Coach Rector was our new defensive coordinator for football who we’d hired when Coach Zoon left. Coach Rector had come from Springfield. I needed to start sucking up to him now if I wanted to play defense my senior year. He was young, at 24, and had played college ball at Northern Illinois as a linebacker. He looked like he could still play.
Coach Rector saw me and called me into his office.
“I wanted to welcome you back. It’s time to get to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Today, just have some fun with open gym. Tomorrow, the trainer will be in, and he’ll get you set up with a training program,” he said, and then it seemed he thought of something. “Do you plan to go out for baseball this year?”
I didn’t promise him one way or the other.
“I’d advise against it. You need to focus on football. I’ve talked to Coach Hope, and we’ll be joining a seven-on-seven league during the spring. It’ll need to take priority over baseball.”
I wondered if he’d run that by Moose. I hated to tell him, but I planned to play baseball.
“Okay,” I said noncommittally.
Damn, why didn’t I just let him know what was in the works?
All the other football players were lifting. I wandered over to the court and played some basketball. Towards the end of gym class, I walked into the weight room. Jill and Becky, our trainers, were there, coaching the guys up. It appeared they had taken the intensity of lifting up a few notches. The guys looked like they had just completed a hard practice.
I was glad to see Tim Foresee working out under the trainers’ watchful eyes. He looked like a beast from the waist up, and both his legs seemed okay, even though the one he’d injured last fall was wrapped.
Tim saw me watching and smiled.
“What are you looking at, wuss?” he smirked.
“I was just hoping you don’t sprain your dingus. Obviously, it’s not getting a ‘regular’ workout, unless it’s a Rosy Palm massage,” I retorted.
Tim sat up and did a neck roll. You could hear a lot of popping, but that wasn’t necessarily bad. He scratched his head, looked down for a second, then back up at me.
“You can’t really know how isolated I felt after my injury last fall. After some initial visits, they dropped off pretty quickly. You and Wolf were the only two who kept visiting me no matter what.
“I have some goals, and the big one is competing through college and maybe beyond, hopefully on the same team you’re on. Now I’m doing whatever it takes to be ready for next fall. Fortunately, we now have people who can guide us through a good weight program, and who helped set me up a workable rehab plan. Believe me, I’m gonna take full advantage of it,” Tim explained.
I remembered Tim was the only one who came up to me last summer, asking to work out. He showed initiative, and that meant a lot.
Tim was a good guy; not the most brilliant guy, but a solid ‘B/C’ student who always got his work done and who didn’t want or expect anything to be handed to him. He wasn’t the most socially adept guy, either, and mainly was the ‘go along, get along’ sort. That was except when it came to football, and except when it came to his dream, which was to be an architect.
Most importantly, to me, he was a good friend whom I could trust. It was beginning to sink into me how rare and valuable that was.
Oh, yes. Tim was also an absolute lights-out middle linebacker when he was healthy!
I smiled happily at my friend and comrade, gave him a ‘bro’ handshake, and walked off to see what else was going on.
I ambled over and watched Wolf as he did squats. We had a new squat rack that was designed to hold the bar slightly below shoulder level. You would get under it and then lift the weight, do the squat, and then put it back into the slot. It had a safety feature that wouldn’t allow the bar to go below a certain level.
Wolf would go all the way down and then jump. It wasn’t like he was doing light weights. There had to be two hundred pounds on the bar.
“What are you doing?” I asked when he was done.
“Coach Rector says I need to learn to jump better. He has me doing this exercise so that if someone’s hanging on me, I can handle the weight. It also helps me learn to land correctly so I don’t get injured. You’re going to love this guy. I’ve been working with him for a month and a half and already added two inches to my vertical jump,” Wolf bragged.
“Wow, he doubled your vertical jump in just six weeks?” I asked, acting shocked.
“If I weren’t so tired, I’d kick your ass. Welcome home, I missed you,” Wolf said and tried to hug me.
He was a sweaty mess, so I made a hasty exit to the locker room.
◊◊◊
My next two classes were Art Appreciation and English Composition. Ms. Saunders and Mrs. Comer each gave us a quiz and then had me come to their desks and caught me up on what I’d missed the first week. My next class was Spanish. I really hadn’t wanted to take it, but after living in LA, I realized I needed to be able to at least understand what people were saying about me. I had a clue about what Rosy said, but I wanted to surprise her when I could respond.
