Page 8 of One on One
Hi Ben,
I’m looking forward to working with you again! I’m starting a series highlighting Ardwyn’s top players at each position over the years, so I’m looking for some old stats.
Attached is a list of what I need. It’s pretty straightforward. The video has to be final by Thursdayafternoon, so please send me everything by Wednesday afternoon.
Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
I sit back in my chair, satisfied. I even forced myself to include the two exclamation points for extra-friendly vibes. Works well with others! Professional, yet feminine!
Next up, a call to IT to figure out why I can’t access the video archives yet. I drag a finger down the phone directory Donna gave me, looking for the right name and extension. Eric’s name is near the top, withAssistant Coachnext to it. I run into Ben’s a few rows below it, followed by his title:Director of Analytics.
The realization cuts like an infomercial knife through a watermelon. What did Williams say at the meeting?Our director of analytics is a modern guy, and he agreed with me. We made our opinions clear to Coach Thomas.I assumed Ben was the director of operations. “Director of analytics” wasn’t even a position when we were in school. I should’ve realized Williams was talking about Ben, though. He was a statistics major. As a student manager, he did all the normal stuff: helped break down film, inventoried equipment, did laundry. But he was also constantly waving a piece of paper in front of Coach Maynard’s face with some graph or chart he’d compiled when he was supposed to be sleeping, urging him to tweak the lineup or rhapsodizing about offensive efficiency.
I remember one particular rant. “Elliott should never bother practicing that baseline shot again. Every time he does, he’s lighting fifteen seconds of his basketball career on fire. He hasn’t even tried it in a game all season.” He threw his hands up in the air.
Coach Maynard frowned. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“The numbers aren’tlying.” Like he needed to defend their honor.
It was a late night in the office and I had been listening to the conversation for too long. I tapped a few keys on my laptop and turned it to face Maynard. “Look, Coach, I made a video montage of all the times he’s taken that shot in a game this year.”
It was a black screen.
Ben and I high-fived. Maynard laughed and shook his head.
Ben argued against my hiring. Williams’s opinion doesn’t bother me as much because it’s not personal. He doesn’t know me. But Ben does, and doesn’t want me here anyway.
That stings, badly. And it jibes with the way he acted this morning. But why is someone I used to work closely with—so closely that I still remember his Wawa sandwich order—acting this way? I must be missing something.
There’s no time for this. If I’m going to convince Coach Thomas that hiring me was the right call while Williams and Ben are whispering in his ear that it was a mistake, I need to focus.
I set off for the storage closet to check out the state-of-the-art equipment Eric promised. The Church, including the office, is long overdue for a remodel. Even when it’s clean it seems dusty, and none of the rooms have enough electrical outlets. But the rich wood molding lining the hallways is charming, if battered, and the carpet is plush, although it’s faded from its original Ardwyn Blue.
I pass the room where the student managers work and a wave of nostalgia hits me, even though it’s barelyrecognizable without the odor of Monster Energy drinks permeating the air. Shockingly, there’s not aSaturdays Are for the Boysflag in sight. It’s crammed full of desks with backpacks everywhere, and music blares from a laptop, but nobody’s there. Practice just started, so they’re probably in the gym. I’ll introduce myself later.
I pull open the door to the storage closet, step inside the dark space, and stumble backward. A reedy twentysomething with shaggy hair is standing in front of my beautiful new equipment, biting his thumbnail and watching a clip fromImpractical Jokerson his phone.
“Uh, hi,” I say.
“I needed a minute,” he says, barely glancing up.
“Come here often?” I quip.
Donna hollers from down the hall. “Kyle! Where the hell did you go?”
He shoots me a pleading look. “Can you shut the door?”
Whatever he did wrong, hiding isn’t going to make Donna any less pissed. “It’ll get worse the longer you make her wait,” I say. It may have been a while since I last worked here, but I still know some things about this place.
The first thingI want to film is a fake press conference with jokey questions for Coach Thomas. After Kyle reluctantly drags himself out of the closet, I acquaint myself with all the gear at my disposal, set up a camera in the media room, and check the lighting and sound. I’ll have only thirty minutes with Thomas tomorrow and it’ll be the first time we meet, so it needs to go smoothly.
As the day winds down, I sit at my desk to review the testfootage. A phone call from the payroll department about my direct deposit sidetracks me for a minute, and when I hang up, an unfamiliar voice emanates from my speakers: “Coach Thomas seems cool.”
I look at all the open windows spread across my three monitors and then realize where the noise is coming from. After I set up the camera, I left it running while I ran back to my office to grab my phone and got waylaid by Ted Horvath in the hallway for a while. Two of the student managers appear to have parked themselves in front of the camera to eat lunch while I was gone.
One of them speaks. “I guess. At least he’s not, like, a sexual predator or something.”
Blood whooshes in my ears.
