Feb 26, 2013 6 min read

? Chapter FIVE

The story so far: The special soccer team of non-athletic boys, practice for their next game by finding a way not to practice. But the second game looms.

Our second game was at Shoreham. If South Orange River had a reputation for being great in sports, so did Shoreham. In fact, the schools were rivals. I always wondered who makes up rivalries. Principals probably cook it up. Maybe they hated each other. Or maybe the school board – anything to avoid talking about budgets – got it going. I didn’t even know anyone from Shoreham. Didn’t even care.

We did get in another practice after the practice when we did not practice. Wasn’t bad. That is, I think we kicked the ball around a bit. The next day we went to a big museum and saw a neat film.

In fact, on the bus to Shoreham, Saltz, Radosh and I got into this long discussion about some of the dinosaurs we saw in the museum. A guide told us no one knows exactly why they died off. We were trying to figure out why. Saltz had the best idea. “Probably got into sports,” he suggested.

“Right,” I said, “The Mastodon Mothers versus the Tyrannosaurus Tiddlywinkers.”

In other words, by the time we got out of the bus at Shoreham, we were in a good mood. Being in the bus alone helped. That happened because after the first game, they gave us – and us alone–a small bus to use when we needed one. For the whole season. I think they thought that the way we played might be catching.

As for my being captain, that hadn’t amounted to much, except a little kidding. But as we got near the field, Saltz slipped up to me and said, “Remember, the captain always goes down with his ship.”

Actually, it was another beautiful day, one of those early fall days that make you remember summer and wish it were back. Mr. Lester was all smiles. The team was loose. Positively jangling. As we closed in on the field, we could see the Shoreham players working out.

We got ourselves ready. Mr. Lester beckoned me over. “When the referee calls, you’re supposed to go out and meet the opposing captain.”

“What for?”

He looked blankly at me, blushing slightly. “I can’t say I read that,” he admitted.

After a bit, the referee did call. I went out to the middle. The Shoreham captain was a big guy for a seventh grader, at least twice as wide as me. He held out his hand and we shook. He nearly busted my fingers. It’s a wonder he didn’t stomp my foot.

“How’s it going?” he said, dancing up and down as if his shorts were itchy.

“Okay,” I said, putting my hand in my armpit to get back some feeling. “You got a nice field.”

“Little chewed up from our last game.”

“Oh? Who with?”

“Buckingham.”

“Really,” I said, pretending that was the least interesting thing in the world. “How’d you guys do?”

“We beat them six-zip.”

“No kidding,” I said, sorry I asked. In fact, I decided that my first official duty as team captain was not to tell my teammates that we were about to play the team that had beaten, by 6-0, the team that beat us 32-0.

Meanwhile, the ref was telling us he wanted a good, hard game, but no rough stuff. I felt like saying, “Don’t worry, we do best at bad, soft and easy.” But I didn’t.

“Good luck,” the Shoreham captain said to me.

“Thanks,” I replied, “we’ll need it.”

He looked at me a little funny. Probably thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.

I can’t tell you about the whole game. Just the highlights. Or rather, the lowlights. It wasn’t all that different from the Buckingham game.

I do remember being impressed because they didn’t score right away. Not in the first ten seconds, anyway. In fact, I think we had the ball on their side of the field briefly. What is worth telling about is our first goal.

It came about this way.

They were on the attack. Actually, they were always on the attack. Just as we were always on the defense. But in this case, they had brought the ball nicely down the left line, passed it to the middle guys, pretty much in front of me – that is, in front of the goal.

Meanwhile, my trusty buddy Saltz, as well as Root and Hays, were right in there, flailing away, hacking with their feet, rear ends, heads, whatever they found useful and close to the ball. It didn’t work. The ball kept getting closer. To me. I crouched, ready to miss.

The ball squirted loose. Hays was right there and gave it a kick with the swift instinct of a true player. Right into our goal.

Point for them.

The best part was when the ball went in and the Shoreham team all lifted their arms. That’s a soccer tradition, airing your armpits after all that footwork. Anyway, I saw Hays lift his arms too, with this great idiot’s grin of success on his face.

Eliscue tipped him off, delicately. “Wrong side, Bozo,” he said.

Hays’s grin dropped like lead weights. He stood there, truly shaken.

At another furious part of the game, I remember looking across the field and noticing that their goaltender was lying flat on his back, hands beneath his head, taking a sunbath. That really made me mad. I was still glaring at him as their twenty-second goal went whizzing past my eyes.

Final score: 47-0.

Guess who won?

I wondered, did that make them better than Buckingham, or us worse?

“Well,” said Dorman, as we dragged into our bus for the ride home, “they said we couldn’t get worse, but we showed them. Lot of points.”

“Yeah, but I scored one of them,” Hays reminded us.

We applauded with slow, regular beats, “Yeah! Hurray!”

Mr. Lester, sitting up front with the driver, was doing his best to pretend he didn’t know us by reading one of his books, How to Be a Successful, Winning Coach.

He never did tell me what a captain was supposed to do.

• NEXT WEEK: Advice from S.O.R.’s principal