A/N: One thing I learned these last 3 months about art that I didn't quite get before is you 100% cannot please everybody or a group of people ALL the time, which can create chaos and conflict but honestly that's what I'm here for. What every artist should be here for. We should embrace it! When people are divided and all over the place with their emotions, passionately hating or loving something/someone with strong opinions that's how you know you're doing it right. ;) BE MESSY GUYS !! 👏🏽☺️
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Miami Beach, FL
December. 2032
Hauling in another win of the season were the Arcadia Raiders basketball team, officially making the playoffs. Lauren looked into that and envied the coach in that division—she wasn't currently managing the school's soccer team, so the lack of action and celebrations after tough tribulations made things quite dull at her job. Lauren put some thought into coaching more than just soccer; if she was going to do this full time for say the rest of her life then basketball was absolutely the next game she'd juggle on her plate. A meeting with the school's principal and basketball coach Rhys Williams sometime soon was on her agenda book but for now, to kill the absence of movement, Lauren gathered her players hitting the weights after school and invited them to her house for a training session. This training session didn't consist of drills on a field, this one consisted of raising her players' IQ on the game itself and challenging their personal strategies, their technique if Lauren wasn't telling them what to do.
Three stacks of large pizza pies and a variety of kid friendly drinks on a breakfast bar; old game CDs brought over from the original Jauregui mansion when Lauren was just a teenager, playing on a projected screen through a laptop; mostly boys and few girls watching from different areas of the lounge, each with their own opinions but all excited and passionate; pens scribbling the plays and notes into composition notebooks, as Lauren stressed the importance that everyone studied and remembered everything discussed here for next year's season. Her daughters were occupied by María who kept them busy in the main family room with role play games and kitchen sets. Winston stood idly by, observing and waiting for Lauren to plant something to keep her players busy with for a handful amount of time.
In her cardinal Raiders hooded sweatshirt and matching sweats, hair in a sleek ponytail and a whistle around her neck, Lauren looked like she was ready to hit the fields any second now. She paced around, hands on her hips, face stern and heavily focused on the HD game projected onto the white screen. Lauren stopped it abruptly and dashed over to the large whiteboard with magnetic red and blue pieces including a soccer ball.
"Someone wanna explain to me what we've just seen here?" she scanned the room, growing disappointed with the ratio of hands raised to hands down accompanied by confused faces. "Not enough of you. I wanna see all hands raised every time I ask a question. This is a team sport, you have to know better individually to come together as a team. Latrell, the floor is yours."
The senior second string striker put his hand down and stood up to speak. "That center midfielder isn't under direct pressure—that person broke the line between the midfielder and defensive line so this defender right in front of them has a big problem because they have a forward playing off their shoulder and that center midfielder in possession. The defender has to go to the ball, they have to press it and they have to restrict opportunity but it'll be difficult."
"Do you see one or two ways for a strategic pass that'll get us over here, right inside the box without losing possession?"
"Two ways but the one I'd run is better."
"How so? Talk me through it," Lauren crossed her arms in a wide foot stance, chin raised and eyebrows scrunched together.
Latrell got up in front of the board, using the pieces to demonstrate. "Aight, so boom. What we have here is a three versus two situation. Hol' up, let me adjust this...like this..." he peeped at the screen to copy the players positions onto the board. "We've got the wide player that is pushed up—they are also a passing option in this instance but if we wanna be really direct, that center defender is gonna have to break run and close us down which allows this forward player to step off the shoulder of that player. It gives them a little bit of an angle to either play the ball in there or run from behind. They remain on the side while they do this run so that through this the defender is gonna press out to the ball here. We can play a straight pass for a diagonal run and we're right on goal, coach. Feel me?"
YOU ARE READING
How Are You True?
Fanfiction[DISCLAIMER: MATURE CONTENT!!!] 3rd book to the trilogy "We Don't Talk Enough". Life tosses all these things at you; some you are prepared for, some you aren't, some you thought you'd be prepared for, and some you NEVER thought you'd have to be prep...
