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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 2002, revisions c. 2007, R.C. Mather)

E-Mail all comments to RevCottonMather at hotmail dot com
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PLAYING THE GAME

A Novel

by R.C. Mather




- 26 -

THE PLAYOFFS



We entered the conference playoffs as the team favored to win. Our
local paper was helping to fuel the interest by featuring pictures
and biographies of each of the starters in the week prior to the
first game of the playoffs. I got a lot of razzing at school the day
after my picture and bio appeared. I was pretty uncomfortable with
all this attention, but I was in the minority from my teammates. Most
of the rest of the guys on the team were really enjoying their moment
in the spotlight.

We waltzed through our first playoff game against the eighth seeded
team, winning 5-1. John Pennington's defensive adjustments on the
field were solid, and Kevin and I stopped just about every ball that
came our way.

Our second round opponent gave us a tougher game, but the result was
still a win, this time 3-1. By this time, the big-city newspapers
were paying attention too. The Metro Times had us rated in the Top
Twenty in the state, a huge boost for us. Their small article about
our win in the second round also pointed out what their reporter
considered to be a major flaw in our game, however. He wrote that he
wasn't sure we had the depth to win against Rockton Heights, the only
team to defeat us in the regular season.

Coach Neville made sure he read that article to us during our warm-
ups the next afternoon. He posted copies of it on every locker as a
reminder of what was expected of us. He wanted us to confound
expectations, and he had every confidence that we could.

Since we were seeded first in the tournament, we had the home field
advantage. Rockton came to us to play the championship game, and we
made sure the stands were packed with fans. We wanted it loud and we
got it. The cheerleaders, normally only required to perform at
football games in the fall, voluntarily showed up to lead the crowd.
They cajoled people to slide over closer to each other so that more
people could sit down. They worked the crowd until there were no gaps
to be seen at all. Heather O'Toole even went so far as to climb up
into the stands and act as a traffic cop, moving people around and
filling in spaces. She got a lot of laughter and no small amount of
applause for her efforts as she picked her way back down to the
sidelines, her golden-red ponytail swishing back and forth.

And it was all very much worthwhile. Rockton Heights came into the
game a little overconfident. We capitalized on that, scoring our
first goal within the first ten minutes. By the final whistle, we had
trounced the toughest competition we could find in our conference,
beating them 6-1. I even scored a goal, only my second as a varsity
player, and it was very satisfying to get that goal in the conference
finals. We were conference champs, the first team from our school to
win the title in soccer.

Sectional playoffs didn't start until the next weekend, so we had
Saturday and Sunday off from practice. This gave our scouting and
coaching staff time to prepare for an unfamiliar opponent. We would
enter the sectionals seeded fourth out of eight conference champions.
The winner of the sectional tournament would go downstate for the
State Tournament, again a single-elimination tournament for the eight
winners of sectionals from around the state.

The Monday Metro Times ran a big story about our conference win. The
story traced our season from the beginning that had held so much
promise, the schools that had been scouting Skip, and our wins up
until the accident. Then, the article continued with how our team's
makeup had changed so much because of the loss of our top two
players, the struggles, and ultimately the triumphs of the team.
Surprisingly, they assigned a large amount of our team's success to
"the quiet sophomore with the loud game, defensive standout Sean
Porter." There were quotes from some of my teammates about me, and
Coach Neville was quoted extensively in the article. There was even a
picture taken of me during the Rockton Heights game for the
conference championship, frozen just at the moment the ball left my
foot on a pass upfield. I hadn't even been aware of a reporter
talking to anybody, so it all caught me by surprise.

By the time the Friday of the first sectional game dawned, the Times
had come out with their picks for All-Conference honors for all the
metropolitan conferences. I was shocked when I got to school and was
informed, via an announcement over the intercom by Dr. Osgood, that I
had been selected as one of the All-Conference defensemen for our
conference, despite the fact that I had not begun the season as a
starter for our team.

A college about an hour's bus ride away was hosting sectionals. We
were nervous and tense on the ride down. Again, a caravan of cars
containing kids and parents supporting us followed our bus to the
host field.

Because of the All-Conference selection, and the article in the
Metro Times, our opponents started focusing on me a little more. They
were double-teaming me and making an effort to pass the ball into the
middle of the field before I could get to it. That was fine by me. I
sure didn't want to trip myself over my own two feet in an attempt to
save the game. If the opposing team was accommodating me by keeping
the ball out of my area, so much the better. The end result of that
strategy was that when the ball got down into our half of the field,
the available playing area, from our adversary's point of view,
shrank down in width by a third. It worked just fine to our
advantage, especially since we then were presented with an open side
when we cleared the ball, the side that Kevin and I patrolled.

On one opportunity, John Pennington picked up a weak rolling shot,
ran up a few steps, and rolled the ball over to me on the right side.
There was only one guy by me, so I let the ball pass me and took its
momentum up the field. I was to the midfield stripe by the time
anybody came close enough to challenge me, and by then, our offense
had a set play in position. I lofted a pass up to the middle, and the
play developed just the way it was designed, with a Trent Abbott goal
and our first sectional win the result.

Each successive sectional game was against tougher opponents, but we
made it through, winning our three games 1-0, 3-2, and 3-1. We were
State Tournament bound.

The next weekend, we left by bus on Thursday for our game downstate
on Friday. Once again, there were eight teams in the tournament. The
first two games would be played Friday and Sunday, and the
Championship game would be held the next weekend.

In our first game, we played the Planey Warriors, a team that was
very experienced, having been here the previous year. They put
together some play sets that were completely different from anything
we had ever seen before, led by their senior All-American forward,
Jesse Wilhoit. They moved the ball in to Jesse every chance they got,
and Mike Evanson, our junior sweeper, along with both of us defensive
players, were hard put to keep him from scoring at will. As it was,
he collected three quick goals within the first twenty minutes of the
first half. We were in real trouble of being blown out for the first
time all season.

Finally, we dropped our defensive center midfielder back, so in
effect we had left and right sweepers, and that seemed to stymie the
Warriors. We managed to neutralize Wilhoit with the new arrangement.
Any time the ball came down into our end of the field, we were able
to clear it back out to midfield.

At halftime, we were down 3-1, but we were feeling much better about
how we were playing than we did during the first few minutes of the
game. Eric and Trent let us know that the Warriors had a weaker
player on defense on their side of the field. If we could clear the
ball up to them, they felt they could make a play on goal.

A few minutes into the second half, their confidence was rewarded.
The ball cleared to Eric on the left and he lit his afterburners. He
torched the defenders, streaking down the sidelines and angling in
toward the middle. Trent dropped over to cover the left side as Eric
charged the middle. At the very last possible moment, he passed the
ball over to Trent, who stepped toward the ball with his left foot,
and launched a high bullet at the far post. The ball just slipped
under the top rail and clanged against the back post of the goal. It
was now 3-2, and the Warriors were on the defensive.

About seven minutes later, a similar play developed, but this time
Trent gave Eric a give-and-go past the defender, and it was Eric's
goal that tied the game.

At about the seventy-five-minute mark, Kevin and I switched
positions on an errant pass by the Warriors. I took the ball up
toward midfield. Our opponents were so worried about Eric and Trent,
on the far side, that they made the mistake of letting me advance the
ball. Their midfielders were holding their positions, which meant I
just had their left defender in front of me. I faked a pass into the
middle, giving myself a looping pass around their defender, picking
the ball up again behind him. I came in toward the goal just as their
sweeper and goalie decided I was a threat, but it was too late. I
threaded a pass in to Trent, who tapped it in for the winning goal.
We were advancing to the semi-finals, winning the game 4-3.

On Sunday afternoon we were facing the Rock Falls Lions, another
perennial soccer power from downstate. We were pretty tired from the
game on Friday, but we figured the Lions would be tired from their
win on Friday, too.

We were wrong. This was our first trip downstate and emotions played
a huge part in our win on Friday, leaving us pretty drained for
Sunday's game. Not so the Lions. They had been here before and knew
what it meant to leave it all on the field in the first game. They
didn't make that mistake this year. They razzled us, they dazzled us,
they embarrassed us. We went down in flames. We got trounced,
completely and thoroughly beaten. We walked off the field after
ninety minutes, knowing we still had a lot to learn about tournament
play. The final score was 7-2.

Our season was over.

The only true bright moment after that humiliating loss was the
following Monday, when the Metro Times announced their All-State
Team. Of course, leading the team was Jesse Wilhoit, the All-American
forward from Planey. But, to my surprise and my team's delight, I was
chosen as a second-team All-State selection on defense, only the
second player in our school's history to be chosen. The first to 
have been so honored was, of course, my mentor, Skip Horvath.

And I truly was honored. All I had wanted to do was go out and play
the game, and here I was, being recognized for playing it my way,
just as Coach Neville advised. My hard work, and the hard work of
Coach Neville and Coach Reyes and all my other coaches and assistants
and teammates, had paid off dividends I had never even dared dream of.





(Continued in Chapter 27)


  
PTG26