Just What I Needed

Chapter 4: The Practice

Chapter 4

~JO ALLEN~

Cross Country practice is a welcome escape after these past couple days of school. Going from all girls to co-ed is a bigger change than I thought it would be. And having Ana in only one of my classes isn’t helping things. Surprisingly though, having James in a few of my classes isn’t all that bad, or embarrassing. So far he’s turned out to be really nice, but I know not to trust him based off just a few days. Even Chase didn’t seem as terrible as Ana described him, though I think her perspective on him is a little skewed by his exaggerated flirting.

“Hustle in ladies!” yelled Coach as we all jogged over to him after finishing our one-mile warm-up run around Culvert Hall’s fields. Cross country was my favorite part of the day. I loved how running just allowed you to escape the world, even though it was just for a little while. Ana and I had joined the team our sophomore year after…good reason...and now, we were the two captains for our senior year, and I couldn’t be more excited. “All right ladies,” continued Coach Carson, our coach from NDA. “Today we are going to do intervals. I know that we’re only two weeks into the season and normally do long distance runs to start off with, but I just want to see where we stand with our sprinting.” Today could not have gotten any better. Sprinting was my forte. It’s such an adrenaline rush. Coach finished off his little speech but telling us that we were going to do a 1000m, 800m, 400m, 200m, and 100m both in decreasing and increasing order. Let’s do this.

I jogged over to the field house where all of our stuff was. I grabbed a quick drink of water before jogging over to the designating starting line that Coach had determined would be the edge of the turf soccer field. As I made my way over, I noticed that the boys’ soccer team was out practicing today, but what really got my attention was the fact that James and Chase were on the team. I always figured that they were naturally athletic due to their lean muscles, but I never knew that they played soccer.

We all lined up on the line, and Coach gave us thirty seconds to prepare ourselves. He blew the whistle, and we were off. I felt the cool breeze of air around me and pushed my legs as fast as they would go. I ran around the fields, making sure not to turn too wide around the corners. I crossed the finished line when Coach called out “3:42.” Not bad for the first 1000 of the season. I walked around trying to relax my muscles. While I waited for everyone to finish up, which was about 30 girls, I walked back over to the original starting line. One down, nine more to go. As I made my way over, I couldn’t help but watch the boys practicing soccer. They were so graceful, dribbling, passing, and shooting like they were combined into a sixth sense. I could never do that. I’m fine running freely, but once you add a movable object to the mix, I become the definition of a klutz.

I started stretching and shaking out my limbs, readying myself to kill the 800. Right when we were lining up to start, I heard the distinct sound of whistling. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe it was just some birds. That was until I someone started shouting.

“Hey, doll face! Why you run those fine as$ legs over here, and I could really help you stretch!”

“What the…” I mumbled to myself. I looked over towards the field and saw a group of guys huddled together, staring at us. I looked away, refusing to get distracted. I readied myself as Coach told us to line up once again. Deep breaths. Pump your arms. Pick up-

“Babe! I’m talkin’ to you!”

Startled, I looked up, getting out of position as Coach blew the whistle. Shit. I focused on the sprint again and pushed myself hard to try and catch up with the girls. I felt my breathing become heavier and heavier as I passed one girl at a time. By the time I rounded the last corner, I had a good lead on the previous front runner.