped his pencil on the stack of reports. "I can read Eddie Whitehead's evaluations in these here papers, son, and they are as precise and insightful as he always is. I was impressed with the parts that obviously weren't Eddie's." He paused once again, and then he shifted gears on me. "You love this game, don't you, boy?"

Startled, I said, "Yes, sir, I do."

"It shows," he said, still tapping the pile. "It surely does show up, even in those first reports, before Eddie Whitehead began showing you the film. You got a way of describin' the plays that makes it all seem like it works all together. Offense, defense, all supposed to be workin' toward the same goals, and you saw just how and where it all seemed to break down." Pick chuckled, this time displaying some humor. "You two take the cake, by God. I leave you two alone in a room full of film canisters, and you gonna fix it, ain't you? Well, I got not a doubt in the world anymore. No, sir, I don't."

"I'm not sure I..." I stumbled on the words, wanting to reach out and grab them back, but they were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"Hell, son, I ain't sure of much, myself," Pick said with a tight grin. "Not anymore, leastways. But this much I do know, Sean Porter. I owe my team an apology. And, despite all that's happened, I believe I owe you at least an opportunity."

"I don't know that you do, Coach," I said. I was sincerely hoping he did feel like he owed me something, but I was not expecting it. I couldn't let my guard down and be disappointed again.

"Here's the deal, son. I intended to punish you for your misdemeanor, and instead I visited a felonious assault upon my team."

Eddie was nodding again, sitting up now and paying attention to the conversation.

Pick continued, "That there Georgetown trophy wasn't important to me. Hell, I already got five of 'em out there in the case in the lobby of the fieldhouse. I was tryin' to impart a lesson, and I done got taught one, but good. I surely did not expect the entire season to go into the crapper just because I benched a couple of our starters."

Pick stood up suddenly, and I flinched. He took a couple of steps over to his chalkboard and began to draw out a chart.

"See? I bench Porter, Wilhoit, Watkins, and Goldman, and I fully expected to lose to South Carolina at the Georgetown. Okay, that's acceptable to me. The same players are benched for the next game, which unfortunately happens to be against South Carolina again, but that's the way the cookie sometimes crumbles. So we lose that one, too." He scribbled some more lines on his chart. "Now, for the next four games, it's just Porter who is sittin', and we should be back at pretty much full strength, especially up front. And what happens? A win, a tie, two losses. What the hell went wrong?"

He practically threw the chalk back into the tray. "I'll tell you what went wrong. I done my team a terrible disservice, and now I got to make amends." He sat back down at his desk. "And I start doing that right now. Eddie?"

"Yes, Pick?" It was the first time Eddie had spoken since we entered the room.

"You correct me if I get this wrong now, hear?"

"You got it," said Eddie, though I didn't think he would have to do any correcting.

"I'm puttin' it all out on the table, Sean. Frankly, I want you back here next year. I'd hate to see you transfer off just because of what happened the end of this season. So, your scholarship remains in place. You try out for your spot in the lineup next year, just like everybody else. That sit okay with you so far?"

So far? It was already beyond any expectations I had brought with me to this meeting. "Yes, sir," I managed to croak out.

"Part of the condition of your scholarship was a part-time job, and I took that away from you, which I should not have done. So now you work for me. Well, to be factual, you will be workin' for the entire Athletic Department, but in truth you will be workin' as Eddie Whitehead's assistant, and you will be workin' for me."

"Okay," I said. I was already doing that. Now, apparently, I was to be paid for it, which was all the way fine with me.

"Eunice will have a paycheck for you every two weeks, beginnin' this Friday. You just stop by and see her anytime that day. Now, I got two special jobs for you two to do for me. First off, I got a list of clinics and tournaments for this spring. I want you and Eddie Whitehead to get together with the team captains and narrow that list down. I don't want us enterin' no creampuff tourneys, though. I want you boys challenged, and I want you all to figure out how to win them challenges."

Eddie spoke up. "I've got Jesse, Bryan, and Rick coming here in about an hour to talk about it," he said.

Pick's eyes crinkled in amusement. "You done gone and anticipated me, din't cha?"

Eddie didn't reply. In fact, his face gave away nothing. Note to self: do not play gin against this guy. Even Spencer Goldman would do well to stay away from Eddie Whitehead when he's got a deck of cards in his hand.

"The other assignment I got is this," Pick continued, once it became obvious he wasn't going to get an answer from Eddie. "We got a couple of good players comin' in as freshmen next year. One in particular is a midfielder from out California way, a young man who desperately wants to put some yardage between himself and his family. He turned down a helluvan offer from Berkeley to accept a scholarship to Florida, and we'll be glad to have him. I got about twenty hours of film of this boy's games. I want you two to analyze that film, just like you did these others, and let me know how we're going to fit him in."