Chapter 99

Monday, July 30

I pulled into the gym parking lot at the high school a few minutes after 1 p.m. and made my way inside. It takes a little walking to get to the gym floor from the lobby, but one of the coaches gave me directions. All I had to do was go through the stands all the way to the other end and find the steps leading down. Then I had to work my way through the maze of hallways that separated boys locker rooms from girls locker rooms, find the hallway that went across the back of the gym and find the unlocked door. I only had to try four doors.

Once on the gym floor, which was covered by long strips of brown paper for folks to walk on, I was confronted by several lines of girls in shorts and T-shirts. It appeared they had a line for every sport, each with a little office cubicle-like thing set up at the end.

A couple of the women coaches shepherding the girls along looked at me like I had two heads or something. One of them finally asked what I needed, seeming to be afraid she’d catch my cooties or something.

“Coach Tucker said I was supposed to be here for a physical at 1:30,” I said.

I was directed to the far end of the gym — the end where I’d entered but couldn’t access the floor — where several boys were lined up. It turned out most of the guys were freshmen competing in sports like cross country, tennis and soccer. I was one of the oldest and biggest guys there.

I was handed a clipboard with a pen attached to it by a string and some forms I needed to fill out. I began writing stuff down as the line shuffled forward a step at a time. In addition to the physical exam form, I had to sign a participation form swearing I was eligible to compete for this school and another paper pledging that I had not and would not use any illicit substances. That ranged from things like tobacco, pot and booze to steroids and hard narcotics.

I had my part all done by the time I got to an assistant coach who was collecting the paperwork.

“Are you sure you’re playing football?” he asked, looking at my form. “All that should have been done back in May.”

“You’ll have to ask Coach Tucker,” I said. “I didn’t find out I was supposed to play until June. And I’m not sure ‘play’ is the correct word.”

“This is highly unusual,” he said.

I believe I’ve heard that before.

I eventually reached the front of the line and waited patiently as the kid ahead of me went through his exam. The curtain closing off the front side of the cubicle was drawn back and I was beckoned forward by a guy in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. He proceeded to poke and prod while asking about my medical history. I told him about getting my head bounced off the pool deck about eight weeks ago, but that I’d been told I didn’t have a concussion.

I was measured — 5-foot-11¼; I’d picked up a half inch since Malibu — and weighed — 173 pounds, 11 ounces in my boxers. After listening to my heart and lungs with the stethoscope, testing my reflexes and looking at my eyes, ears, nose and throat, he told me to drop my shorts, turn my head and cough. Following that little bit of uncomfortable business, I was handed a little plastic cup and told to step behind the screen in the corner.

“For a urine sample,” he said in response to my confused look.

It took a couple of minutes of imagining waterfalls and running faucets before I pissed enough to provide the minimum amount required. The doc put the cap on and affixed a label with my name and the date, then drew a blood sample and sealed it up.

“You’re done,” he said as he put the samples in their appropriate cases.

I was on my way out when the assistant coach who’d questioned my participation in football stopped me.

“Coach Tucker wants to see you in his office,” he said.

I had to ask where that was, which exasperated the assistant.

“In the fieldhouse,” he said. “Where did you think it would be?”

I made my way back through the maze and out of the front of the gym, across the parking lot to the fieldhouse and the front door of Coach Tucker’s office. I knocked and was bade to enter what could have passed for any businessman’s office except for the proliferation of football paraphernalia adorning the shelves and walls.

Coach Tucker sat behind his desk with Coach Ramirez, the special teams coach, and a tall, slender black man dressed in coaching clothes seated in front.

“Come on in, Gary,” Coach Tucker said. “I wanted to talk to you about your role on the team this fall.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, stepping in and pulling the door closed behind me.

I was introduced to Coach Ramirez and Coach Wilson, the receivers coach.

“I’d like you to work at slot receiver when we start practice,” Coach Tucker said. “I think you may be able to help us in certain situations.”

“OK,” I said, “but I don’t think I’m going to be much help on deep routes. I’m not exactly the fastest guy out there.”

“No,” Coach Tucker said, “but you’re fast enough to run three or four steps and turn around. I’m thinking you can be an option for us in short yardage when defenses load up against the run. Just get past the first-down marker and look for the football.

“I was impressed with the way you caught those balls from Jeremy the other day. Not many of our receivers can handle his stuff at close range. If you can help us keep a couple of drives alive, that’ll force defenses to be honest.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Anything else?”

“Oh, we’re just getting started,” the head coach said. “Coach Ramirez wants to try you on the hands team in onside kick situations, both kicking and receiving. He’s also got a copy of the special teams playbook for you.

“We likely will never call one in a game, but we’ve got a number of fake field goal/PAT plays that we work on that have to be ready if we ever do. There will come a time when our season will be on the line and we have to reach into our bag of tricks to make something happen, those times when you either score a touchdown or turn in your equipment. You’ll need to learn those plays.”

Coach Ramirez handed me a slim spiral-bound booklet that looked like something you’d turn in for a history or English paper. Inside were diagrams for all kinds of madness, from swinging gate plays to option plays where the kicker was used as the pitch man. One that caught my eye was a direct snap to the kicker, who then passed. I’d like to see Jeremy run that one.

“We’ll hold off on giving you an offensive playbook for now,” Coach Tucker said. “Let’s keep things as simple as we can until you show you can handle the basics. Coach Wilson will work with you on learning the terminology used in our play calls. Right now, I only expect you to learn two or three pass patterns depending on how a defense lines up.”

I actually knew some of that, having helped Jed learn his assignments the last three years. The full varsity playbook wasn’t quite as thick as a New York phone book. There were so many variations based on formations, personnel packages, defensive alignments and, for all I knew, phase of the moon. Jed said that it was unusual that they ever used more than 10 percent of what was available, but Coach Tucker had been known to pull something out that he hadn’t used in years just because an opponent wouldn’t expect it.

There was one other matter to deal with.

“Lets get you geared up,” Coach Tucker said. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had to teach someone how to put on their equipment. Lamar, would you take him to see Jolly?”

Coach Wilson stood and told me to follow him, then headed through a second door of Coach Tucker’s office that led into the locker room. We went to the far back wall to the equipment room, where my freshman American History teacher, Coach Rogers, was organizing things. I finally got the joke when I saw the pirate flag attached to the wall above his desk.

The two coaches took my measurements, which were fractionally larger than what they’d been in Malibu, and saw that I had every bit of gear I needed, using one of those foot-measuring devices like they have in shoe stores to determine what size cleats I would need. Coach Wilson then led me to the receivers’ area of the locker room and showed me which locker was mine.

All the coaches I’d seen — Tucker, Ramirez, Wilson and Rogers — walked me through how it all fit together. It wasn’t quite the same as my sister and my girlfriend using me as their own personal Ken doll, but there were similarities.

The first thing I was told to do was place a pair of nylon exercise shorts on the shelf up top. These would be worn on the first few days of practice when we were restricted to noncontact work, days we were in “shells” and Thursday walkthroughs.

I was shown how the butt, hip and thigh pads and protective cup fit into little pockets of the compression shorts. I was then ordered to strip naked and started dressing out with the compression shorts, which extended almost to my knees. The knee pads went into pockets in the white practice pants.

That was followed by a short-sleeved UnderArmour shirt that was made of the same material as the compression shorts. Coach Rogers then helped with the shoulder pads. They had kidney pads that hung down in back and had a little belt that fastened around the belly. We spent a few minutes adjusting straps here and there to achieve a proper fit. Coach Wilson banged on top of the shoulder pads with his fists, almost driving me too my knees, but I didn’t feel any pain.

They then helped me into a plain white mesh practice jersey with no number. I was told it would be best to leave the jersey on the pads except for when it needed to be washed and game days. I was shown how to lace up the fly of the pants and fasten its belt.

“What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in all this stuff?” I asked.

“Make sure you go before practice starts,” Coach Tucker said. “But I’ve never dealt with a seventh-grade team that didn’t have at least one accident during the first week or so, and you’re basically a seventh-grader in terms of experience. You’ve just got to know the rhythms of your body. If you’re regular, you shouldn’t have a problem.”

After donning knee-high sanitary socks and cleats, I was handed a plain helmet. Decals with the team logo and other stickers would be added the week before the first game. Coach Rogers then stuck the needle of a little hand pump into a valve on top and squeezed a bulb on the other end until I could feel the bladder inside the helmet make it fit snugly.

“We’ll check the fit every week before games,” he said as he disconnected the pump. “Let me know if it needs to be pumped up during the week. Notify me if you get a haircut because that will change how it fits.”

Coach Rogers then snapped a chinstrap onto one side and adjusted that until I had a proper fit.

“Make sure this is secured before you step across the sideline,” Coach Tucker said. “I want it to become a habit. The helmet never intentionally comes off when you’re on the field — practice or game.”