Benchwarmers Read online

  “Understood,” he said.

  “Understood what?” Coach J roared.

  It took Jeff a split second, then he got it. “Understood, sir,” he said.

  Coach J turned and walked away. “Blue team, bring it in,” he said. Jeff—of course—was playing on the white team.

  Then he blew his whistle again. “Diskin,” he said to Danny Diskin, who was on the sideline at that moment. “Go for Michaels.”

  The thought of just walking off the field crossed Jeff’s mind, but he decided against it: Why give the geology teacher an excuse to throw him off the team? If Coach J was going to do it anyway, fine, but Jeff wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  At the end of practice, Coach J made them sprint the length of the field and back and then jog to midfield, where he and Coach C were waiting. Their field was not quite the full hundred-yard stretch of a regulation soccer pitch. But to Jeff, wind sprints made it feel twice as long after he’d been chasing down balls all afternoon.

  That hadn’t been a problem today.

  “Okay, boys, good job out there,” Coach J said. “We play here tomorrow at three thirty. That gives you forty-five minutes from the end of school to kickoff. Get to the locker room right away, change, and get out here, and we’ll get you stretched out and warmed up.”

  He paused, and Jeff thought the day was mercifully over. It wasn’t.

  “One more thing, and listen up because this is important. For a lot of you this is your first experience with an organized team—emphasis on the word team. If you want to be part of a good team and also a good teammate, you remember always that you and your ego are no longer important. You do what’s best for the team. You don’t talk about team issues outside the locker room. What happens in the locker room or out here stays in the locker room and out here. Period.”

  He looked directly at Jeff. “Everyone understand?”

  They all answered, “Yes, sir!” with Jeff barely moving his lips.

  Coach J noticed.

  “I said, do you understand—Michaels?”

  “Yes, sir!” Jeff said in as loud a voice as he could muster.

  “Okay then. Arlow, you’re the team captain. Get everyone in for a cheer.”

  Arlow smirked, looked directly at Jeff, and moved to the middle of the huddle, his hand in the air. Everyone surrounded him.

  “Team first!” Arlow said.

  Everyone put their hands in and repeated, “Team first!”

  They started toward the locker room, Jeff moving at a quick jog. The faster he got out of there, he figured, the better.

  * * *

  Ray Didinger’s column was up on the NBC Sports–Philly website by the time Jeff got home.

  His dad had texted him to tell him Didinger had finished writing it, so Jeff went straight to his computer to check it out.

  Didinger pulled no punches.

  “Andi Carillo is a talented eleven-year-old soccer player,” it began.

  She’s in the sixth grade at Merion Middle School and wants to play on the sixth-grade soccer team. But as of right now, she can’t, because the team’s coach, Hal Johnston, doesn’t want any girls on his team.

  “No one ever said this was a boys-only team,” Andi’s father, Tony Carillo, said on Monday. “Presumably the best fifteen players—regardless of sex—would be selected for the team. That didn’t happen.”

  No one is disputing that Andi deserved a spot on the team based on her ability to play the game. What Johnston is apparently telling people is that he cut Andi because he thinks it would be bad for the morale of the boys on the team to play with a girl who is better than they are.

  I say “apparently,” because Johnston didn’t return a phone call, or an email as of this writing. It was left to the school’s principal Arthur L. Block to defend his coach … sort of.

  “Coach Johnston felt that boys should be on the soccer team and girls on the field hockey team,” Block said. “I told him there was nothing in my mind that prevented Miss Carillo from trying out for the soccer team. He agreed to allow her to try out but insisted that, as coach, he should have final say on who made the team. I agreed to that.”

  I asked Block if he now thought that had been a mistake. There was a long pause. “Whether it was a mistake or not, I made a commitment to a coach who is being paid almost nothing to do a job that’s important to the school,” he finally said. “So I feel I need to stand by that decision and by the coach.”

  Block’s heart appears to be in the right place. He doesn’t want to break his word. But Johnston broke a commitment he made when he agreed to coach the team—spoken or unspoken. That was his commitment to give every kid a fair chance to make the team and to play for the team. Clearly he never intended to give Andi Carillo a fair chance.

  The rest of the column had details about Andi and her family before it circled back to Didinger’s conclusion.

  The question of girls competing with boys dates to the 1970s. Girls have proven over and over again—Mo’ne Davis, anyone?—that they can compete with boys. It is heartbreaking in the year 2019 that there are still coaches who can justify this sort of segregation.

  Next year will mark the one hundredth anniversary of women being given the right to vote. It would be nice if someone would wake Hal Johnston up to the fact that his way of thinking has been outdated for just about that long.

  Jeff reread the whole thing again from beginning to end, then walked into the kitchen and told his mom to call it up on her computer. When she was finished, she smiled and said, “Well, that should get people’s attention.”

  She was right. Jeff’s dad walked in an hour later with a big smile on his face.

  “Ray’s column drew two-thirds as many hits in the first hour as the Eagles column he wrote last night,” he said. “That’s completely unheard of. Even the newsroom know-nothings couldn’t ignore that.”

  “Are people talking about it? What are they saying?” Jeff asked eagerly.

  His dad shrugged. “You know how the Internet can be. The comments section has some jerks, for sure. But seems like a lot of folks—most of the ones I’m seeing, at least—are really rooting for Andi and are outraged by the coach’s attitude.”

  “So what now?” Jeff asked.

  “Well, I will be at the game tomorrow with a crew. We’ll interview Andi and her parents beforehand and see how Johnston chooses to handle himself after the game. If he tries to duck us, he’s going to embarrass himself on camera.”

  “You think other media might show up?” Jeff’s mom asked.

  “Possible,” his dad said. “Ray being the writer definitely gives it a lot more weight.” He smiled. “Selfishly, I hope not. I’d like to have first crack at the story.”

  “Second crack,” Jeff said.

  “First TV crack,” his dad said.

  They both laughed. The next day would be interesting—regardless of the outcome of the game.

  11

  “Don’t be nervous, Andi,” Tom Michaels was saying. “We’re taping this, so if you stumble or don’t feel comfortable with a question, we’ll just stop tape and start again. Remember, you’re the good guy in this story.”

  Andi smiled and nodded her head.

  She was standing in front of the camera that Mr. Michaels’s cameraman had set up on a tripod. Behind her, about twenty-five yards away, the Merion–Ben Franklin soccer game was just beginning. She kind of wished Jeff was next to her to be her cheerleader, but he was sitting on the bench, in uniform, watching the game.

  He had told her before the game that he expected to play exactly five minutes—the public-school rule in Montgomery County was that everyone in uniform had to play at least five minutes—and that would probably come late in the second half.

  When the news team had arrived, as scheduled, at three fifteen, Mr. Michaels had told Andi and her mom that he had already interviewed the school principal.

  “Principal Block said on camera that if he were the coach, you would be on the t
eam,” Mr. Michaels said. “That sets things up perfectly for us.”

  “Have you spoken with the coach?” Andi’s mom asked.

  Mr. Michaels shook his head. “I left him a couple of phone messages saying I’d like to talk to him after the game. Mr. Block gave me his cell number, and I texted him. We’ll see what happens when the game’s over. If he’s smart, he’ll talk. He can’t hide forever. This story’s making some waves in town.”

  He gestured with his left hand in the direction of another camera crew.

  “I wish I was the only one here, but I’m not,” he said. “The guys from Channel Three are here and I think the Inquirer’s got someone out here, too. Plus, some internet sites.”

  “Would you prefer Andi not talk to anyone else?” Jeannie Carillo asked. “I mean, we owe you.”

  Mr. Michaels laughed. “Would I prefer you not talk to anyone else?—of course. But you need to talk to anyone who asks. The more people who are aware of this story, the better it is for your cause. Besides, we’ll do a better job with it than anyone else anyway.”

  He turned to his camera guy. “John, you ready?”

  The camera guy gave him a thumbs-up. “Count yourself in,” he said.

  “Ready, Andi?

  “Ready,” Andi said, though she wasn’t really sure if that was the case when it came to being on TV.

  “Okay then, three, two, one.” He paused for a split second and then asked: “Andi, when tryouts ended for the team, were you confident that you’d earned a spot on the team?”

  “Honestly I thought I’d made the team after the tryouts,” she said, looking at the camera and not Mr. Michaels as instructed. “Several of the boys told me they thought I was one of the best players. Plus, by the third day, a lot of them were being very encouraging whenever I made a good play. I thought that was a positive sign.”

  “So what was your reaction when you saw you weren’t on the team?”

  “At first I thought it was a mistake—so I went to see Coach Johnston. I knew he hadn’t been thrilled about me trying out, but I thought I’d proven myself to him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Well, I think to him, it didn’t matter whether I was good or not—a girl on the team would be bad for morale.”

  “Do you think the boys on the team feel that way?”

  She hesitated before answering that one. “Maybe a couple,” she said. “But I think most would like to see me on the team.”

  Mr. Michaels smiled. “Perfect, Andi,” he said. “You did great.”

  Andi noticed someone dressed like a reporter—shirt and tie, no jacket in the hot weather—talking to her mother. Then he walked up and shook hands with Mr. Michaels.

  “Andi, this is Steve Bucci from Channel Three,” Mr. Michaels said as Bucci walked over to shake her hand. “He’d like to ask you a few questions, too, if you’re up for it.”

  Andi shrugged. Mr. Michaels had said it was okay with him, so it was okay with her.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Just give me a minute to get my crew set up,” Bucci said. “I’m sure my questions will be pretty much the same as Tom’s. Won’t take long.”

  Andi nodded. Her mother came over with a towel.

  “You’re sweating,” she said. “Let’s sit in the shade for a moment so you can cool down.”

  Mr. Michaels was nodding. “That’s a good idea,” he said.

  “What happens now?” her mom asked.

  “We’ll get some tape during the game, then see if we can talk to Coach Johnston and some of the players when the game’s over.”

  “I’m sure Jeff will talk to you,” Andi said, smiling.

  “I’m sure you’re right about that,” Mr. Michaels said. “But interviewing my son is probably not the best idea. Don’t worry, though. Even if nobody talks to us, I’ve got plenty for the story. And, like I said, with Steve and the other reporters being here, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on the school to get this right.”

  Bucci was back. “Ready for your next close-up?” he asked with a friendly smile.

  Andi’s mother laughed.

  “Give her one more minute to cool down,” she said. “Then she’ll be ready for a close-up or anything else.”

  * * *

  Bucci hadn’t been kidding about his questions being similar to Mr. Michaels’s. He did ask a few more background questions, like “How much soccer have you played?” and “Did you learn to play from your two older brothers?” but the basic premise was pretty much the same.

  After that, a newspaper reporter with a tape recorder and notebook asked if she had a few minutes. Her mom insisted they sit down on a bench in the shade of a large oak tree that wasn’t that far from the entrances to the locker room.

  More questions—all pretty much the same. The reporter did ask if the family planned to go to court if Coach Johnston didn’t relent and allow her to join the team.

  “That would be up to my mom and dad,” Andi said. “They’re both lawyers.”

  “So no legal fees then?”

  “I hope not,” she said.

  They heard some whooping coming from the direction of the Ben Franklin bench. Andi glanced at the scoreboard. The game was ten minutes old and Ben Franklin had just taken a 1–0 lead.

  “Looks like Merion could use you,” the reporter said.

  “I sure hope so,” Andi said, then stopped. She didn’t want to sound like she was hoping the team would lose without her.

  But she knew, deep down, that was exactly what she was hoping.

  12

  If watching her school lose was Andi’s wish, she got it. Ben Franklin led 3–0 at halftime before two goals by Ron Arlow midway through the second half—each half was thirty minutes long—cut the margin to 3–2.

  But Ben Franklin scored with about eight minutes left to up the lead to 4–2, which was when Jeff Michaels got into the game. He was the last of Merion’s fifteen players to see the field, and he actually played the last eight minutes—only because the game was a lost cause, he figured.

  Ben Franklin scored once more in the final minute, and then it was over. The good news was this was a nonleague game. There were nine teams in Merion’s conference, which meant there would be two nonleague games and then one game against each of the other eight teams in the conference.

  Andi watched as the two teams lined up for handshakes. After the two coaches had shaken hands, Mr. Michaels appeared, as if by magic, at Coach J’s side. Andi couldn’t hear but could tell the conversation was animated. At one point, Coach J pointed a finger at Mr. Michaels, who waved a disgusted hand in his direction and walked away.

  “Hey, how’d it go with my dad?”

  Andi looked up and saw that Jeff was standing right next to her.

  “Good, I guess,” she answered. “I just did what he told me to do—which was tell the truth.” She gestured in the direction of Jeff’s dad, who was now talking to Danny Diskin and waving his cameraman over. “Didn’t look like it went so well with Coach.”

  Jeff shrugged. “He told us before the game that he wasn’t going to be bullied into talking by, I think he said, ‘some over-the-hill columnist,’ and while he couldn’t censor us, if he didn’t like what we said, there might be consequences—like a lot of running at practice tomorrow.”

  “Danny doesn’t seem too worried.”

  Jeff laughed. “Danny’s not afraid of anything or anyone. Even Arlow won’t mess around with him.”

  “You think anybody else will talk?”

  “Arlow said he’d talk, but I doubt if he’ll be taking our side … I mean, your side.” He paused, cheeks a bit flushed. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” she said. “I thought you played well today.”

  “How could you tell?” he said. “I only touched the ball a few times.”

  “And made a great tackle and a nice pass.”

  “You noticed?” he said. “Glad someone did.”

  She laughed. “I’m
betting your dad noticed, too,” she said.

  “Yeah, probably,” he said. “Unfortunately, he’s not coaching the team.”

  “Unfortunately is right,” she said, watching as Danny Diskin, interview over, walked away and Ron Arlow took his place in front of the camera.

  * * *

  Jeff texted Andi during dinner.

  Dad says story will air tonight. Probably about 10:15. Then again in the morning, and tmrrw on 6 pm show. Lot of exposure.

  Andi usually went to bed at about nine thirty on a school night, but there was no way she wasn’t going to stay up to see Mr. Michaels’s story. Steve Bucci had told her mom his story would air late, on the eleven o’clock news. She wouldn’t stay up for that, but they would DVR it to watch in the morning.

  Her parents were fine with the notion of her staying up a little late to watch the NBCSP report. The first fifteen minutes of the show seemed to take an hour. At least.

  Finally, coming out of a commercial, anchor Dei Lynam set the piece up by saying: “It is the year 2019, more than forty years after girls first began playing Little League baseball. And yet, here in Philadelphia, there’s at least one coach and one school that is still living in the past. Tom Michaels has more.”

  The piece opened with a shot of that day’s game—showing one of Ben Franklin’s goals.

  Mr. Michaels’s voice came from the television set as the Ben Franklin boys celebrated the goal: “Opening day for the sixth-grade soccer teams from Merion and Ben Franklin middle schools, and the visitors have just scored to wrap up a five–two victory over Merion.”

  The camera cut to a shot of Ron Arlow—which surprised Andi.

  “First game, we’re still getting used to one another,” Arlow said. “We’ll be better by Friday.”

  Then, suddenly, Andi was on camera, standing and watching the game with her mom.

  “Experience may help Merion on Friday, but, unless Coach Hal Johnston backs away from his ‘no girls on my team’ edict, one of Merion’s most talented players won’t be in uniform—again.”