to previous seasons, the most diverse Wildcats varsity roster happened Ali’s freshman year, when there were four girls of color. Four out of twenty.
This season there are two—Ali and Luci. She wonders if this is something Luci has noticed too. Someone told Ali that Luci only moved to West Essex last year. Maybe where Luci lived before was more diverse. Maybe not.
JAMES: TTYL sis. Good luck tomorrow!
ALI: Thanks. Tell everyone I love them!
Ali tries not to think about what she’ll be missing this weekend. It’s rare for her family to be all together, even rarer without Ali. But the Wildcats are her family too, Ali reminds herself. And while Ali’s real family will always be there, her Wildcat family is forever changing. Tonight’s team gets only this one season to be together. When it ends, they’ll break apart and spin off in different directions, always connected to each other but never like they are right now.
Ali heads back into the living room. A group of sophomores—some old, some new—clusters around Coach, hanging on his every word. He’s talking about field hockey for sure, using his hands to draw the action through the air.
Even though this will be his seventh year at West Essex, Coach remains one of the youngest teachers at the high school. You’ll never find Coach socializing around the copy machine in the main office. He eats his lunch in his classroom, which isn’t even lunch but some kind of pale, lumpy protein shake.
Ali isn’t exactly sure how old Coach is. The consensus between the girls puts him somewhere around twenty-nine. But he seems way closer to their age than, say, a teacher like Mr. Bicehouse or her parents. That’s part of what makes it less weird when Coach yells at them. It’s 0 percent parental. Parents want you to do your best. Coach wants to win.
Ali took his accounting class as an elective in the spring of her freshman year, hoping that Coach’s dynamic energy might unlock some latent math passion inside her. But she was surprised to find that Coach was not a particularly magnetic teacher. The way he’d present or explain concepts was usually hard to follow—completely opposite of the way he communicated on the field—and Ali regularly found typos on his handouts. He often seemed as bored with the material he presented as the students were. Probably because he never wanted to be a teacher in the first place. He only took the job because the math teacher he’d be replacing was also West Essex’s field hockey coach.
The Wildcats used to be a mediocre team. Never made it to finals, that’s for sure. Lucky to end up with more wins than losses at the end of the season. But once Coach took over, everything changed. Not only has he used his expertise to coach them to victory, he uses his contacts to bring in college scouts. Under his hand, the girls varsity field hockey team has become the most decorated in their high school’s history, with five state championships in six years.
After last season, it’s a relief to see Coach in an upbeat mood. Ali folds herself into the group. Coach is telling them about the temporary position he took with the Men’s Junior National Team this summer, subbing for a strength-and-conditioning coordinator who went on medical leave.
The girls listen intently, but Ali is sure they are thinking the same thing she is: if it had been a permanent position, Coach wouldn’t have come back to West Essex this season. They are lucky they still have him.
Coach excuses himself to get some water. The girls then turn to Ali and ask her about goalie camp.
“It was good,” she says with a shrug.
They nudge her for more details, curious because Ali’s position is so different from theirs. Ali normally gets plenty of breaks during Wildcat practice, since many skill drills or formations don’t apply to her. Her stick is even shaped differently from theirs, more of a hook than a paddle.
So she tells them. Goalie camp was unrelentingly focused on her skill set. Drills on the field to sharpen her reflexes, increase her agility, extend her reach. Exercises in the weight room to strengthen her quads, her glutes, her core. Frankly, she’s never been in better shape. Her tummy has always been flat but she now has actual abs, the beginnings of a legit six-pack. Phoebe couldn’t stop touching them when they went hot-tubbing after the first day of tryouts this week.
Still, she’s quick to