Thank you to all who have stuck with this story so far.
It is amazing to me that so many people have read my chapters and given me nice comments.
Chapter Five
A few days after Halloween, I was sitting at my computer working when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Henry? This is Neal Goins over at the high school."
"The school? Is something wrong with Paige? Is she okay?"
"What? Oh, no no no. She's fine. That's not why I'm calling."
"Oh. Whew, you scared me." What I was thinking was, "You could've led with 'Paige is fine.'"
I was a little preoccupied and missed the start of the next sentence.
"... and she's planning to move in with her and look after her. So what do you say? Can you help me out?"
I was really lost now.
"Help you out how?"
"With the team, of course."
That really didn't clear things up for me.
"Say again?"
After a few more stumbling sentences back and forth, I finally got the gist of the story. Coach Taylor, who was over the girls' varsity basketball team, was moving back to her hometown because her mother had a stroke.
Practice already had begun, and the new season would get underway in two weeks, and Neal was looking for a new head coach.
"Why not get the JV coach to step up to varsity?"
"Have you met him? He's only a year out of college. He's a little young to be taking over a JV team, much less a varsity squad."
Then he added, "Plus, he's 23 years old. I really can't afford to have a horny young man hanging around 17- and 18-year-old girls. Can you imagine what kind of scandal that could create?"
I pictured Randi and thought that I could indeed imagine a scandal with a young woman.
"Listen, you coached these kids growing up, and you come to all the games. There's nobody that knows these girls like you do."
Yeah, one of them even saw my naked ass a few days ago, I thought.
"I can't offer you much of a salary. Say $2,500, maybe as high as $3,000 if I explain to the school board that it's an emergency."
"The pay isn't the problem," I said. "It's the scheduling I'm a little worried about. I take a five-day business trip every January. Big show, can't miss it."
"We'll work around that. Reschedule a game or two if we have to. We do it all the time for bad weather."
"My work goes into overdrive in March. What if the playoffs are going on?"
"The playoffs are in February. The only way we'd still be alive in March is if we went to the state title game, and nobody is expecting you to do that coming in cold off the street."
"Okay, Neal. I'll take the offer. Let me get off this call so I can tell my assistant coach I won't be with the youth league this season."
I wasn't sure how my daughter would take it, having her dad suddenly be her coach again. I hadn't done that since she started high school.
It turned out I had nothing to fear. Paige and Lori both were excited at the news and gave me a big hug that evening.
The next afternoon I showed up at East for my first varsity practice.
Neal was right -- I did know everyone on the team. Most of them came to the house from time to time, and I did see every game last season.
Tessa was easily the smallest at about 5-foot-2, but very tenacious on defense.
Autumn could dribble the ball and get into the paint at will.
Lori could shoot outside or drive the lane.
My daughter Paige was 5-foot-8, a great size for a wing player, but she was often expected to go inside and battle with bigger girls. I'd worked a lot with her on tips and tricks to get her shot off in traffic.
Kim and Crystal usually came in off the bench, but they were just as good as the starters. Kim was a great shooter, but a little bit prissy and didn't like physical play. Crystal was just the opposite: scrappy and hard-working but couldn't make a shot outside 10 feet.
The only player on the team who wasn't at the Halloween sleepover was the center, Carrie.
At 6-foot-1, Carrie was easily the tallest girl on the team. While that height made her important at basketball, it also made her socially awkward. She tended to walk with her shoulders slumped and her head bowed down to seem shorter. She wasn't fat in the least, but she had wide hips and muscular arms, but seemed very self-conscious about her size.
There were three other players on the team, but they were young and not ready to take on big roles with the team.