you and Wilkens through some drills.” Ricks didn’t look up from his clipboard, head tilted to one side as one of his coaches muttered into his ear. Two nods, then Ricks squinted, glaring at his players as they stopped to watch Michael Wilkens greet Reese. “You having a break?” he shouted to the team, getting a few head shakes. “Then get on your drills, you bastards!”
Ricks dismissed her, and Reese followed Wilkens to the 25-yard line. She’d met the punter during her tryout. He was nice. A little suspect of her, but then everyone was. Reese understood the reason for caution. It didn’t matter that her father had a reputation for coaching the best athletes in the league. No matter that Reese’s tryout had been covered by every media channel in the country, and anyone with a Wi-Fi connection could look up her landing kick after kick through the uprights. She was still an anomaly. There might have been women before her in the NFL, relegated to holding the ball and nothing else during a game, but Reese was the first fully contracted placekicker in the league. That meant inclusion. That meant a contract and a nice pile of money to go with it. That meant she wasn’t going anywhere. But none of that meant her teammates or coaches had to like her stepping in to shake up the NFL’s “good ole boys” standard.
Buddy Mills, the special-teams coach, moved behind them, and Reese felt his presence. Both Mills and Wilkens were large, but not the largest among the crowd. Around them, as Reese and Wilkens stretched and listened to the game plan Mills had in store for their half hour drills, Reese tried to ignore the sensation that came over her.
The stares were still focused on her, though they now seemed somewhat diverted by Ricks’ yelling. There were still low calls and insults, but Reese blocked the noise of them. The goal loomed large and impressive in front of her. No matter how many times she stood in front of it or how many balls she kicked through the uprights, it never failed to impress her and neither did the assembled crowd.
There were coaches, all too busy to do more than glance in her direction before they returned to barking commands and instructions at their players. There were her teammates, offense and defense, running respective drills, playing to the crowd and the reporters, neither of which technically should have been at Reese’s first official practice. The woman suspected Gia had something to do with that and she glanced at her team manager, standing next to Ricks, dark glasses over her heart shaped face as she kept her attention on Wilkens and Reese. Gia was taller than some of the squat, once-muscled coaches, but she stuck out among the gold and black jerseys and visor-wearing men. She was on the young side, likely in her late thirties, though she looked much younger and dressed professionally in her tan, tailored slacks and white wrap shirt. Her diamond earrings shined in the sunlight and her rose gold Rolex caught the same light when she smoothed back her shoulder length hair. For someone out of place among all these men, Gia was controlled, calm, as though she knew her job and dared anyone to keep her from it.
She also knew Reese’s job, and like her father, Gia saw fit to tighten her features as she watched her, like she wanted no emotion on her face to encourage. She wanted Reese focused, alert.
“We’ll start close,” Mills said, his tone light, not condescending as much as flippant. But Reese caught the smirk on his face, some disbelieving expression that told her the special-teams coach didn’t expect a lot from her. “Wilkens?” Mills nodded, tossing Michael the ball as Reese stepped into position, and her teammate knelt, holding the ball to the field.
“Try to breathe,” Wilkens said, grinning as he watched her.
Breathe. Yeah. That was all there was to it.
But Reese did just breathe, letting her eyes slip closed as she inhaled, moving three large paces back and two paces to the left of the ball as she prepared to run. She blotted out the hush that came over the crowd. She ignored the whirl of the cherry picker overhead, filming all the drills and player movements as they practiced. She muted the sound of the laughing crowd and her snickering teammates laying bets that she wouldn’t even make a kick from the 25-yard line. All that