garbage reality TV instead of whatever cinematic masterpiece is currently streaming on Netflix. But it’s not like getting stuck talking with one of your parents’ friends, because Coach isn’t butchering some hugely famous person’s name. He listens to the same music, he doesn’t need someone to explain why certain texts show up in blue bubbles and some in green bubbles. It’s just … super chill.
Either way, before Coach takes off, he’ll make a speech about the next day’s game, get them fired up not simply to play but to win.
After he leaves, all twenty girls cram themselves into a den or family room and spread out their sleeping bags. Then they watch a movie of the senior host’s choosing as a way to unwind, multiple bags of microwave popcorn in orbit. Sometimes they make it to the end credits. But at most Psych-Ups, the movie gets shut off well before. Coach expects everyone in bed, with lights out, by ten o’clock.
Every senior holds a Psych-Up at some point during the season—sometimes two—but first-night hosting duties always fall to the team captain. Mel’s parents are going all out tonight—caterers booked, a white tent erected in the backyard, dozens of white rose arrangements, helium balloon sculptures assembled in Wildcat colors. Even still, Mel’s Psych-Up will follow the structure of any other.
Until the clock strikes midnight.
That’s when, at Mel’s direction, the Wildcats break Coach’s curfew for the first and only time all season to hold their own secret season kick-off celebration on their home field, underneath the twinkling stars.
It’s not to undermine his authority. This is in no way a rebellion. If anything, it’s about the girls doubling down on the values Coach works so hard to instill in them. Loyalty. Pride. Grit.
Team first, always.
The captains have plenty of opportunities to put their own spin on the festivities. What music they’ll listen to, what bonding games they’ll play, what late-night diner to stuff their faces at afterward. But the night always, always culminates in a special ceremony where the captain presents each of her teammates with their varsity jersey. And, in accepting those jerseys, the girls pledge their hearts to the Wildcats.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Mel is a golden girl, a top player of not just the Wildcats but all high schools in their state. Naturally, she aspires for her Psych-Up midnight celebration to be the greatest yet. That she’s had less than a month to prepare for it—while previous captains got an entire off-season—has only made Mel more determined to exceed expectations.
But that wasn’t the only challenge Mel faced with her Psych-Up plans. There’s another horrible kink she needed to account for.
Until last season, the Wildcats have always been champions.
The best strategy Mel could come up with was to avoid, avoid, avoid, and instead keep her teammates focused on the future. In fact, she planned to expressly forbid any mention of last season’s disastrous end during her Psych-Up. This was how Mel herself survived the off-season, embracing whatever methods of distraction necessary to put it out of her mind. And she suspected she wasn’t the only one.
Mel and her teammates each swallowed the same bitter pill of disappointment, forced it down, and tried to move on. Was it really such a big deal if the loss was still there, a lump bobbing in the backs of their throats?
Mel’s answer remained a firm nope, even after tryouts began this week and the girls who were on last year’s varsity team were reunited after the different leagues and camps and club teams that scattered them in the off-season.
They seemed nervous to be around one another again. But in the aftermath of last season, the girls had never turned on one another, never pointed fingers or threw blame at another player’s feet. So it didn’t take long for things to warm back up. Muscle memory to kick in.
Mel felt this most acutely with Phoebe. Those nine long months of having not played together compressed into seconds as soon as Coach blew his whistle Monday morning. They knew each other again.
Technically speaking, this week the girls performed as well as maybe they ever have. Each of Mel’s teammates was sharp, focused, committed, determined. They played like they had everything to prove.
Which apparently they did.
What else could explain Coach’s punishing final workout today, which lasted almost twice as long as years past? Her teammates probably accepted it as an overdue penance. But Mel suspected there was more to Coach’s methods. It was as if he were trying to