Page 11 of Spin Serve

“She had five hitting errors on her line shot alone,” the coaching prospect argued and crossed his arms over his chest.

“She had zero the previous match and the one before that, and–”

“Okay. Okay.” He waved his hands around in the air. “What am I doing here? Do you two want to improve or not? Do you want a coach who can help you get to the Olympics or not? What do you want? While your previous coach did his best, I’m sure, he didn’t exactly get you to where you need to be.”

“Our previous coach was a hall-of-fame player in both indoor and beach, has won a gold medal in both in the Olympics, and has earned countless other medals and trophies, too. On top of that, he’s coached three Olympic beach teams, and they’ve won medals. What have you done?” she challenged.

“I don’t have to be here and take this. I have other teams interested.”

“In your ego? I doubt it.”

“Aspen!” DJ exclaimed.

“What? It’s the truth. Why did you even come out here if you were just going to tell us what we’re supposedly doing wrong without even watching us work out first, or listening to some of the things we think we need to work on, or asking us about what our previous coach had us working on, for that matter?”

“I came out here because you asked for me. You need a coach.”

“We don’t need you, though. And you should really work on your attitude because this ain’t it.” Aspen shook her head. “You didn’t even say hi or shake our hands when you got to the beach. You just walked up and started telling DJ she was serving wrong when you’d seen her serve once. Even if you watched us play and you had notes, which we’re more than willing to take, that’s not how you approach people.”

“Aspen just means–”

“What she’s saying. Aspen means what she’s saying,” Aspen interrupted her far-too-nice partner. “So, we’re done here.” She nodded at the would-be coach.

“Fine. I only took this meeting as a favor, anyway. I don’t need this job.”

“Great. Win-win, then,” she returned. “Bye. You’re on our sand.” She pointed down to where his feet were on their rented court for the day.

He grunted in frustration and more stomped off like a toddler in the middle of a tantrum than walked off.

“What was that?” DJ asked.

“That was me texting Beth and Patrice later, asking them why they didn’t warn us about this guy when we mentioned that we were looking for a new coach. Think they’re trying to sandbag us? They were with him for over a year.”

“No, I don’t think that. You asked if anyone had any recommendations, but you failed to ask if anyone had any good recommendations.”

“My bad, then,” Aspen joked and turned toward her partner. “We’ll find someone. I’ve got a list of–”

“One more person does not a list make, Aspen. You know that finding great beach coaches isn’t exactly easy. We’re a small group of people as is, and you’d have to not only find someone available or willing to leave their current team, which could cause drama we don’t want to deal with, but someone who will actually work with us, unlike that guy who just wanted to point out how bad we are. It’s a chemistry thing more than anything else.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Let’s just get through our practice. I’ll call the next one up on our non-list when I get home and see if he can get out here tomorrow.”

“We could always go without a coach,” DJ suggested. “A lot of teams do.”

“Not the top teams,” she argued. “Name one of the top eight teams on tour or any of the possible qualifiers without a coach…”

“Yeah, I know,” DJ replied. “What if we tried for a tourney or two and see how it goes?”

“We might not have much of a choice,” she said.

???

“Can you come out tomorrow?” Aspen asked into her phone as she walked over to her sliding glass door.

“I can’t. I’m in upstate New York this week and going to Seattle the following week. I’ll be back after that, though, and we can talk then. In the meantime, I can watch tape, and we can chat on video if you think that’ll help until I can get out there to see you. I have a contract that I can’t break, and it wouldn’t be fair to my players to just go, even if I could.”

“I understand. I think that’ll be fine, but I’ll need to talk to my partner,” she replied and pulled open the door.

“No problem. Just let me know, and I hope we’re able to work something out,” he said.

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