Triple Threat

Prologue
All I wanted was to play football.
This is what happened because I tried.

1
Alex’s father denied it every single time she’d ask.
“I know you wanted a boy, Dad. It’s okay, I get it,” she’d tease.
They were having the conversation again, on their way to the Orville town fair in western Pennsylvania. They’d spent the afternoon at the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp in Latrobe, a couple of towns over.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Jack Carlisle said to his daughter. “You were exactly what I wanted. It was almost like I ordered you from Amazon Prime. Free shipping and everything.”
“Then answer me this,” she said. “Why’d you give me a boy’s name?”
Jack Carlisle breathed a deep sigh. “Your mom and I didn’t give you a boy’s name,” he said. “We named you Alexandra. You’re the one who wanted us to call you Alex.”
Alex smirked at her dad from the back seat. She never tired of messing with him like this. And despite the sighs and headshakes, she knew he loved it, too. It happened a lot when they were together. And they were together all the time. Jack Carlisle and Alex’s mom had divorced when Alex was only four. Her mom moved to the West Coast to become a surgeon and remarried, leaving Alex and her dad in Orville. Alex had regular phone calls with her mom, but she was closest to her dad. They were two peas in a pod. They both loved sports, but they loved each other more.
Alex’s dad was a Steelers fan through and through. He followed other sports, too. Just not as closely as football, and not with the same enthusiasm as he rooted for the Steelers. When Alex was around eight years old, her dad began to notice how much she loved running and catching balls, and throwing them most of all. He used to joke that sports were one of the few things he’d passed on to his child. That, and his piercing blue eyes.
Nevertheless, Alex was still convinced he’d wanted a boy. And she told him so now in the car.
“I’m a lawyer, and I can’t even argue with my own daughter,” he said, shaking his head like he did when the Steelers were forced to punt.
They were stopped at a light now. He used the brief pause to turn to Alex in the back seat and said, “You know how much I love you, pumpkin pie.”
He had a lot of nicknames for her, so many that Alex lost track of them all. But “pumpkin pie” was the first one she could remember.
“I do,” she said, giving him a playful wink so he knew she was joking. “Admit it, though. You would have loved me a little more if I were a boy.”
He sighed, resting his forehead against the steering wheel. “Alexandra Carlisle.”
“Call me Alex,” she said, and her dad chuckled. She loved making him laugh. It made her feel as if she’d scored a goal in soccer or struck out a batter in softball.
They’d had a great day at Saint Vincent College watching the Steelers practice. Now they were heading back to Orville, because Jack Carlisle had promised to take Alex to the fair. Her dad had told her about a famous Steelers wide receiver, way back in her grandpa’s time, named Jimmy Orr. Jack Carlisle explained that their town wasn’t named after Jimmy Orr, but probably should have been.
It was already the third week of August. The Steelers were playing preseason games, and Alex knew that the National Football League now had strict rules limiting the number of contact drills between games. But that was fine with her. She enjoyed watching all the passing drills, particularly the amazing accuracy of the three Steelers quarterbacks, from the shortest handoffs to the longest deep throw. She never got tired of watching the running backs and receivers run their patterns with such precision, making their cuts to the inside and outside from almost the exact same points on the field.
More than anything, Alex loved watching the flight of the ball, perfect spirals finding their way to their intended targets.
At one point her dad asked her if she was getting bored.
“Are you serious?” she said. “This is my team in front of me. It’s our team.”
“It’ll be better when they start playing season games,” Jack Carlisle said.
“Yeah.” Alex nodded. “And we’re back at Heinz Field.”
Her dad had a pair of season tickets to Steelers games, on the thirty-yard line, visitors’ side of the stadium. Jack Carlisle said he liked it better over there, because the Steelers coaches and players would be facing them, even from the other side of the field. One ticket for dad, one for Alex. They went to two preseason games and eight regular season games every year. Then, fingers crossed, to a home playoff game or two after that. The preseason games took place in August, and even though the quality of play wasn’t much, the weather was usually pretty nice. Toward the end of the season, though, western Pennsylvania could feel colder than Alaska.
Even so, Alex and her dad never missed a game.
Loving the Steelers was one of the things that bonded Alex and her dad. They were as close as a father and daughter could be, and Alex could never imagine loving anybody or anything as much as her dad.
“My football girl,” he called her, and not just during football season.
The Orville fair was set up on the grounds of the local church. They’d parked their car in the lot, bought tickets, and walked under the balloon archway at the entrance. Now they made their way across the fair, the sun still high, with plenty of daylight left before they’d have to head home for dinner. Seventh grade for Alex wasn’t starting for a couple more weeks. She knew all her friends were trying to milk those last precious days of summer vacation and dreading the first day of school. But not Alex Carlisle. The start of the school year meant that the start of the NFL season was just around the corner. Pretty soon, she and her dad would have their Steelers back. Alex was always a little sad when they broke camp at Saint Vincent, just because the college was so close to where they lived. It made her feel as if the Steelers were practically living in her neighborhood. Heinz Field, on the other hand, was more than an hour away.
Alex still liked football better when the games counted, no matter how many times her dad took off work to take her to training camp. She liked her own sports better when the games counted, too. Softball in the spring, soccer in the fall.
Soccer was supposed to start up the week before she went back to school. Alex was a good enough player. She was a right backer, which meant she mostly played defense. Everybody talked about her passing and her vision and her decision-making.
She was a good, solid player.
But Alex wanted more than that from sports. From anything, really. She didn’t talk about her dreams much. Didn’t talk about them at all, in fact. Not even with her dad.
But her biggest dream was this:
Alex Carlisle wanted to be great at something.
Her favorite teacher at school, her English teacher, Ms. McQuade, always said the greatest adventure of all was the journey to finding your passion.
Alex hadn’t found her passion yet.
Oh, she knew she had a passion for football, and for the Steelers. But that was different. No matter how much you loved your team, you were on the sidelines watching them. From the stands or the sofa.
You weren’t in the game.
Yeah, she told herself. You are good at soccer. Really good. But not great.
The previous year, Alex and her teammates had watched together as the United States women’s team won another World Cup. She had secretly rooted harder for the star player she considered her namesake, Alex Morgan. Her passion was clear. So was Megan Rapinoe’s.
Alex Carlisle wished she could feel that way about soccer. And as good of a pitcher and hitter as she was, she didn’t feel that way about softball, either. Neither sport was her dream. But she had a dream all right. It was just out of her reach. Like trying to grab a star out of the night sky and drag it down from the heavens.
“Hey,” her dad said. “Where were you?”
“What?” Alex said, pulling herself out of her reverie.
“I felt like you left me there for a second,” he said. “I asked what you want to do next.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. It’s like you always say: my head was full of sky.”
“So what do you want to do?”
Alex put her hands on her hips and looked around, getting a panoramic view of the place.
Then she spotted the coolest and biggest stuffed animal she had ever seen in her life. But not just any stuffed animal . . .
“I want you to win me Simba!” she said.
The Lion King was Alex’s favorite movie of all time. She loved the original animated version and watched it over and over to the point where she had the whole thing memorized. When the new live-action movie came out, she had dragged her dad to the Orville Cinema the day it opened for the midnight screening. They went back three or four times after that. One day she hoped to see the Broadway musical in New York City.
Of all the characters, Simba was her favorite. She thought Simba was the bravest. But more than that, Simba’s story resonated with her. It took him a while to realize his own dream, about being king. Just like Alex was taking time to figure out hers.
Alex’s love for The Lion King rivaled even her love for the Steelers.
“Dad,” she said, tugging on his arm, “come on. You’ve got to win me Simba.”
They’d already been to a booth where you tried to win prizes by tossing softballs underhand into a milk crate. That didn’t quite pan out for Alex and her dad. They’d stopped at the dunk tank, where Jack Carlisle hit the buzzer, plunging one of Orville’s high school seniors into the water. The students were raising money for a local charity, so it was for a good cause.
But in the next booth over, where Alex spotted Simba, you had to toss a football through a hole that looked barely wide enough to fit, well, a football. The odds were unfavorable, to say the least. On the wall, an image of a football player was painted with his arms up, as if receiving a pass. The hole was where the hands came together.
Jack Carlisle had once been the starting quarterback at Orville High. He wasn’t good enough to play college ball at Penn State or the University of Pittsburgh. But he’d had enough of an arm to lead the Orville Owls to the league championship in his senior year.
“I’ve got no arm anymore,” he said to Alex. “Heck, when we’re playing catch in the backyard, you throw better than I do.”
Alex knew he was right about that but didn’t want to discourage him from trying to win her the enormous stuffed animal. It would take up the whole back seat of her dad’s car. It was amazing. She couldn’t leave the fair without it.
Jack Carlisle made a beeline for another carnival game, but Alex grabbed his shirt sleeve and pulled him back toward the booth.
“Come on, Dad,” she said. “Aren’t you always telling me the most important thing for a quarterback is hitting what they’re aiming for?”
“Yeah, when you’ve still got the arm,” he said. “I left mine back in high school.”
“You’ve still got it!” she said. “Who’d know better than your favorite wide receiver?”
“I’ve still got it in the backyard,” he said.
“Please, Daddy,” she said, looking up at him with big, pleading eyes. She knew she was being dramatic, but it was fun to tease him.
“Oh, here we go with the please, Daddy,” he said. “I’m assuming that’ll be the same tone of voice you use when you want your own car someday.”
“Today I just want a lion,” she said.
It cost five dollars for three throws. The young man running the booth said that nobody had put a football through the hole since they’d opened that morning.
Now that they were standing at the counter, Alex understood why. She was pretty good at judging distances. This was at least a fifteen-yard throw from where they stood. Maybe even a little more. She looked at the hole, then over at Simba, and thought:
Really big prize.
Really small target.
“You got this,” she said to her dad.
“In your dreams,” he replied.
Alex smiled.
If he only knew.
Her dad made a big circle motion with his right arm, giving himself a quick warm-up. He groaned as he did.
“Nobody likes a whiner,” Alex said to him.
Her dad huffed at that. “You better hope I don’t pull a muscle,” he said, “or you’ll be driving us home.”
“Really?”
“No,” he said, laughing.
The young man handed Jack Carlisle a beat-up-looking ball from a basket of them on the counter and grinned.
“I don’t want you to think I’m betting against you,” he said. “But my shift ends in half an hour, and I bet one of my buddies twenty bucks that nobody would make this throw today. Nobody made it yesterday, either.”
“You can start counting your money right now,” Jack said.
“Hey!” Alex said. “A little positivity couldn’t hurt.”
“More like wishful thinking,” he replied.
Then he took his first shot.
The throw missed the player completely. He groaned even more loudly than he had while warming up. “That was pathetic,” he said.
“You said it, not me,” Alex said, throwing her hands up in defense.
“Hey,” he said, grinning. “Who’s got the bad attitude now?”
His second throw hit the player.
In the knee.
“Getting closer,” Alex said.
“That’s your pep talk?”
Alex just shrugged, but flashed her dad a quick smile.
His last errant throw, to Alex’s great amusement, hit the player right below the belt.
“Now that,” the guy behind the counter said, “has got to hurt.”
Alex couldn’t help it. She laughed. Even though that last miss meant her dad had lost his chance at winning the prize.
“Oh, you think it’s funny, hotshot?” her dad said, giving her a playful nudge. “Why don’t you try?”
“You’re willing to lose another five dollars?” Alex said.
“I’ve seen that arm of yours,” he said. “Maybe I’m looking to win a bet. Even if it costs our friend here his.”
“It’s on,” Alex said.
Her light brown ponytail was sticking out of the opening in the back of her black-and-gold Steelers cap. She removed it so she’d have a clear view of the target. Then she secured the rubber band on her ponytail nice and tight. She didn’t warm up or anything. Just looked up at the guy behind the counter and held out her right hand, palm up. Asking for a ball.
He handed her one. She stepped back a few paces, making the throw about a yard longer. But that was so she could step into her throw.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, smiling to herself.
I got this.
Even though it was a regulation ball, it felt good in her hand. She and her dad always used a regulation ball in the backyard, and she loved the feel of the laces beneath her fingers.
Eye on the hole, she stepped into the throw.
Fired a perfect spiral right through it.
If it had been a basketball shot, the announcers would have said it hit nothin’ but net.
The guy bent at the waist, hands on his knees. “Are you kidding?”
“My football girl,” Jack Carlisle said to him, proudly slapping a hand onto Alex’s shoulder.
Alex had shocked even herself. She hadn’t expected the ball to go through, but it had. And maybe she could even do it again. Turning to the man in the booth, she put out her hand and said, “Another ball, please.”
“You already won the prize,” he said, incredulous.
“Yeah, but my dad paid for three throws,” she said. “Gotta get our money’s worth.”
He handed her another ball, shaking his head. She took an extra step back this time.
The ball whistled through the hole again.
“Show-off,” her dad said.
“How old are you?” the guy asked.
“Twelve,” Alex replied.
“No way.”
“Way,” she said.
She put out her hand once more, and he tossed her the last ball. She fired another spiral right through the opening.
“Money,” Jack Carlisle said.
“Not for me today,” the man said in disappointment. He pointed toward the stuffed animals. “Which one do you want?”
Alex pointed to Simba. The guy used a grabbing stick to lower Simba off the wall of prizes and held it out to Alex. She received it as if he were handing her the Super Bowl trophy.
“You’ve got some arm for a girl,” the young man said.
“I’ve got some arm, period,” she said.
When they got home that night, Alex told her dad what she’d been keeping inside all summer: she wanted to try out for the football team at Orville Middle.


2
The walls of Alex’s room were covered in Steelers posters, and the shelves were lined with soccer and softball trophies and medals. Simba was propped up next to Alex on her bed, taking up about half the mattress and forcing her to relocate some of her smaller stuffed animals to her desk chair.
Alex was prepared for the conversation she and her dad were about to have. She knew trying out for the football team would come with questions and concerns. They’d talked a little about it over dinner, but they continued it here, in her room, surrounded by the greatest football team ever to exist.
It was just the two of them, as always. Alex’s mom was living in San Francisco. But she and her mom had a good relationship, even long distance. Her mom now had a four-year-old son with her new husband, Richard.
She got the boy, Alex had thought more than once.
Alex had expected her dad to try to talk her out of it. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t given his permission yet, either.
“You know why I felt so good today making those throws at the fair?” she said. “Because for a few minutes, I felt like I was in the game.”
Her dad was sitting at the end of her bed, facing her.
“I always knew how well you could throw,” he said.
“For a girl?” Alex said with a smirk.
“You know me better than that,” he said. “And no one knows better than I do how football is your thing.”
“But I don’t just want it to be a thing when I’m sitting with you at Heinz Field, Dad,” she said. “Or next to you on the couch.”
“A lot of people love football,” he said. “And hardly any of them ever suit up and play.”
“Is this about how I might get hurt?”
“Hey,” he said. “I know you can get hurt playing any sport. You get tackled in soccer, too, and the only padding you wear is below your knees.”
“I hate when they get tackled in the World Cup and beg for calls,” Alex said. “I never did that.”
“My girl,” he said.
He called her that a lot, but this time it made Alex think of something.
“We wouldn’t even still be talking about this if I were a boy,” she said.
“Hey, you know that’s not true,” he said. “I have lots of friends who don’t want their sons to play. They’ve all read the news that’s come out about concussions and head injuries and all the rest of it.”
“But most of those boys will get to play,” Alex said. “And there’s nothing in the rules that says I can’t, if I’m good enough.”
“You’re right about that,” he said. “I checked online while you were setting up for dinner. The announcement on the school website said that the tryouts are open to anybody in the seventh grade.” He grinned at her, the fun in his eyes this time. “Which would include a girl, even if she is most definitely not just anybody.”
“So I can go for it?” Alex said.
Jack Carlisle breathed a deep sigh. “You can go for it, kiddo.”
Alex tackled her dad with a hug, nearly knocking the wind out of him.
“Whoa there—save that energy for the field!” he said.
“The tryouts are next week, though,” Alex said, a frown shadowing her face. “The same nights as soccer tryouts.”
“Your soccer coach isn’t going to be happy,” her dad said.
“She’s probably not going to be the only one.”
Alex’s dad stood up and kissed the top of her head before walking toward the bedroom door. He could see how excited and happy she was.
“I love you,” Alex said.
“Always nice to hear,” he said. “But what did I do in particular?”
“You didn’t say no.”
“You’re the one who’s going to be putting herself out there,” he said. “How could I possibly say no to something I’ve been telling you to do your whole life?”
“You think Mom will approve?”
He paused in the doorway. “You don’t need her approval,” he said. Not in a rude way, just as a matter of fact. “But, yeah, I think she will. You know how big she is on chasing after what you want.”
They both knew what he meant. Liza Carlisle—now Dr. Liza Borelli—had wanted to be a doctor more than anything. But she didn’t go to med school after college. Instead, she followed her heart and married Alex’s dad, and they had Alex a few years later. Suddenly, her dreams of becoming a surgeon began drifting further away from reality. In the end, she had to choose: sacrificing the dream for the family or the family for the dream.
At thirty, she did eventually attend med school, and she and Alex’s dad got a divorce. Alex had been four. She didn’t understand why her mom was leaving her, no matter how many times either parent tried to explain it. All Alex thought at the time was that her mom didn’t want her.
“Someday you’ll understand,” her mom had said to Alex a few years back.
“You mean how selfish you are?” Alex had replied.
Her dad always said she was old, even when she was young.
“You will always be a big part of my life,” her mom said. “But I want more out of my own life than I have, and if I don’t do this now, I never will.”
Some of Alex’s earliest memories were of the day her mother left. She could only remember small things. The suitcases in the front hall. The car waiting to take her mother to the airport. How she couldn’t stop crying.
“Dreams and choices are complicated,” her mom had said. “Sometimes more complicated for women than men. When you’re older, you will understand.”
And, over time, Alex did. She understood why her mom had chosen to leave, and why it had to happen when it did.
Mostly she understood the part about the complicated nature of dreams.
And choices.
Her mom had made a big one, leaving Alex. Deciding to pursue the career rather than care for her only child. Running away from her obligations, as Alex saw it. And maybe, to an extent, she still felt that way. The feeling of being rejected. It was why, even now, she had difficulty making friends. Really close friends. She had spent a lot of her life being afraid to put herself out there. She wasn’t an outcast, exactly. But sometimes she just felt safer being part of the crowd, having a lot of good friends instead of one or two really close ones.
That way she didn’t have to risk getting hurt.
But somehow going out for football felt different. Or maybe it was just a different Alex. Like they said on those TV commercials: a new and improved Alex Carlisle.
Even though she hadn’t raised the subject with her dad until today, or with any of her friends yet, she had been thinking about trying out for football all summer. And the more she thought about it, the less afraid she became.
She was going for it. Just like her mom. It made her a little proud. Made her feel brave.
Opening up her laptop on her bed, she typed in the school’s website and reread the page about tryouts. They’d be spread out over four nights and include skill training, sprints, and a mile run, plus an obstacle course. Alex had never gone through anything this intensive for softball or soccer. But if there was one thing she knew, it was that she could run all day without getting tired.
And there was one other big thing:
She knew she could throw a football as well as anyone her age in Orville, Pennsylvania.
Getting up to look in her closet now, she picked her football off the floor and put her fingers over the laces. The laces felt as good as they had at the fair.
Seeing her hand on the ball brought a smile to her face.
No way the football cared whether a boy or girl was throwing it, she thought.
The door to her room was closed. She was alone with the ball and all her big ideas about making the team.
“Let’s do this,” she said softly to herself. “Let’s do this.”
Then she stood tall, left hand out in front of her, the ball set over her right shoulder, as if standing in the pocket.


3
Alex’s dad was late getting home from the office on Friday, the night of the football tryouts meeting. The women’s intramural basketball league had reserved the middle school gym for that night, so their meeting would take place at Orville High. Alex didn’t mind. She liked getting a preview of the hallways she’d be walking through in just a few years. Their neighbor, Kelly, who looked after Alex during the week, offered to drop her off at the high school.
But Alex wanted her dad with her. Not because she was feeling anxious. Just in case she started to.
“This feels a little like my first day of school,” Alex said in the car.
“You got this,” he said. “And I’ve got you. Remember that.”
The parents were seated in bleachers on both sides of the gym. There was a long table set up underneath the scoreboard. As Alex and her dad entered, some of the teachers from Orville Middle were handing out sign-up forms.
One of them was Mr. Maybin, who’d taught Alex sixth-grade math.
“Hey you,” he said to Alex. “What are you doing here?”
“Signing up,” Alex said.
“This is for football,” Mr. Maybin said, as if Alex had stumbled into the wrong gym.
“I know,” Alex said, feeling confident.
“Well, okay then!” he said, a little awkwardly, handing her a form. “Make sure to get a parent or guardian’s signature before submitting.”
Alex smiled and took the form. “Thanks, Mr. M.”
She knew she was going to be the only girl on the gym floor that night. But if she was being honest, she’d known that well before leaving home. Knew from the moment she’d decided to try out. But now she was here. No turning back. There were seventh-grade boys seated on both sides of the basketball court, with a wide lane cutting between. Alex walked up that lane now, feeling every eye in the gym on her. Some of them even belonged to the parents up in the bleachers with her dad. She heard some giggles, too. And some whispers. But then relief washed over her when she spotted a familiar face in the crowd—tan, freckled cheeks, a messy crop of chestnut brown curls, skinny legs crossed in front of him. She’d gone to school with Gabe Hildreth since kindergarten, and they shared all the same classes. Over the years, they’d grown to be pretty good friends. Gabe had been a star wide receiver on the sixth-grade team at Orville Middle.
Alex walked over to where he was sitting, and he made some room. She sat down next to him.
Now Gabe was whispering.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“What you’re doing here,” she whispered back. “Trying out for football.”
The coach of this year’s seventh-grade team was a man named Ed Mencken, a phys ed teacher at the high school who Alex knew had played football with her dad when they went to Orville High. Mr. Mencken had been a tight end, according to Alex’s dad. Alex spotted him now up near the table and thought he looked to be in good enough shape to go out for a pass right now.
But he wasn’t going out for any passes at the moment. He was walking down the aisle between his prospective players, straight in Alex’s direction.
“Excuse me, young lady,” he said.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
He was standing over her now.
“Are you in the right place?” Mr. Mencken asked, totally serious.
“Yes, sir,” Alex said. But the way he said it made her feel a little unsure herself.
If everybody in the gym hadn’t been staring at her before, they were now. Mr. Mencken had a voice as big as himself.
“This meeting is about football tryouts,” he said, as if Alex were a confused child lost in the woods.
Alex’s dad was in the front row of the bleachers, to her right. He could hear what Mr. Mencken had said. Alex was pretty sure the whole gym heard. Her dad stood now, and Alex held her breath, worried he might make this moment even more awkward for her than it already was.
“She’s in the right place, Ed,” he said.
Mr. Mencken turned to see where the voice was coming from. Then he saw who it belonged to.
“Your daughter?” he said to Jack Carlisle.
Alex’s dad gave a quick nod. “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Mencken looked as if he wanted to say something more but decided against it. He simply walked back to the table, picked up the microphone (even though Alex couldn’t imagine why he needed one), and started talking about this year’s team.
He said that of all the boys in the gym, twenty-four of them would make the team. That’s how he said it: boys. As if he’d forgotten Alex was there. Or maybe he was ignoring her. He said the Owls would play an eight-game schedule against other middle schools in their area, and at the end of the season there would be a championship game between the two teams with the best records. The game would be played the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Then he described what they should expect over the four nights of tryouts.
“From now on, I’ll be Coach Mencken,” he said. “Even though we haven’t picked the team yet, the season starts Monday night. This will be a real training camp, not some summer camp. You boys—” This time he managed to stop himself. “You all are going to work harder over the next few days than you’ve ever worked on anything in your lives.”
He smiled, but didn’t look all that happy to Alex.
“And you’re going to love it,” he said with a smirk.
He walked back up to the table and turned around, facing everybody in the gym at once.
“And if you’re not willing to put in the work to be the best football player you can be, then don’t bother filling out that form in your hand,” he said. “Because this isn’t the team for you and I’m not the coach for you.”
From somewhere behind Alex she heard someone say, “I heard this guy was tough.”
If Mr. Mencken heard, he didn’t let on.
“Long story short?” he said. “I’m a football guy. And I want football guys playing for me.”
Alex swore he was looking at her again as he said that. Or maybe she’d just imagined it.
I’m as much a football guy as anybody in the gym, she thought.
Coach Mencken put down the microphone. The meeting was over. But a lot of the boys from her school were still staring daggers at Alex.
“You never said anything about wanting to play football,” Gabe said when they were standing. The parents were up and chatting now, some asking Coach Mencken questions about the team. The other seventh graders were milling about, catching up on their summers.
“I didn’t make up my mind to try out until the last couple of days,” she said, then shrugged. “And then I figured if I told you, you’d only try to talk me out of it. So I decided to surprise you . . . and I guess everybody else.”
He blew out some air. But he was smiling.
“Well,” he said, “mission accomplished on that.”
“Mr. Mencken didn’t seem too happy to see me,” Alex said.
“From what I hear,” Gabe said, “the only thing that makes him happy is winning football games.”
“Maybe he’ll like the idea of a girl on his team better if I show him I can do that,” she said, then paused. “How do you feel about all this?”
She didn’t clarify, but knew Gabe understood what she meant. How did he feel about her trying out for the team?
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It does to me.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Gabe said.
“Anybody can get hurt playing football,” Alex said.
Gabe gave her a long look and said, “I wasn’t just talking about getting hurt on the field.”
Alex knew he spoke the truth. Already she could tell that Coach was skeptical of her. What would the rest of the guys think? But she couldn’t worry about that now. Today was a win.
“See you Monday night,” Alex said before catching up with her dad.
“Unless you change your mind, of course,” Gabe said.
“I won’t,” she said. “Come on. You know me better than that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“You always knew I loved football . . .” she said.
“I thought that meant watching it,”
“Maybe I finally got tired of just watching.”
Gabe walked toward his dad then, and Alex looked around for hers. She saw him underneath one of the side baskets, talking to Mr. Mencken. Her dad seemed to be doing most of the talking. But at least he appeared to be acting cordial.
When they were in the car Alex asked, “What was that all about with Coach?”
“I just wanted to make sure we understood each other.”
“Dad,” she said. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him I wanted him to treat you the same as every other player on that field and work you just as hard.”
“And that was it?”
“Pretty much . . .”
“Daaaad,” she said.
She could see a smile creep onto his face.
“I might have mentioned one other thing.”
Now he was really smiling.
“What?” she said.
“I might have told him that if he tried to work you harder than everybody else, or didn’t give you a fair shot at making the team, I’d tell everybody that he used to cry like a little baby when we lost a game.”
“He did?” Alex said. “For real?”
“Waa waa waa,” her dad said, mimicking a whining toddler.
“Wait,” Alex said. “There’s no crying in baseball, but I never heard about football . . .”
One of their favorite movies to watch together was A League of Their Own, about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Alex’s favorite moment was when the team manager, played by Tom Hanks, told one of his players, “There’s no crying in baseball.”
“Same rule applies,” her dad said, winking.


4
Coach had sent out an email blast over the weekend to all who had registered for tryouts, explaining how there would be no contact or tackling drills until the roster had been set. The team’s first official practice would be held the following week, at the start of the school year.
But he reminded all the players who’d be attending the tryouts to show up on Monday night with helmets and shoulder pads.
The last line of the email read: “There will still be football activities this week. You all need to get used to dressing like football players.”
Alex didn’t have a helmet or pads. There had never been any reason for her to have them.
Until now.
On Sunday afternoon, Alex and her dad went shopping at the Dick’s Sporting Goods in downtown Orville. By then Jack Carlisle had done some online research about the best and safest helmets for twelve-year-old players. He told Alex it was the first time he’d had to think about buying a helmet since he was in high school and his own father had taken him to the local sporting goods store, back before superstores like Dick’s existed.
“Gotta tell you, kiddo,” he said. “These things cost a lot more than they did when I was playing.”
Alex grinned.
“I’ll bet a loaf of bread does, too,” she said.
“And I can’t believe how many different kinds there are,” he said.
“Waa waa waa,” she said, leaning into her dad.
All joking aside, Alex knew how lucky she was to have a dad like hers. One who not only supported her dreams but helped her reach them. She never took that for granted.
The manager of Dick’s, Mr. Pritchett, was an old friend of Alex’s dad. Over the years, they had bought Alex’s softball glove and bat and soccer shin pads and soccer spikes at Dick’s.
This trip to the store was different.
When Mr. Pritchett greeted them, he said to Alex, “Don’t tell me. You grew out of last year’s soccer cleats, right?”
“We’re actually looking for a football helmet,” her dad said.
Mr. Pritchett looked genuinely confused.
“Who for?” he said.
“Alex,” Jack Carlisle said, like it should be obvious.
Mr. Pritchett looked down at Alex. She smiled at him and shrugged. Then he looked over at her dad.
“Seriously?” he said.
“We hardly ever joke about football at our house,” Alex’s dad said.
“She’s going out for the team?” Mr. Pritchett said.
“That she is.” He put one arm around Alex and squeezed tight. Almost like he knew what was coming and was bracing Alex for it.
“But, uh . . . are you sure she can, um . . .” Mr. Pritchett paused, as if the rest of his thought had gotten stuck in his throat somewhere.
“Try out? Handle the pressure? Make the team?” Alex’s dad guessed, knowing full well that wasn’t what Mr. Pritchett was asking. “We wouldn’t be here if the answer to any of those questions was no.”
“I’ve sold girls lacrosse helmets before,” Mr. Pritchett said. “But I don’t believe I’ve ever sold a football helmet to a girl.”
Alex thought he made it sound as if he were about to sell a bicycle to a fish.
“Well, Scott, my old friend,” Alex’s dad said, clapping him on the back, “there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”
Then he told Mr. Pritchett that he was actually looking for a specific helmet, one he’d researched, a Riddell Youth Speed Flex.
“They’re kind of expensive,” Mr. Pritchett said.
“And kind of safe, too, from what I read,” Alex’s dad said.
Mr. Pritchett chuckled. “Helmets were a lot cheaper in our day.”
“So was a loaf of bread,” Jack Carlisle said.
He gave Alex a quick wink. She winked back. They were sharing a private joke.
Even though football, more than ever, was no joke with them.
The colors for the Orville High team were blue and white, and the helmets were white with blue trim. The kids trying out for the seventh-grade team were encouraged to buy white helmets, too, if possible. Coach Mencken made some suggestions about brands in his email but said parents were free to buy whatever they thought was safest.
Alex’s dad told her that the Speed Flex had gotten a five-star rating on safety and comfort.
“I was looking for six stars out of five, to tell you the truth,” he’d said to Alex on the way to the store. “I’ve read the same stuff about concussions as everybody else.”
“I know this isn’t easy for you, Dad,” Alex had said. “But I appreciate you letting me do it anyway.”
Mr. Pritchett said they were in luck. He’d just gotten a shipment of Riddell youth helmets that included the Speed Flex. And in the Orville blue and white.
“What am I gonna stock?” he said to Alex’s dad. “Notre Dame colors?”
Once Alex had a Speed Flex on her head, she thought it was pretty much the coolest thing she’d ever worn in her life. There were inflatable pockets on the inside that were supposed to provide extra protection. Alex had done some research of her own. The consensus seemed to be that the helmet should fit without having to fasten the chin straps. Hers did. But fastening the straps turned out to be no problem.
She secured the chin straps in place and walked over to look at herself in a mirror.
“It’s perfect,” she said to her dad.
“But does it really fit?”
“It fits so well that I may sleep in it,” she said.
“Okay, that’s weird.”
She took off the helmet and carried it with her to the section where the shoulder pads were. Dick’s carried three different brands, the names of which they recognized from the research they’d done. But they were set on Wilson Rush pads, which provided the same support as the other brands but just looked a little sleeker to Alex, even though no one except her was ever going to see them once she had her jersey on.
If she got to wear a blue Orville jersey.
When she looked at herself in the mirror with the pads on over her T-shirt, she thought she looked a little bit like Iron Man.
“I look like I’m on my way to Avengers practice,” she said to her dad.
“Maybe you should be, instead of football practice,” Alex heard from behind her.
Jeff Stiles, who’d been the quarterback on the sixth-grade team, and his dad had come walking into the shoulder pad section of Dick’s.
“What did you say?” Alex said to Jeff.
Jeff tried to act surprised. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “I didn’t say anything.”
But she knew what she’d heard, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
“Hey, Jeff,” she said. “You’re gearing up, too, I guess?”
“Just some new pads,” he said. “I’ve got my same helmet from last season.”
“Like he’s going to have the same job,” Mr. Stiles said, putting his arm around his son’s shoulders. “QB 1.”
Starting quarterback. His dad made it sound as if Jeff getting the job were a foregone conclusion.
Jeff looked at Alex.
“So you’re still doing this, huh?”
“I must be,” Alex said. “I think these pads would look pretty silly at soccer practice.”
“A lot of the guys think it’s pretty silly for a girl to try out for our team,” came Jeff’s retort.
“And not just the boys on the team,” Mr. Stiles added.
Jack Carlisle smiled at Jeff’s dad. But Alex knew her dad. It was the fakest one he had.
“You mean the parents, Bob?” Jack Carlisle said. “Last time I checked, middle school sports were supposed to be about the kids.”
“Like girls go out for football teams all the time,” Mr. Stiles said with an arrogant laugh.
“Not all the time,” Alex’s dad said. “Just this time. And like it’s always been: the ones who are good enough are the ones who get the jobs, same as it was when you and I were getting after it in high school.”
Alex looked to see what Mr. Stiles’s reaction would be. Her dad had told her that when he and Mr. Stiles were at Orville High, they’d both gone out for quarterback. Jack Carlisle had won the position as a sophomore and had kept it all the way through their senior season. Mr. Stiles had been a running back.
“Yeah,” Mr. Stiles said. He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice. “Good times.”
“Well, see you tomorrow night,” Alex said to Jeff.
“Good times,” he said, rolling his eyes.
There was one more thing for them to buy before football tryouts the following night:
A football.
Alex would have been fine if seventh graders used a regulation-size ball. She already knew she could grip one just fine. After all, she’d thrown a regulation ball at the fair to win Simba. But by now, she’d discovered they would be using an intermediate-size ball, a Youth Size 7.
A regulation ball, the size they used for high school football and college and the pros, was a 9.
Alex’s dad bought her a Youth 7 to take home with them, along with her new helmet and Iron Man pads.
The second they were home, Alex hurried to put on her helmet and pads, so she and her dad could practice with the new ball in the backyard.
“Did you hear what Jeff said?” Alex said to her dad.
“I did,” he said. “And I heard what his dad said, plain as day. Apparently he’s convinced that the football gods want his son to be the quarterback he never was.”
He shook his head. “It’s just football,” he continued. “But some things never change, even from when I was a kid. Some of the parents in the gym the other night were still making it out to be more serious than climate change.”
“I take it seriously,” Alex said.
“That’s different,” he said.
“How?”
“Because this is your dream,” he said. “And you’re allowed to chase your own dreams as hard as you can.”
“I do want this, Dad,” she said. “And I’m not gonna lie: Jeff and his dad’s attitude today made me want it even more.”
“It’s not about them,” her dad said in a stern voice. “It’s about you.”
“I know.”
“And yes, I know how much you want this, sweetheart,” he said.
She knew there was no way in the world he could see her smiling at him from behind her facemask.
“I’d appreciate it,” she said, “if you wouldn’t call me sweetheart when I’m in uniform.”
“Consider it done,” he said.
He jogged out to the middle of their yard. She threw him a pass, and then another, and another. Every time she caught the ball, she’d rub it up a little, like a pitcher with a new baseball, trying to bang it up a little. Make it feel less slick. She’d read about how when NFL teams got a new shipment of footballs, they’d do all sorts of crazy things to break them in for their quarterbacks, including sticking them inside a sack and banging it against a wall.
But the laces felt the same to her. And she felt as if she could control the smaller ball even better than a 9.
“How’s it feeling?” her dad asked, starting to back up a little.
“Sweet,” she said.
“Please don’t say ‘sweet’ when you’re in uniform, sweetheart,” he said.
Everything was fine back here, Alex thought, just the two of them. Like always. Playing a game of catch. Alex knew it wasn’t going to be anything like this tomorrow. She was going to feel like the new kid at school, even though she’d known most of these boys from growing up in Orville. She had lived here her whole life. But tomorrow she would feel like an outsider.
The girl who was always holding back, now putting herself out there, knowing that just about every other kid on the field had already made up their mind about her. Rejection was a feeling Alex knew well. Didn’t make it any less painful, though.
She had heard it in Jeff Stiles’s voice today. And he didn’t even know her dream. At least not all of it.
“You can really catch the ball,” her dad said. “Coach might take a look at those hands and try to turn you into a wide receiver.”
Alex had the ball. She didn’t respond, just motioned with her left hand for her dad to go long, toward their deer fencing at the end of the yard.
She let the ball go, not putting too much air underneath it, not wanting her dad to be too close to the fence when he caught up with her pass.
He wasn’t. He reached up and caught the spiral with plenty of room to spare.
“I’m not a wide receiver,” Alex said, taking off her helmet and shaking out her long brown hair. “I’m a quarterback.”