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From: Sid Viscous <barf@blowjob.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Playing the Game II: Playing to Win, Ch. 35 (mf rom)
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 17:10:03 -0500
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I have just found out that my ace editor and proofreader for PTW is
very ill and in the hospital.  The Purvv has been a tremendous help to
me these past several months during the creation of this story, and I
have sent along my best wishes to him on a speedy recovery.






---------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to the Church of The Reverend Cotton Mather. This story is
the sole property of the author, and may not be copied or downloaded
for the intent of profit. Permission is freely given for anyone to
download or copy for their personal pleasure or use, as long as there
is no intent to charge money or barter for the privilege of acquiring
this material.

(Copyright 2003, Rev. Cotton Mather)

E-Mail all comments to RevCottonMather@hotmail.com
Don't be shy!  I enjoy hearing from you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------



PLAYING TO WIN:
PLAYING THE GAME, BOOK II


by Reverend Cotton Mather




- 35 -

LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW



By early August, I was dead tired, and even looking forward to
school starting up again.  The workload had to be less than what I
was struggling with during those hot weeks in July and August.  

The kids were learning too fast.  Even with the help I had, and the
amount of time we were spending with each group, it was hard for me
to stay ahead of them.  I was spending about 20 hours on the field
with the kids and the coaches, running drills and supervising
scrimmages and games, and coordinating my top-notch helpers.  I don't
know what I would have done if I didn't have my four friends helping
me out.  They were able to fill in the gaps I inevitably left in my
plans, covering for me over and over again.

In between the hours spent on the field, I put in another 10 or 15
hours a week trying to stay one step ahead of each group, planning
out drills, strategies, games, and scrimmages.  Whether we were
playing 3 on 3, 4 on 4, or full scrimmages, I felt I needed to have
an idea of the makeup of the teams beforehand.  It was too easy to
let the kids decide who they wanted as their teammates if we left
that decision until it was time to play, but sometimes that created
imbalance among the teams.

I spent another 10 to 15 hours each week writing down my
impressions.  Each day, after camp, I would write down my impressions
of how that particular session went.  I wanted to be able to refer to
my notes and see where I could improve things, if I should do this
again the next year.  I also wrote down remarks about many of the
players in camp, noting improvements in their play or in their skill
levels, places that might need more work, and sometimes even
predictions about how far they would go in their soccer endeavors.  I
even wrote down some of the funny stuff that happened, as a reminder.
I made sure every kid enrolled got mentioned at least once a week in
these journals.  I was thinking that I might be able to distill the
information I wrote down and make up a presentation for each player
at the closing party for the kids and their parents.

The young kids took the least amount of time, because their skill
levels were still pretty primitive, even after a few weeks in camp. 
The middle group was tougher, because their coordination and
reasoning skills were more defined, so they progressed rapidly.  From
my work with Davey and Kip, along with my own experiences playing at
that level, it was pretty easy to come up with plans for this group.

The real challenge was keeping up with the competitive group.  By
the end of July, the number of kids taking lessons in this group
ballooned from 25 to more than 40.  Most of them were junior-high
kids who were seeing this as a stepping-stone to playing on the high
school teams, and they were all fiercely competitive, and a few could
even be called driven.  I knew one thing.  They were driving me nuts.
After all, I was the one who had to do all I could to stay ahead of
them, and they were fast.  Capital F Fast.  I even had a couple of
kids who had played on the J-V team as freshmen, who were hoping that
working with us would be the way they could get noticed enough to
make the Varsity team during late summer tryouts.  I repeatedly told
them that none of us had any influence over Coach Neville's
decisions, but they didn't really believe me.  Truth be told, I was
probably lying.  If Eric, Trent, Jorge and I all came up to Coach
with the same name of a player unfamiliar to him, he would most
likely take a chance on the player.  I just wasn't ready to put
myself on that kind of firing line quite yet, though.

School was scheduled to start on Tuesday, August 31, and I really
wanted a week off so I could just sleep in and not worry about
anything, so I scheduled our last day of camp to be Friday, the 20th.
We scheduled Saturday as the party day, and arranged to have access
to the park and the main soccer field all day.  We scheduled the
middle group's party for the morning, the youngsters for about noon,
and the older kids for around 4:00.  I devised some fun and easy
drills, mostly based on a weaving passing drill, to showcase the kids
for their parents.  Watching them weave around each other down the
field, in teams of three, was pretty impressive for the parents, who
typically only saw their kids during games.

I also set up a 30-minute full-field game for the first two groups
before handing out awards.  Parents love that kind of thing, I had
discovered, and every kid got to play.  The younger group played 7-on-
7, since one kid was on vacation and couldn't make the party, and the
middle group played a 9-on-9 game, with Tessa and Jorge working the
goals.  Every kid played the whole game, and the parents were
thrilled when the game ended up tied, 1-1.  Tessa assured the tie
when she deliberately slowed her steps in defending against a
crossing pass, and Davey Wilkinson put the ball past her into the
back of the net.

After the game, I handed out certificates to every player.  I had
recruited Molly to hand-letter the names on them, since she had the
best handwriting of anyone I knew, and I used my journal notes to
talk about how each player had improved over the course of the
summer.  The parents all applauded every kid, and there were a lot of
very happy players, proudly showing off their certificates.  It made
it all worth the hard work.  I even got about a hundred dollars in
extra tips from parents, by way of thanks.


For the competitive group, I knew that a weaving pattern wasn't
going to do it, so during the last week of sessions, we worked on
showy passes and schemes.  Heel give-and-go passes, special signals
for throw-ins, and taking high passes off their heads and then
running upfield without letting the ball touch the ground, keeping
the ball in the air with chest, shoulder, head and knee touches, were
going to be the showcase for these players.  After the
demonstrations, we set up two half-fields.  Between the instructors
and the kids, we had enough players for four full teams, with no
subs, so we played two games simultaneously, across the width of the
field, so that everybody could play, and all the parents could watch
both games at the same time.  It was a little chaotic, but it worked
out okay, mostly because the kids all understood it was all just for
fun.  They had gotten enough competition over the past few weeks, so
they were able to put aside those drives for one afternoon.

After the game, I handed out certificates to the players, and once
again used my journal to explain how each player's game had improved.
These older players didn't hold the certificates with the same amount
of pride as the younger ones, but that was okay, because they held
their new skills proudly, instead.

What made me the happiest, though, was the courtesy nearly every kid
displayed to me and the other coaches.  After the ceremony, the
parents and kids were gathering up their belongings, and the five of
us were underneath the awning I had rented to provide some shade for
us for the day, finally relaxing after several weeks of work.  I
glanced up and saw Mariko Lee, one of our junior-high students from
the competitive group, walking toward us.

"Sean?"

"Hi, Mariko.  What's up?"

She looked around shyly at all of us.  The five of us were standing
or sitting in a loose semi-circle, and she looked like she was
feeling a little bit more on the spot than she liked, as the others
looked on curiously.

"I... I just wanted to thank you all for what you've done for me,"
she said.  "I really enjoyed this camp."

While I knew that nearly all the kids had a good time, and they had
gotten better at their games, I was still a little surprised that a
kid this age, normally very shy and self-conscious around high-school
kids, would be bold enough to walk up to us alone to thank us.

Mariko tentatively held out her hand, and I shook it gently.  She
stepped over and shook Jorge's hand, and then stepped up to Eric,
standing leaning against one of the support poles, a cold can of Coke
in his hand, and held out her hand.

"Ah, hell, ain't no handshake gonna do it," he said with a smile. 
He stepped up, towering over the little 11-year-old, and wrapped his
arms around her and hugged her.  She was taken completely by
surprise, but only for a moment.  She put her arms around him and
gave him a squeeze, a huge and happy smile on her face.

Tessa was next, and she hugged her, too, and so did Trent, and so
the precedent was set.  She moved back over and hugged Jorge, and
then gave me a hug, too, before running off and rejoining her family.
By the time she ran back across the grass, other kids were gathered
around, jostling for position as they all started shouting out thanks
and farewells.  Lots of parents came up to join in the melee, and
before we were finished, we had been hugged, thanked profusely, had
our hands thoroughly shaken, and I had had another two hundred
dollars pressed into my hand as tips.

After we had picked up the cones and flags, taken down the awning
and packed it away, and gathered up our balls and jerseys and gear
and packed it into our cars, I gave each of my friends their cut out
of all the tip money I had received.  Sixty dollars each made us all
feel wealthy, let me tell you.

As we stood by our cars, almost unwilling to drive away from each
other, I thanked each of them in turn for all their help.

"Hey, we had fun, didn't we?" said Trent.

"Oh, yeah, but I'm gonna sleep for a week," said Jorge.  "These kids
wore me out."

"Ah, you're just a slacker," said Tessa, smiling at Jorge
affectionately.  They had really gotten to be good friends over the
past few weeks, only partly because of the position they played.  "We
could have gone another week."

"Maybe you could have gone another week," noted Eric.  "Us guys,
we've got tryouts and practice coming up next week for school, so we
aren't gonna get a whole lot of rest."

"Oh, man, I forgot about that," moaned Jorge.  "There goes my plan
to sleep for an entire week."

Shit.  So had I.  The one I really felt sorry for, though, was Trent.

"Hey, buddy, when do you leave?" I asked.

He looked both excited and a little sad.  "Tomorrow afternoon," he
replied.  "I've already got most of my stuff packed up.  We're
hauling a little U-Haul trailer down with us."

"Hey, Trent, I forget.  Where are you going again?" asked Tessa.

"University of South Carolina."

"How long to get there?" she asked.

"A couple of days, I guess.  We're leaving about noon tomorrow, and
we're thinking we'll get there sometime Monday afternoon.  I'm
supposed to move into my dorm room sometime between 4:00 and 6:00 on
Monday, and we've got team meetings and tryouts beginning Tuesday
morning."

"Is your whole family going?"

"Yeah, me and my parents and my sister."

"What about Danielle?" asked Eric.

Trent smiled.  "She's moving into her dorm next Saturday," he said.

"That's so great, that you guys were able to go to the same school,
even so far away," said Tessa.

"It took a lot of convincing, but it all worked out," said Trent. 
"But, hey, I've got to get going.  I've got to finish packing, and
then Danielle and I are going out to dinner with all our parents." 
He gave Tessa a hug, and shook Jorge's hand.  He grasped Eric's hand
a moment longer, and they nodded to each other, silent
acknowledgement of their connection to each other.  He turned to me.

I put out my hand, and he grabbed it, but instead of merely shaking
my hand, he pulled me in and gave me a friendly hug.

"Take care, Sean.  Knock 'em dead this year."

"I'll miss you, buddy," I roughly whispered.  There was something
catching in my throat.

He let me go, and bent down to pick up his gear bag.  He threw it up
onto his shoulder, and we all followed suit.  As we got to our cars,
Trent called out, "See you at Christmastime!"

"Hey!" I shouted.  "You won't be back before that?  What about
Thanksgiving?"

"Nope.  We play right through November.  It's warm down there, Sean,
not like up here in the frigid north!"  He waved from his car, and
his wheels spun on gravel as he accelerated out of the parking lot.

Man, I thought to myself.  Trent and Danielle were leaving, team
tryouts were starting, school was only a week away.

Where had the summer gone?





The Lehigh/Jacks summer party was held that same afternoon and
evening.  By the time I got there, the softball game was already
history.  It was just as well, since I was pretty wiped out from the
multiple soccer parties I had hosted.  I was really looking forward
to collapsing in one of the Lehigh lounge chairs on their deck, a
frosty glass of soda close at hand, and Luscious sitting by my side. 
I wasn't going to move from that spot for hours.

Kayla squealed and ran over to me, and jumped into my arms when she
saw me.  I bent down and gave her a big kiss, even though most of the
neighborhood was watching, including her parents.  They just shook
their heads at us, smiling indulgently, and went back to cooking and
conversing.  I flopped down in a lounger, and Kay sat on the edge.

"How did it go today?" she asked, her hand resting comfortably on my
stomach.

"It went really great, but it was a long day," I said.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be there to help you today," she said.

"It's okay, sweetie.  We were all there, and it went just fine.  I
know you had to work."

Jake came over and perched against the deck railing.

"Hey, Seanster, how's it going?"

"I'm hot, and sweaty, and tired, and looking forward to sleeping
in," I said.

He laughed.  "It's about time you had to work a little.  Soccer
players, they've got it easy.  Run around a little, sweat a little,
and they start crying about how tired they are.  You ought to try a
real sport like football."

I just looked at him.  I remembered working out with him at the gym.
I also remembered how wasted he got when he just had to run a couple
of miles with me.

He grimaced, obviously remembering the same thing.  What the hell, I
thought.  Getting back into the weight room would probably do me good.

Jaimie came over, toting a couple of cold cans of soda.  She handed
one to Jake, who gave her a peck on the lips as thanks.

"No scavenger hunt for us this year, sweetie," said Jaimie as she
popped open her can of pop.

Jake looked over at her, startled.  "Why not?"

Jaimie thrust her chin out toward the volleyball nets, where a bunch
of younger kids were playing, including her younger sister.

"I've got to stay with Tara the Bitch," said Jaimie irritably.

"What?  Why?"  It sounded like Jake had just had his plans for the
evening ruined.

"Because my parents will be helping your parents, and since Tara's
confined to the house at sunset, somebody's got to stay with her. 
That would be me."

Jake grumbled, "Ah, shit."  He paused for a moment, and then said,
"And she can't stay by herself?"

Jaimie gave him that look that girls are so good at, the one that
says, 'My boyfriend is an idiot.'

Jake sighed.  "No, I guess that wouldn't be such a good idea, would
it?  Oh, well.  Nothing to be done about it.  We'll just watch TV or
something."  He turned to us.  "You guys want to hang out with us
tonight?"

I glanced over at Kayla.

"Sure," she said, surprising me.  She looked over at me and giggled
to herself.  She gave me an almost imperceptible shake of her head,
discouraging me from contradicting her.  I knew what to do: when in
doubt, shut your mouth and trust the girlfriend.  All I had to do was
remember it, treat it like a mantra, and I would probably be okay.

A little later, when we were in line to fill our plates, I leaned
down and whispered into Kayla's ear.  "Why are we watching TV tonight
instead of going into the basement during the scavenger hunt?"

She smiled at me, and touched her fingers to the scar on my lip. 
"That wouldn't be enough time for us, anyway, love.  Be patient, all
will be well."

That simple touch, along with those simple words, was enough to get
my heart racing.  Yes, I thought to myself, all is well already.  For
Luscious, I could be very patient.





At sunset, a bitterly complaining Tara was sent off to her house by
her mom and dad.  Jake, Jaimie, Tara and I followed along behind her,
as if we just happened to be going in the same direction, and Tara
turned around and glared at us.  We were older, and not under house
arrest, therefore we were the enemy.  I could see it in her angry
eyes.

When we got in the house, Jaimie asked Tara if she wanted to watch
television with us.

"HBO?" asked Tara.

"No, 'Saturday Night Live'," answered Jaimie.

Tara grumbled, but finally flopped down on the couch and crossed her
arms underneath her small breasts and scowled at the TV.  Jaimie and
Tara headed for the kitchen to arrange some snacks and get sodas for
us all, and Jake and I sat on the floor.  Jake grabbed the remote,
and flipped through the channels, looking for some diversion to watch
until SNL came on.  Outside, we could hear the squeals of the younger
kids as they headed out on the scavenger hunt.  A couple of times the
doorbell rang, but we ignored it, and the kids at the door scrambled
off in search of other houses with treasure.

We found a rerun of "Barney Miller" and settled in.  Kayla nestled
up to me, and I put my arm around her comfortably.  Jake and Jaimie
moved up to sit on the couch, arms around each other.  As they
settled in, Tara looked over at them in disgust.

"Oh, gag me," she muttered as she looked at us.

"If you don't like it, you can go to your room instead," said Jaimie
with false sweetness.

"Oh, screw you," said Tara under her breath, but she stayed where
she was, staring balefully at the images on the television.

The "Saturday Night Live" show was a rerun, of course, but we didn't
care.  We cuddled and enjoyed the air conditioning and the sodas and
the chips and the warmth of being together.  We also perversely
enjoyed making Tara irritable, a task that was made much easier by
Tara herself.

Finally, a half-hour into SNL, Tara stood up.

"I'm going up to take a shower," she announced.  She stomped out of
the family room and up the stairs.  We ignored her as best we could,
which proved to be not too hard to do.

About an hour later, we were figuring the picnic and party were
probably wrapping up.  We started cleaning up the family room,
removing the detritus of our snacking, when we heard a loud thump
from upstairs, followed by a loud laugh.  The four of us stopped and
looked at each other, puzzled about the noise.  As we listened, I
thought I could hear more than one voice from upstairs.  There was
another loud thump.

"Oh, shit," said Jaimie.  She looked worried, and a little angry. 
She headed for the stairs, Jake right behind her.  I looked at Kayla,
who just shrugged, so we followed the other two and ran up the
stairs.  Jake and Jaimie were knocking on a door, presumably Tara's
bedroom door.  Jaimie rattled the doorknob, but the door was locked.

"Tara!  Open this door now!" yelled Jaimie.

There was no response, except for an odd shuffling sound, muffled by
the locked door.

"I'll get it," said Jake, and he gently pushed Jaimie aside and put
his meaty shoulder against the door, and he shoved.

The door popped open, banging against the wall and bouncing back,
and Jake stumbled into the room.  We all tumbled after him, and
stopped short to look at Tara, who was just locking her window, her
back to us.

She was naked, and she had her head turned toward us, looking at us,
a mixture of fear and triumph playing on her face.  She turned around
to face us, and walked back toward her tousled bed.  She looked calm,
but I could see her muscles quivering from fear or nervousness.  Her
face was flushed, and the rosy color bled down her throat and across
her chest, fading by the time it reached her small breasts.  Her
nipples looked red and damp, and it looked like somebody had dribbled
sugar glaze from her breast to her navel.  Her pussy lips, peeking
out of her sparse bush, were also swollen and red, and there was a
string of milky white semen dripping out of her pussy and down her
thigh.

"What have you done?" cried Jaimie, who took three quick steps
toward her sister and grabbed her by her biceps and shoved her
roughly down onto the bed.  Jake strode over to the window and looked
down, and swore.

"Jesus Christ, there's a ladder here!"  He shoved the window open
and stuck his head out.  "Hey!"  he yelled.  "You!  Over by the
garage!  Get your ass back over here!"

He started climbing out the window, and Jaimie cried out, "Jake! 
Don't do that, take the stairs!"

He pulled himself back and headed for the door.  He grabbed my arm
as he started out the room.  "Come on, Sean, let's run those bastards
down."

We ran down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.

"Who did you see?" I asked as we threw open the back door and fanned
out toward the garage.  He was going to move around toward the back
of the garage on the house side, and I jogged over to go around the
opposite side.  The field was behind the garage, and the woods were
beyond that.  If whomever we were chasing made it into the woods,
they would be really hard to find.  "Jake?  Who was it?" I persisted.

I couldn't see his face, because of the dark and the distance, but
he sounded pretty reluctant when he finally answered.

"I think I saw two of them," he said quietly.  "I can't be sure,
Sean, but I think one of them was Stephen."

That was not the sort of ugly surprise I was expecting.  I raced
around the garage and met Jake on the other side, but there was no
one to be seen.  We jogged across the field and ventured a little way
along one of the many paths through the woods, but we both knew it
was futile, and we gave up after a few minutes of searching.

Dark thoughts invaded my head as we trudged back toward Jaimie's
house.  I needed to find Stephen, and he wasn't going to be a happy
camper once I got my hands on him.




(Continued in Chapter 36)

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reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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