I quickly found out that what people called ‘chili’ was vastly different from one to the next. There was one group that swore that chili should have lots of beef, peppers, and spice, and not much else. I found these to be excellent for topping hot dogs. The fire department had what they called a New Mexican version. It included chunks of pork simmered in green chili peppers. I gave them props for something I’d never had before.
A local sporting-goods store had a white chili. It was made with pale cannellini beans and shredded chicken, but still managed to fry my tongue with its hot peppers and spice. Then there was the group that seemed to throw the kitchen sink into the pot. I’d never had corn in chili, and it was surprisingly good. I also liked a black bean vegan version.
For me, the winner was the fire department’s New Mexican chili. I asked one of the firefighters how they made it. He suggested that I cheat and cook the pork in a Crock-Pot using store-bought salsa verde as a cooking liquid. Once it was done, he cut up the pork and added roasted green chili peppers. It was on my list of dishes I wanted to try to make. He said that at the firehouse, they served it with tortillas and ate it like a wet taco with refried beans and cheese.
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I was in getting my ankles taped when Doc Grog came in.
“You still want to try to play without the Vitamin T?”
“If I can.”
“Let’s check you out before we decide,” he suggested.
He had me twist, turn, and stretch. Then he prodded my hip and ribs. My ribs gave a twinge, so he gave me a local anesthetic to numb it. He then instructed the trainers to tape extra padding over my ribs before I put my gear on.
I got dressed and Coach sent us out to warm up. The stands were filling up as Milo and Bryan led the team in warm-ups. You could feel the buzz from the crowd because we were on a quest to do something extraordinary: win three straight state championships. It was amazing what winning could do to energize a fan base. Freshman year, we might have had three to four hundred people at a game. Tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if seventy-five hundred to ten thousand of our fans showed up. Some smaller colleges would kill for that many butts in the seats. It looked like Beverly had close to a thousand people on their side.
Beverly came out, and they were fired up. I looked at my guys, and they were just going about their business. I stopped stretching and had the team gather around.
“Who are we?!” I shouted.
“Bulldogs!” the team yelled back.
“Where are we?”
“Our House!”
I repeated the chant several times until the cheerleaders got the crowd involved. The Beverly contingent looked around and didn’t seem to be as sure of themselves as they had been when they left the locker room. When you have that many people shouting, it can be unnerving. It had the desired effect. My teammates began to bounce around and had come to life. Now, we were ready to play.
◊◊◊
Beverly won the toss and elected to receive. We’d changed up our onside kick. Instead of lining up with the majority of players on the side the ball was going, Coach Stephens wanted to make them react to us. Instead, we all bunched up behind the kicker, and then right before he ran up to the football, we shifted to the side the kick was going.
Beverly saw what we were doing and quickly rushed to the left side of the field where all but Wolf, Tim, and I had shifted. Coach had told Derek that if we had equal or greater numbers to a side, to kick it that way. With the rush to compensate, they’d left the right side of the field with only one upman. Derek kicked it to the right side, where Wolf, Tim, and I were.
The ball bounced off the ground and popped over the Beverly upman’s head. Tim’s job was to keep him occupied while Wolf and I tracked down the ball. When it hit the ground, it bounced straight back to their upman and hit him in the helmet. I about broke my ankle as I had to dive back for the ball. Next thing I knew, it felt like both teams had jumped on top of me.
I wasn’t a happy camper when I came out from almost being crushed. When we huddled up, Wolf noticed.
“Oh, boy. They pissed him off.”
That fired my guys up because they knew I was about to light the other team up. Frickin’ jerks.
“Okay, settle down,” I said to get their attention. “We’re going to run the quick pass to Wolf to see what their defense does. Wolf, you’re to catch it and not try anything fancy. Remember that the coaching staff needs to see what adjustments they’ve made.”
We’d talked about this on Friday and before the game, but sometimes these knuckleheads had short attention spans.
Before the snap, Beverly was in their base defense. When we snapped the ball, their linebackers dropped deeper than usual, and their corners did the same. They wanted to keep the play in front of them. This was what we expected. The only problem was that we could pick up short gains of three to five yards at will. Coach Mason wanted us to take what they gave us early before we added any wrinkles.
