Going the Distance by John Goode Read Free Book Online

hear the whispers from the other guys every time he did it and inwardly winced, knowing it was another strike against me. The worst part was scrimmage games against each other for practice. No one likes being shown up in front of other guys. Everyone really hated it when I was the one who did it. I’m not sure what the coach was getting at putting a different man against me every day, but I do know it assured that every person had a chance to personally resent me for kicking his ass on the court.
    I know I should have loved this. I should have been crowing proudly as I flew past guy after guy. There should have been a sense of accomplishment with every three-pointer I sank. I loved playing, but I was learning to hate winning so much. This went on for two weeks, and it was just getting worse and worse. Dressing out before practice, all I got were angry stares. Bad enough I was taking my clothes off in front of other guys, but to do it while people shot daggers at me just made it unbearable. Even my biggest fan, Cody, was losing his love for my talent as the grumblings grew louder and louder each day.
    My dad didn’t seem to understand.
    He said that guys were always going to resent me for my skills. Just that fact made me sick to my stomach, but he went on past that. He said I had a gift, and that even the people who were going to love me for it would secretly hate me at the same time because they couldn’t do the same. It was the first inkling that basketball wasn’t just my own personal way to salvation, but that it might be a larger part of the rest of my life. He explained I was lucky that I had no idea how good I was because, without that humility, I’d be insufferable. At the time I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but I soon would.
    The coach was a largish man who must have been built twenty years ago and then let himself go in a bad way. He had that gut all former jocks seemed to gain after a while. My dad, who was twice my age, was in as good if not better shape than I was, so when I saw someone like this, it just made me grimace. What he lacked in physical stature, he more than made up for in his knowledge of his team. No one had gone to him to complain about me. There wasn’t a guy brave enough to bitch loud enough for him to hear, but nonetheless he knew what was going on.
    At the start of the third week of practice, two weeks before our first game, he called a team meeting in the locker room before we took the court. Cody explained this was when he named a team captain for the season, usually the most senior player since they had been around the longest. The captain didn’t have many duties outside of keeping team morale in check, which was a task all by itself. Now I know this sounds sexist, but I have no idea how someone could handle a team of girl athletes, because I know every team I’d been on so far had been filled with its share of guys who were overly emotional, started fights over every little thing, and were jealous as hell about everything.
    In other words, they acted in the same manner I imagined spoiled teenage girls did.
    A good team captain knew how to talk to the guys, calm them down, fire them up, and more importantly, knew how to keep certain guys away from each other. Don’t let awesome teamwork ever fool you into believing that every person on the court likes each other equally. There were whole currents of fuckery coaches and trainers never even got a whiff of that, if left unattended, could sink a season before one tip-off ever happened.
    Cody was only a year ahead of me, so there was no chance he’d get it, and he was the only person on the team who wasn’t outright hostile to me behind closed doors. The safe bet was Tommy Grazier, a decent senior who had played this court since he was my age. As it was his last year, he had been a shoo-in as MVP and all-around stud for the team. From what Cody had explained to me, that was all before I showed up. People were talking