minded.
Now that the fateful Thursday had arrived, Bobby felt nervous. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes to four. The young gym teacher gathered up her blank squad rosters and playbook, walked across the empty gymnasium and out the big double doors that led to Louth Athletic Field. She’d worked late into the evening the night before, helping Ole Amundsen chalk out a regulation hockey field in the center of the track’s oval.
Outside the double doors Bobby blinked, briefly blinded by the late-afternoon sun. It was a golden September day, warm with just a hint of fall’s coolness. Perfect field hockey weather, she thought. Then she saw that the new hockey field was aflame with scarlet gym tunics. It looked like practically the entire school had turned out for tryouts. Bobby’s heart swelled with emotion.
Why, these poor kids have been just craving a field hockey team! she thought. They had simply been waiting for someone to teach them how to satisfy the hunger for physical activity that had been building inside them. And I’m the one to do it! thought Bobby as she walked toward the sea of girls.
“How do you feel about the turnout for tryouts, Coach Bobby?” Peggy Cotler approached her, flipping open her reporter’s notebook in a businesslike way that couldn’t hide her excitement.
“It’s terrific.” Bobby instinctively raised her voice so that more of the girls could hear. “If the Metamora girls show half as much skill as they do school spirit, why, we’ve got the makings of a great team!”
“What do you consider to be the qualities—” began Peggy, but Bobby interrupted her. “Interview later—I’ve got a lot of potential players to put through their paces!” She blew a sharp blast on her whistle. “Everyone to the end line! Count off in groups of ten, and we’ll start with some sprints!”
Of course the large turnout meant Bobby spent extra time weeding through the mass of field hockey hopefuls. She started by eliminating the weakest applicants—like precocious Lotta Reiniger, who had skipped a grade and was in the fourth form, although she wouldn’t turn thirteen until November. She was followed by eighteen-year-old Munty Blaine, who was as stocky as a stevedore, with a voice as hoarse from her years of illicit smoking. “Your wind’s no good,” Bobby had to tell her. She’d seen Munty panting asthmatically five minutes into a game of ring toss.
“I’m quitting cigarettes, really I am,” rasped Munty pleadingly.
“I’m sorry,” said Bobby, really meaning it. To the younger students she could offer the opportunity to try again next year, but this was Munty’s last year at Metamora. The disconsolate sixth former threw herself down on the sidelines in despair.
Lotta didn’t give up so easily. “If I can’t play, can I be your assistant?” she begged. “I can write down everyone’s names and help you keep track.” And so the pint-sized student followed the rangy gym teacher, busily writing down names as Bobby put each group of girls through basic drills in dribbling, passing, and tackling.
Bobby had to admit that they weren’t an inspiring sight. Most of the girls had never played before. Bobby had passed out copies of the field hockey rules and regulations in all her classes, but learning field hockey from a rule book was like learning the tango by reading step diagrams!
Bobby patiently sifted through the lunging, panting girls, rejecting, suspending final judgment, or marking a particularly promising player’s name with a star. Meanwhile, Munty was joined on the sidelines by curious spectators as well as fellow field hockey hopefuls as tryouts continued. Blowing her whistle to signal to the current players attempting to bat the ball around that it was time to surrender their sticks to the next group of eager girls, Bobby realized that her audience had grown to a sizeable number of students, and even included some faculty.
“Why, Mona,” Bobby exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” Mona was moving about the crowd, pouring cups of cocoa from a keg she’d strapped to her back and handing out apples from a basket on her arm.
“If the girls won’t come to snack hour in the common room, their snacks had better come to them!” Mona replied cheerfully. “I’m terribly excited about this terrific turnout, aren’t you? The Midwest Regional Secondary School Girls’ Field Hockey League won’t know what hit them!”
Bobby was touched. “Gee, Mona, that’s awful swell of you.” She was working her way through the throng to take the apple Mona was holding out when she almost tripped over Hoppy Fiske. Hoppy was sitting in the midst of a group of girls wearing serious expressions. “Sorry, Hoppy, I didn’t see you.” She hadn’t suspected Hoppy was a field hockey enthusiast. “Why so down?”
“We came to support Misako,” she said, glumly.
Misako “Mimi” Nakagawa was a fourth form transfer from Japan. The Young Integrationists Club had taken her under their collective wing, and Bobby had heard that she’d been elected vice president of the group the other night, although her English was still pretty rudimentary.
Now Misako sat with her YI friends with a downcast air.
“Why, Misako did quite well,” Bobby said. “I haven’t made my final decisions yet—there’s every chance you’ll make the practice team.”
Misako brightened at the news. “I work very hard,” she promised.
“It would be a wonderful thing for the league if Misako played,” Hoppy said earnestly. “It would certainly show where Metamora stood on the integration question!”
“Well, the practice team and the varsity team are very different things,” Bobby tried to explain, dismayed by Hoppy’s assumption that a field hockey team was a means of sending political messages. “After all, we want to win, don’t we?”
“Integration will win,” Hoppy said firmly. “It’s the only possible way to resolve the current state of affairs.”
Bobby gave up trying to explain her field hockey philosophy to the Current Events Mistress. Applause and calls of “Way to go, Kayo!” drew her attention back to the field. Two girls were dribbling, push passing, flicking, and dodging as if they’d been playing field hockey all their lives. The other girls had stopped their attempts to play and backed away, as dancers do when mambo experts take to the floor.
Bobby blew her whistle and the two girls stopped, turning toward her with smiling faces.
“Well, well, what have we here?” Bobby recognized the older girl as Carole “Kayo” Kerwin, an attractive sixth former. Her pale blond hair frothed from a high ponytail, and her long thin nose gave her a patrician air. She exuded confidence and authority. As she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her tunic, an eager fourth former ran up to hand her a towel. Kayo was popular, Bobby knew, likely to be elected Head Prefect in the Prefecture elections next week.
More to the point, Bobby had also noticed her ease and agility in the sixth form’s stunts and tumbling class. This display, however, was more than agility. This was experience.
“Our mother taught us how to play,” explained Kayo. Bobby looked at the other girl, who had Kayo’s coloring but a round impish face. “You must be Linda Kerwin,” she realized. This was the girl Mona had told her about, who had caused a scandal with her ouija board the previous year.
“That’s right,” said Linda cheerfully, twirling her stick.
“Mom played field hockey here, back in the thirties, when Miss Dennis was Games Mistress,” Kayo continued. “We’d have scrimmages whenever the Old Girls visited. She’s going to be over the moon when she finds out you’ve reinstated the Savages!”
“Old Girls?” Bobby was puzzled.
“You know, old Metamora girls. They’re called Old Girls,” Linda explained helpfully.
“She means alumnae,” piped up Lotta.
“I know you’ll want to see the other Metamorians who also play with us,” Kayo told the Games Mistress chummily. “Edie, Beryl, Penny, Sue—”
Bobby