Chapter 39: A Potentially Good Idea

We left right after breakfast for the long ride back to Gainesville. We took turns driving so it didn't seem like that long, each of us taking about a two hour turn behind the wheel. Alex was quiet and subdued during the trip, uncharacteristic of her. Erin studied the entire time she was not driving, and I took the opportunity to do a little homework, too.

We stopped along the way for lunch. Erin had made up a bunch of bologna sandwiches from the supplies I had purchased. We had chips and sodas to go along with them. The weather in southern Georgia had moderated, with the sun trying to break through the clouds and the wind calming. We found a turnoff to a little state park along the coastline, and we watched the breakers, still large, pounding the rocks as we sat on a picnic table and ate.

Alex took over the driving duties after lunch. I sat in the back and alternated between trying to write a paper on the Industrial Revolution and thinking about what Erin had said. I would be in the middle of a sentence about Eli Whitney or something, and boredom and distraction would set in. I would find myself mulling over my night with Erin in my bed.

I understood what she had been telling me, but I was having a hard time accepting it as a lifestyle that was suitable for me. It might have worked for Erin, but it seemed like the whole thing had way too many traps for somebody like me. I would be the first to admit to having a classic, Midwestern Bible Belt upbringing. Perhaps the morality that came with that landscape was too stifling for more sophisticated kids, but I didn't think I was ready to throw off the shackles of my relatively conservative values, such as they were. I sighed and tried to concentrate on what, to me, was ancient history once again.

Before we left, Erin had written out a little thank-you note for the Fontanas and left it propped up on the kitchen table. We also left a little money, explaining in the note it was for the beer and pizza we had consumed.

"Are you sure this is going to be enough?" I asked, looking doubtfully at our paltry offering. I was still a little nervous about the breaking and entering we seemed to have perpetrated.

Erin laughed, though. "It's enough," she said. "Remember? Friends of the family? Really, Sean, they won't mind at all."

We cleaned up the place, including washing and drying the towels and stuff we used and putting it all away. When we finally closed and locked the door, the note and the money were the only evidence I could see of our habitation over the weekend.

When the girls pulled up to my apartment, I slithered out of the back seat, clutching my meager bagful of belongings. I leaned in and gave Erin a kiss, and then I walked around to the driver's side. Alex didn't wait for me. She got out of the car and, with a glance back toward Erin that probably was more significant than I realized at the time, she took my face between her hands, hauled herself up against me. She gave me a hard, open-mouthed kiss with plenty of tongue that took my breath away.

When she broke the kiss, she held on to me for a moment, looking into my eyes. Her normally playful expression was serious as she gazed at me. Then, without a word, she let me go, got back behind the wheel, and drove off, leaving me standing there completely baffled once again.

How do they do that?

We had two home games until the Georgetown tournament. I was a little nervous about going up to Washington again, considering the last time I was there was when I suffered a self-implosion of magnificent proportions. I was still trying to recover from the repercussions, and I absolutely did not want to experience anything other than eating, sleeping, and playing soccer while we were at the tournament.

Pick started experimenting in advance of the tournament by mixing up our positions during our practices and scrimmages, just to see how it all affected our movement during game situations. Most of the time it really didn't matter, which pleased Pick enormously. We all knew the tricks we had developed using Lightspeed during throw-ins had a limited lifespan. Teams and scouts would pick up on them from reports and film very quickly, and so our coaches were constantly looking for new opportunities. Switching the lineup was a good way of keeping our opponents on their heels.

During the games, though, he kept his plans wrapped. He put us in our standard starting lineup for our game against Duke, a school known almost as well for their basketball achievements as their academics. They recruited great athletes who were also exceptionally bright. Sometimes it worked dazzlingly well, and other times it was an exercise in futility - as in Northwestern University, another very highly regarded school who chose their student-athletes carefully. Their trials and tribulations trying to compete in the Big Ten were the stuff of legends back home.

We didn't have much in the way of trouble from Duke's soccer team, though, and we walked away with a 3-0 shutout. Jesse scored twice, and Lightspeed contributed the middle goal. I got assists on one of Jesse's scores and on Harlan's goal, which put a smile on Eddie Whitehead's face. Pick looked as stoic as he could, but Eddie gave it away. The coaching staff was as pleased as a fisherman at an unlocked catfish farm.

Our next game was against a very tough opponent. Even though Tampa was a relatively small school, their soccer program was top-notch, and they were ranked in the Top Twenty. We lined up at two in the afternoon, and by four we all felt like we had been through a war.

They were tenacious and tough, and they knew exactly who they wanted to harry. They employed a fluid defensive scheme that involved just about everybody on the field, and they were well prepared for our maneuvers. They keyed in on Jesse, Lightspeed, and me, no matter where we were on the field. Part of the time, they played man-to-man coverage, nearly unheard-of in soccer, switching into zones when we began to exploit the open man in their doubling coverage. We were able to move the ball seemingly at will on our half of the field, but we could never get into a good attacking position. They always managed to deflect our advances. They also were quite judicious in choosing when to double-team one of us, the second man always seeming to converge whenever the ball came to any of the three of us. They used a lot of elbows and knees in their defense, all perfectly legal, and all really painful when you were on the receiving end. By the middle of the second period, I was beginning to believe they had sharpened their joints with files, just for us. I was bruised and winded, and it made me just a little hesitant to attack, which of course fit right in with the Tampa scheme.

They also had obviously spent a lot of time watching films of our games, because they seemed to find ways to attack just when we were switching. We always knew we were at our most vulnerable when we were moving men from one position to the next, but, in the past, our speed and the element of surprise always worked in our favor. During the Tampa game, I couldn't tell if my teammates and I were a couple of steps slow, or if Tampa's reaction times were really so good, but the result of the game was a shock to us, especially playing at home. We walked away, humbled by a 3-1 defeat.

After the game, though, Pick didn't look upset, or even unhappy.

"Gaw damn, but that was a helluva team, wa'an't it, boys?"

We were too drained to do much more than mumble back at him. I had my head down, my arms resting on my thighs, as I sat in the locker room. Sweat was dripping from my nose and puddling on the floor between my feet. I didn't even have the energy to wipe myself off with my towel. All I could do was watch each drop hit and crown in the accumulating puddle.

"Boy, wouldn't I love to match up with them again this season," Pick continued, unconcerned about our decided lack of enthusiasm at the prospect. "They done their homework, didn't they, Eddie?"

"Yes, Pick," said Eddie dutifully.

"And we didn't," growled Pick. "We done got beat off the ball at nearly every turn, din't we? And we couldn't penetrate, could we? And they had their way with us, ex-pecially up in the middle, din't they? And that's just the beginnin'."

"They were better prepared," said Bryan.

"Yup, they was," agreed Pick. "Porter? Where are you, boy? Ah, there you are. Porter, what could we have done better that might have neutralized some of their potential?"

I wearily picked up my head, a little dazed that he would grill me at this point. "Jeez, I don't know right now, Coach. Maybe after I look at the film..."

"Nope, not good enough. Show me your worth here, son. I know you know it, you was just too much in the middle of things to have seen it at the time."

I sat there, wishing he would leave me alone, knowing he wasn't going to let me off the hook. I thought about it for a few minutes, and then it began to make sense to me.

"We didn't collapse down on their doubles," I said. I sat up a little straighter, feeling more energized as I thought about the problem. "Christ, we played right into their hands, didn't we? They pressured us, and we caved. If we had recognized the double-teaming and reacted right away by sending another body into the mix, we might have broken it."