Someone must have alerted Mr. Hasting because he ran through the locker room and straight to the training room. Becky ran out to the locker-room door to meet the paramedics.
While they dealt with that, Coach Hope had me take the team out to warm up. We stepped outside, and I changed our plans. We were in the middle of a snowstorm. There was already an inch on the ground, which was rare for this early in the year.
“Go put your tennis shoes on, and we’ll stretch in the gym.”
I didn’t want to get cold and wet before the game even started.
“Good call,” Coach Rector said.
I decided to lead the stretching because I needed to focus on football. I could see that word about Coach Mason had gone through the team, and we were distracted with worry. Once we were done, I called everyone to get close so I didn’t have to yell to be heard.
“I know that you’ve all heard that something has happened to Coach Mason. Trust in Doc Grog and the training staff to make sure he’s okay. We need to put that drama out of our minds because we’re about to play a game that will send the winner to play for the State Championship.
“If we’re fortunate, we get to play Mike and Alan. I’d like to get a little payback,” I said with a grin.
“Damn right!” Yuri barked.
There was general agreement. I hadn’t realized how much Alan had pissed people off. They’d all backed off because he and I were friends. When Alan turned on me, his protection had disappeared. He made the wise choice of transferring.
“To get there, we have to beat McHenry. I’m not going to say something cliché like Coach Mason would want us to win, even though he does. We have too much on our plates with the weather, and we’re facing an excellent opponent. If it were a regular fall day, I would say we would beat them easily. We’re in for a hard-fought game, and we need to get ready to play.”
“Who are we?” Wolf shouted.
“BULLDOGS!” the team shouted back.
“Where are we?”
“OUR HOUSE!”
“It’s time to become football gods!” Phil yelled.
We all groaned at his theft of a football movie line. Next, he would tell me I was the ‘wind beneath his wings’ or some such drivel.
We split up offense and defense to get our final instructions. Coach Hope came over and looked at me.
“Do you have this?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said, so he ran off to check on Coach Mason.
“We’re going to come out in our power set with both Don and Wolf at tight end. I’ll start out under center, and we’ll be in the ‘I’ formation with Jake at fullback and Ty at tailback. Roc will be our lone outside receiver.
“We’re going to pound them up the middle, so that means you linemen will have your work cut out for you. Remember that in this weather, it will only take a crack in their defense for Ty to pop through for a long gain. I want you to get mean, get off the ball, and put your defender on his backside.
“I also want you to hustle every chance you get. Let’s see how well they’re conditioned,” I said.
I’d just changed our offense to what it had been my freshman year. I was confident the seniors knew what to do and would lead by example. It was time to go out onto the field.
◊◊◊
We walked outside, and the first thing we all noticed was the wind had picked up, and the snow was coming down almost horizontally. It was more than nasty out. I also saw that our fans were smart enough to have stayed home. There were actually more McHenry fans than our own. They hadn’t realized how bad it would get before they left for the game this morning. I would bet that the area motels would be packed tonight. I sure wouldn’t want to drive back in this.
We lost the coin toss, and McHenry deferred to the second half. We took the ball. On the kickoff, the wind caught the football and blew it out of bounds. That gave us the ball on the 35-yard line. I had the offense huddle up.
“Line up in our normal spread and then shift to goal-line on ‘set.’ Dive right on two,” I said and broke the huddle.
“Down! Set! Hut, HUT!”
On the snap, I pivoted to hand the ball to Ty and about fell on my butt. Johan had fallen flat on his face, and the defensive tackle filled the hole. Jake made a valiant effort to block him, but he was no match and was tossed aside. I apologized in my head for handing the ball to Ty. There was a tremendous crack of pads, and Ty was taken down.
I decided to huddle up.
“That sucked,” Ty offered.
“I’m sorry …” Johan started, but I cut him off.
“Shut it!” I barked to take control of the huddle. “Same play, on two. Roc, stay awake.”
The reason I’d had us start in the spread and then shifted was I wanted to see what defense McHenry was in. If they shifted with us, they were in a man-to-man set. That was what they’d done the first play.
“Down! Set! Hut, HUT!”
