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From: "Rev. Cotton Mather" <revcottonmather@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} NEW Playing the Game III: The Competitive Edge, Ch. 1
Date: Fri,  5 Sep 2003 06:10:06 -0400
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Welcome back to the world of Sean Porter, Luscious Kayla Lehigh, and the 
rest of the residents of the PTG universe.

Enjoy!



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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.
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THE COMPETITIVE EDGE:
PLAYING THE GAME, BOOK III


by Reverend Cotton Mather




- 1 -

MY PARENTS GAIN A BEDROOM


You wonder, sometimes, how you get into these situations.  Looking
back, I have to believe that, somewhere along the timeline of my
life, I was led to this point, that I would be here no matter how I
led my life.  But I digress...





Sometime during the summer after my senior year of high school, I
stopped thinking of myself as a high school kid.  Maybe it was the
business I had set up, and maybe it was the anticipation of playing
soccer at the college level.  Or it could have been that I was
getting more mature, the third and least likely possibility.  One
thing was certain, though, and that was my girlfriend, the luscious
Kayla Lehigh, was somehow directly responsible.

And just when I needed her, she was not with me.  I was in my
parent's car, headed down to the University of Florida.  My dad was
driving, and my mother was calmly knitting in the shotgun seat.  My
brother Stephen was zoned out with his headphones on, listening to
something obnoxious, and I was sitting next to him, holding my soccer
ball in my lap and missing my girl.  My older brother, Michael, was
still at home.  He was working full-time and couldn't take time off
to come with us.  Actually, he was probably just as glad that he
couldn't come along.  It would have been a tight squeeze with one
more person in the car anyway.

It was a two day trip to Florida for us, which seemed to make it
even more painful, as I had nothing better to do than to think about
stuff.  I missed Kayla so much there was an ache in my solar plexus
that felt like it would never be healed, and yet the thought of
playing soccer for Pickett Cropper and the Florida Gators left me
with a mild case of vertigo.  How had I, a middling defensive player,
managed to win a scholarship to one of the elite soccer programs in
the country?  It was still a mystery to me.  I had a lot of hours in
the back seat of the car, watching the flat farm fields of Illinois
and Indiana slowly turn into the lush green pastures of Kentucky and
the worn hills of Tennessee and North Carolina.  By the time we
reached Georgia, I had tired of so much introspection, and had taken
to alternating between reading and gazing out the window as the
landscapes and small towns rolled by.

My family and I made it to Gainesville without incident, other than
a little lingering depression on my part over what I was leaving
behind.  My parents had two rooms at a Holiday Inn near the campus
reserved for two nights.  My parents took the room with the queen-
sized bed, and my younger brother Stephen and I would share the
second room, one with two twin beds.  We checked in after dark and
found a small restaurant within walking distance, where we could grab
some dinner.  None of us felt much like getting back in the car to
drive to get something to eat, so we made do with what we could find
nearby.

Moving day, when we would set up my new living quarters, was the
next day.

We got up the next morning and walked down to the same diner we had
eaten at the night before.  Dad ordered pancakes, Mom had a bagel and
some fruit, and Stephen and I ordered French toast, a real treat for
us.  We didn't often go out for breakfast.

There were only a couple of dorms where the athletes were going to
live, and the streets around them were busy with kids and families
shuffling for the prime parking spots for unloading vans, trailers,
and cars.  We decided we would wait until after lunch before we would
join the fray, so Stephen and I got to be lazy in the morning.  We
took advantage of the pool at the hotel, and then we piled into the
car once again for the short trip over toward the center of the
university grounds.  We wandered around campus during the late
morning, admired Lake Alice, and stopped for lunch at Reitz Student
Union, just soaking up the university culture.

Right after lunch we pulled our U-Haul into a designated spot on the
street, and the four of us started carting my stuff up to my third-
floor dorm room.

I knew my roommate's name was Weston Bridges, and I knew that he was
from the Atlanta area, and he was on the swimming team, but that was
about all I knew.  Since swimming was a winter sport, he didn't have
to be on campus early like I did, so he wasn't moving in for another
few days.  I took the opportunity to get my stuff put away without
having to worry yet about sharing space.  It was a small room for one
person, much less for two, but I hoped we would be able to work it
out okay.

My mom organized my closet for me while my dad and I put together
the framework to loft our beds.  Stephen was in charge of hanging my
posters and pictures on the walls.  By dinnertime we were pretty much
finished, and I clambered up onto my bed, now six feet up in the air,
and carefully pasted a photo of Luscious on the ceiling, right above
me.  I wanted Kayla to be the first thing I saw every morning, and
the last thing I saw every night.

Jesse Wilhoit came up to my room as we were finishing up, and he
came to dinner with us that night.  He brought along his roommate,
another soccer player by the name of Bryan Watkins.  Jesse and Bryan
eased my transition from home to college life that evening with their
stories about their freshman year at school.  It kept my parents, and
especially my mother, from getting too emotional about packing off
their middle son.

The next morning my family headed back home.  Dad shook my hand,
Stephen pretty much ignored me, and my mother hugged me fiercely,
tears running down her face.

"Aw, Mom," I said, as embarrassed as only a new college freshman can
be.  "Don't cry.  Don't think of it as losing a son, think of it as
gaining a bedroom."

Well, that didn't seem to help much but, finally, she let me go and
reluctantly got in the car.

Dad slipped me fifty dollars when Mom was turned away, as he shook
my hand once more.

"Don't forget to write your mother often, son," he reminded me.
"Make my life easier, would you please?"  He grinned ruefully and
opened his car door.

Stephen apparently had been hanging back for a reason, looking
around as if he didn't have a care in the world.  When Dad got in and
closed the door, he turned to me and awkwardly hugged me.

"I'm proud of you, Sean," he whispered roughly.  "I'm never going to
be able to go to college, so you're gonna have to have fun enough for
both of us."

I hugged him back, surprised and gratified at his gesture.  "What do
you mean, you won't be able to go to college?  Get your grades up and
you'll be fine."

"Nah," he said as he let me go.  "I've got my own family to take
care of, as soon as I'm out of high school.  Tara and the baby."

"You can take care of them best by being the best you can be.  If
that means going to college, then that's what you have to do,
Stephen."

He shrugged.  "We'll see," he answered.  He hopped into the back
seat and adjusted his earphones for the long ride home.  Just before
he closed the door, he gave me a quick grin and a thumbs-up.  It gave
me some encouragement that he was going to be okay.

My parents finally pulled out, and I was on my own.  With luck and
some diligence, I hoped I would make the most of this opportunity,
and not fuck up too much.



*****



Soccer tryouts and team meetings began that afternoon.  We all met
at the fieldhouse, and Coach Pick put us through his paces with laps,
dribbling and passing drills, and free kick shots on net from
different distances out on the field.  I got the feeling that he and
his staff had already decided on their starting lineups, and all that
was left to do was evaluate some of the walk-ons who were trying out
for the team.

After about three hours of working in the Florida heat and humidity,
I was wiped out.  As I looked around, I could see that I wasn't
really in any worse shape than anybody else, which made me feel a
little better.  About the only ones who looked like they could keep
going were Jesse Wilhoit and Martin Flauget, a junior defenseman from
France.  Both Jesse and Martin had been playing with the Under-20
National Team, and had spent the summer in North Carolina at the USSF
training facilities.  Because of their experiences over the summer,
they were both in exceptional shape, having honed their skills in the
heat and humidity that North Carolina provided during June and July.

At the end of that first practice day, the coaches led us off the
practice fields and into the fieldhouse.  We all filed into a meeting
room next to our locker room.  There were backless benches around the
walls, and the middle of the room was empty.  We all either sat on a
bench or flopped to the floor as Pick and his assistants conferred.

Finally, Pick called for our attention.  "Listen up here, fellas,
I've got a few announcements."

He waited a moment for us to settle down.  "You boys who have been a
part of this here program have heard this speech before, but that
don't mean I want you to not pay attention again.  Okay?"  He didn't
bother waiting for any answers.  "You freshmen and transfers, here's
the bottom line on what you're committing to here.  Your priorities
are as follows: classes and grades first.  Got that?  I'll repeat it
for you, just in case you thought you didn't hear me right.  Classes
and grades come first.  If you ain't passing your classes, you ain't
playing soccer, so classes and grades have got to come first.  Right
behind them is the team.  Okay?  With me so far?"

He looked around the room.  His attitude was one of not expecting
any questions, and he got none from us.

"If'n you have any spare time after that, you come see me.  I'll see
to it you keep busy."  There was a scattering of groans from around
the room, mostly from older guys.  Pick continued, "During our
season, you should be so busy you won't have time to get into any
mischief.  Come springtime, maybe then you can cut loose just a
little, but until then you belong to the University and to me, in
that order, and between the two of us, we will demand about ten
percent more than you have to give, so plan now on going home dead
tired every damn night."

Jesse was sitting on my right, and Spencer Goldman was on my left.
Jesse nudged me and nodded.  "He's not kidding," he murmured.

As Pick was talking, one of his assistants was passing out
schedules.  There were three pages stapled together.  I was expecting
to get a one-page summary, listing our games and times, but what we
got was a game schedule, a weekly schedule for the first four weeks,
and daily schedules, individually set according to our class
schedules.  We had full team practices, defensive and offensive units
had their own practices, and there was individual instruction for
each of us.  Our individual instruction page included scheduled
weight room times, and there were some one-on-one and two-on-two
drills set up for us.

As I was reading my sheet, there was an rhythmic and annoying
bumping of the bench going on.  I glanced around Jesse, and saw
Martin stretched out on his back on the bench, his arm holding his
head up so he could read, and his foot tapping the bench.  Jesse
glanced over at him also, and, with an exasperated look on his face,
swept Martin's feet off the bench.  Martin nearly lost his balance
and fell to the floor, but managed to catch himself in time.  He
glared at Jesse but didn't say a word.

"Prima Donna asshole," muttered Jesse.  It was the first negative
thing I had ever heard him say about anybody, and it took me by
surprise.

Pick dismissed us after going over what he expected of us over the
next couple of weeks, and Spencer and I headed toward our dorm.  He
was on the sixth floor, so he accompanied me up the stairs.  We had
made a promise to each other that we would avoid the elevator as much
as we could, but I had the feeling Spencer would break that
particular vow long before I did.

I unlocked my door and let it stay open as I flopped down on my bed.
I intended to write a letter to Luscious, but I wanted to read over
my soccer schedule once more.

It was brutal.  Eunice, Pick's office assistant, had typed in my
work schedule, meshing it with my class schedule and my workout and
practice schedules.  I had zero spare time during the week, and very
little on the weekends.  I had Sunday mornings free, and Sunday
evenings generally were open, but that was about it.  I flipped
through the pages, and saw that it would probably continue right
through Thanksgiving break, into December.  At least three months
before I would even have a day off, and there was no way I was going
home before Christmas.  Even Thanksgiving dinner was going to be a
dorm meal.  That was depressing, but even worse was the realization
that I would not see my family or friends for months.  My picture
hanging over my bed would be the closest I would come to seeing Kayla
for at least seventeen weeks.  I was going to have to keep my nose to
the grindstone and not think about it.  It was the only way I would
be able to make it.

I hoped my Kayla would understand.





(Continued in Chapter 2)

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