Page 28 of The Keeper
“Alright ladies, I don’t want to waste a lot of time talking at you,” Mack says, focusing on the women standing in the front of the group.
Of course, Gina is front and center wearing what I can only assume are hot pants and a sports bra. My eyes roll so hard they might detach from my body.
I keep my eyes trained on my water bottle, not hearing a lot of what he says until he mentions that he’ll be working with the goalkeepers.
My head snaps up and our eyes collide. Coach Johnson has always worked with me directly. Why the sudden change?
I look over at Erin Thomas and Kristal Agnes, the two other keepers on our team.
“Did you know about this?” I whisper. Both of them shake their heads. “What’s the deal? He shouldn’t be making changes like this without at least talking to us about it.” Erin shrugs, but I can see that Kristal is as irritated as I am.
“Did you have something to share, Rachel?” I hear from the front. I look quickly up to the front and see Mack looking at me.
I clear my throat, suddenly nervous as all eyes turn to look in my direction.
“We were just wondering why we’re making a change to GK training so late in the season.”
My reply is cautious, as I want to ensure I don’t implicate that Mack is doing anything wrong. Heisthe coach, after all. But I also suspect that he’s doing this on purpose. There’s no reason for Mack to focus on our training. Coach Johnson and I have a system, a schedule, a plan. I don’t want to throw a wrench in it right now.
“Coach Johnson has expressed an interest in focusing more on offensive training and strategy, as that's where his interest lies. I’ll be focusing more on the defense. We can talk more about it when the four of us hit the gym in a few.”
His reply, while answering my question, is like a slug to the gut. I’m surprised and slightly disappointed to know that Coach Johnson asked to change his focus. Did he not like working with us?
“Alright ladies, let’s get started.”
Everyone disburses into groups on the field while Erin, Kristal and I turn and head to the training room, talking softly about the change on the way there.
We normally only work out in the gym in our free time, as Coach Walker always wanted us to feel cohesive as a team during actual practice. It made sense to me. It spoke of her having a vision. Splitting the GKs off on our own feels wrong. But I know I can’t risk voicing my opinion, especially when things with Mack are so tentative.
When Mack walks in fifteen minutes later, we’re jogging lightly on the treadmills with weights around our ankles.
“I like the weights,” Mack says, standing with his arms crossed in front of our machines. “It plays perfectly into what I want to do with the three of you over the next few weeks.” He reaches over to his bag and pulls out more weights, walking over to each of us and strapping them to our wrists. “From now on, I want you to wear these as often as possible.”
I glance quickly at Erin and see her face break out into a smile. Erin read online over the summer that a lot of pro players wore light weights around to increase their speed and reflexes. If you could move quickly and accurately with an extra twenty pounds on your body, imagine how fast you would move once those weights were removed. She put together a bunch of research and took her findings to Coach J, but ultimately Coach Walker didn’t like that method and told Erin it wasn’t going to happen.
“I can see from Erin’s reaction that I won’t get much of a fight from you on this. It’s a technique used in the professional level in a lot of different sports, and I’ve heard great feedback so far.” Mack is standing in front of us again. “But I do mean as often as possible. I know it isn’t fashionable…”
“We aren’t concerned about that,” Kristal cuts in. “We spend a lot of time covered in sweat and dirt.”
I let out a little laugh, picturing our practice last week after the one day it poured rain in California. The three of us were basically standing in pits of mud. Once practice was over, we spent a good twenty minutes in a mud fight. Jeremy had refused to let me in his car when he picked me up for dinner that night.
“Sweat and dirt,” I breathe out, with a smile. “The glamorous life of a keeper.”
I look back to Mack and see him watching me intently. My smile quickly drops and I replace it with an unaffected expression. Mack clears his throat, averting his eyes. After giving us further instructions and pulling us off the treadmills, he heads back out to the field, leaving us to train on our own.
“Damn that man is a fox,” Erin says, once he’s finally out of the gym. “Think he has a girlfriend?”
I let out a snort of laughter.
“Laugh all you want,” Kristal pipes in, “but Gina said she wants to hit it. Hopefully he’s taken so we can throw her off his scent.” She sits on the ground and begins doing sit-ups while throwing a medicine ball at the wall at the same time, catching it before it drops. This bitch is a tank and IwishI could train as hard as her. She might be a backup GK, but she’s one of the ones who will go pro, without a doubt. She just needs a little time to develop more.
“Fucking Gina.” Erin slams her ball to the ground, picks it up, and then slams it down again. “If that bitch tries to crawl into Coach’s pants, we could have a huge issue, and our team doesn’t need that.”
“If he’s really as much of a ladies man as he looks online, she won’t have a hard time getting him between her thighs,” Kristal adds.
“He’s a ladies man?” I ask, my stomach turning just a bit. I remember the pictures I saw on his Facebook page, but those weren’t very recent. I thought maybe he had grown out of the nameless hookups phase, unlike my brother.
“Oh yeah,” Kristal says through heavy breaths, lying on the ground, still throwing the medicine ball at the wall. “Ruth-Ann said she couldn’t find anything about him online. But I did a little digging. His last thing was that Victoria’s Secret model with the sexy body. What’s her name?”
