Epilogue: That Which Has Passed, That Which Will Be

And here we are, so many years after the end of the tale, with a lot of relatively inconsequential events that were precipitated by the incidents told.

For instance, Kayla is the mother of three beautiful Porter children. Kaitlynn, the oldest and the apple of my eye, is thirteen, and is her mother all over again. Very little of Sean was thrown in as spice. She is youthfully slender, deceptively strong, with silky white-blonde hair she ties back in a ubiquitous ponytail. And she plays defense like a demon, striking terror in the hearts of opponents and their coaches at the sight of her on the field. She is partial to soft and supple athletic shorts. One, a bright red with a white lightning bolt down each side from hip to hem, reads Porter Soccer. It's part of the Porter Enterprises uniform, and Kaitlynn is proud of it.

The second pair is baby blue, and in an arc on the backside it reads TRUBBLE.

Despite the warning, boys have been sniffing around more and more lately. Kait's clever, though, and seems to be traversing the minefield of teenage hormonal rage with dexterity. She has shown an attraction to fleet forwards lately, especially a boy, also in my program, named Cody Fletcher. A good kid, but I'm keeping a close eye on him.

Next is Timothy, who just turned eleven. Timmy is a lot like his Uncle Michael. He's hard to motivate in school, but he has exceptional mechanical aptitude. He doesn't have much interest in team sports, other than a bit of an obsession with the Chicago Cubs, preferring instead to ride his bike through the fields behind our house for hours on end. He and his friends built a dirt bike heaven out there, with jumps, ditches, and obstacles galore. He often comes home bruised and bloody, with a big smile on his dirty face, after a day out on his bike.

The baby of the family, Tynan Porter, is eight. Ty is small and wiry. He's half spider monkey, able to shimmy up a doorframe with his bare hands, and hang on by his fingertips. He loves to accompany his dad on business trips around the area.

All three take part in my summer clinics, though Timmy does so under protest. Ty reminds me of Kip Wilkinson at that age, enthusiastic but undeveloped. Like Kip, Ty's day will come.

Speaking of Kip, he and his older brother, as I had predicted, were stars for Coach Neville when they got to high school. They were the backbone of Coach's only other undefeated season. Davey played in my old position, right defender, while Kip, playing midfield, broke nearly all Trent's scoring records. When he first made the varsity team as a freshman, Davey asked me if he could wear my retired number, and I was pleased to be able to let him do so. I went to every game I could, sitting in the bleachers with Lori, David, and the other parents. I was nearly as proud of them as were their mother and stepfather.

Davey went on to play on a partial scholarship at Ball State. A year later, Kip accepted an offer from the wily coach from Florida, Pick Cropper. Jesse pushed hard on behalf of Maryland, but Pick played the Porter Card, something neither Kip nor his parents were able to resist. For my part, I was very happy to see him go on to my alma mater. I knew he would excel under Pick's program. After all, he was fully committed to the Porter system, to the extent he had the university hire me to run his preseason and spring clinics.

Today, Davey is an investment advisor for one of the big firms. He and his wife, Amy, have two kids. Yes, Lori is a grandmother, and a doting one at that. Davey and his family live in Rhode Island, but they get back here a couple of times a year.

Kip is also married, with one son and another on the way. He married his college sweetheart, and he runs the Southeastern Division for Porter Enterprises, from my Orlando office.

Shawna, their stepsister, is now twenty-one, and a newlywed. We attended her wedding earlier this year. When she was a teenager, she was our Number One babysitter. She was always a shy girl, lovely and radiating an aura of innocence. She played recreational soccer, but she really preferred softball. Lori might have been a little disappointed in her sport of choice at first, but David leapt in and encouraged Shawna at every opportunity.

Shawna's younger sister, Valerie, served as her maid of honor. Three years younger than Shawna, Valerie has always thought of herself as a "girly-girl." She loved to dress up in Lori's good clothes and parade around. She discovered makeup at around the age of ten, and boys at eleven. She has been a handful ever since, though her parents have never once complained. Once she survived into her older teenaged years relatively unscathed, Valerie seemed to find herself again, and she has evolved to become a wonderful friend, daughter, and sister.

I had mentioned Jesse Wilhoit earlier. Kay and I were honored to attend Jesse's wedding to Brittany. Bryan Watkins was his best man, and Eric and I both stood up for him. Jesse stayed at Maryland for seven years, helping Alan Russo build a powerful program there. He was too good to remain an assistant for long, though. In 1992, he took the head coaching position at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. While coaching and building a very successful program, he also continued his education, eventually earning his Doctorate in Sports Management. The minute he stepped off the podium after the award ceremonies, the President of the University offered Jesse the post of Athletic Director. Jesse, of course, accepted, and he and Brittany, along with their two kids, have lived in Oxford ever since. I tend to call him Doctor Wilhoit whenever I can, just to watch him turn several shades of red.

By the time Jesse and Brittany got married, Spencer had taken a deep breath and come out of the closet. He brought a boyfriend to Jesse's wedding, which kind of scandalized the parents, but didn't bother any of us. By then, all his closest friends knew about it, and anybody who had a problem with it found themselves outside our tight little group.

Since then, Spencer has had some tough times. He found a wonderful man named Thomas Albertson, and they were quick to realize they truly loved each other. After a couple of years of living together, they took their vows in front of a gathering of friends. Unfortunately, Spencer's parents wouldn't accept their only son's choices, and they stayed away. His sister was there, though, in a show of support.

Unbeknownst to anybody at the time, however, Thomas had, sometime in the past, encountered the AIDS virus. Spencer and Thomas had several wonderful years together, followed by two very difficult years. Spencer nursed his lover throughout Thomas' long decline, until he finally succumbed in January of 2000. It took Spencer a long, long time to recover, and he is still healing. The one good aspect of those last years was the reconciliation with his parents. When they saw, even secondhand, the love and devotion shared by their son and his love, they swallowed their pride and called Spencer. I'm sure that reunion was painful and joyful, full of tears and apologies on both sides.

The summer I hired Elena turned out to be Danielle Nickerson's last summer with us. She was swept off her feet by a grad student named Robert Milano, an MBA candidate with large ambitions. Robert ended up on a management fast-track with a Fortune 100 company. They moved from the D.C. area to Dallas, and then to Los Angeles. From there, they spent a year in Tokyo, eighteen months in the Netherlands, and stints in Chicago, Madrid, and New York. They finally settled on a gentlemen's farm in Connecticut, when Robert became a Group Vice- President. They have an apartment in London, a villa in the south of France, and a condo in Aspen. After so much moving around, Danielle's glad to be able to finally set down some roots for her family. She and Trent made their peace after their rather acrimonious breakup in college. Trent and Robert will never be friends, but at least they can sit down at the same table now.

Trent, for his part, has been married and divorced twice. He says now he won't get married again, but I think that's just the residue from his last breakup talking. He's got a lot to offer; he just hasn't found the right lady as yet. He's running Spring Lake for me during the summer, and the indoor facility we built a few years ago the rest of the year.

Eric Johnson, who has been at my side since we were playing club ball together, is the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Porter Enterprises. His offhand comment during our early years of operation, about Sean becoming a millionaire by the time he was thirty, was oddly prophetic.

He hasn't been far behind me, however. I gave him a ten-percent piece of Porter Enterprises after our third year of operation. In no small part because of his efforts, that stake is now worth a heck of a lot of money.

Eric and Keisha deserve a story of their own. They stayed together all through college, and then things kind of blew up. Keisha wanted to go to law school at the University of Chicago, and Eric wanted to develop the Southeast for us. Keisha, a very strong-willed woman, followed her dream. Eric, a very strong-willed man, followed his. Their relationship was the price they both paid.

Eventually, Eric married on the rebound, rarely a good idea. It lasted less than five years, and produced two children, a girl they named Chantelle and a boy, Oman. Keisha met a high-powered litigator while she was interning at a big Chicago firm. They got married after her bar exams. She went to work for the U.S. District Attorney's office in Chicago, and almost immediately the conflicts began at home. Keisha's husband, Perry Kaiser, convinced her she should be a stay-at-home mom. For the sake of her marriage and her children, she agreed to give it a try. However, after a couple of years of putting up with Perry's long hours at work billing clients whose moral accounts were pretty much bankrupt, she had enough. She hired the sharpest divorce attorney in the Midwest, and together they took her husband to the cleaners. Adultery, mental cruelty, and an ill-advised attempt to hide assets doomed Perry's efforts to escape unscathed. In the final settlement, Keisha owned their house, free and clear, along with a substantial bank account, and she went back to the District Attorney's office a much happier person.