Lily Daly - My baby girl

chapter 16

Hey guys! For the purpose of the plot, I thought I'd let you know that I've changed Lily's age to 14 rather than 13 as I think I want to do more mature things and it makes more sense (well at least in my head at least 🤭)
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It was our last training before our Christmas holidays break and the senior team went on international break. Luckily the senior team and the u15s trained at the same time, meaning that me and my mum wouldn't have to wait around whilst the other trained. It also meant that our club's Christmas dinner and exchange were on the same day. You may be thinking that's a good thing but it's not.

The thing is, my team still doesn't know who my mum is. There is a reason that no one knows because I don't want to ruin anything with any of my friends. Well, there is one person who has ideas and that's Niamh. Since our first match of the season when she saw me sitting with all the girls she's given looks and made comments but never said anything which I'm grateful for.
Mum and I made an agreement that if anything happened we would say something but thankfully she understood why I didn't want to tell anyone.

We arrived at the training ground with the boot full of presents and my mum looking like a Christmas store had thrown up on her. As per usual I got out of the car and went to find my friends as my mum parked the car. I went into our changing room and found that all the others we already there chatting. We said our hellos whilst putting on our boots and heading out to training. The day's plan was to have a final fun training session before going inside for our team Christmas dinner, games, and gift exchange. During training, everyone was wrapped up warm due to the frost that had come overnight. And when I say we were wrapped up warm I'm not even joking; I had pretty much everything I owned on (leggings, thermals, training fit, jumper, and windbreaker, not to mention the hat and gloves as well), the others also wrapped up but not as extreme as me whereas Niamh had her shorts and training top and thin jumper on. We were huddled up before warm-ups and my small short figure was standing in front of Niamh's tall figure.

"Niamh? How the hell are you not freezing to death?!" I asked her turning my head to look up to her bright blue eyes.
"Lily I'm always hot, you know that" your right there I thought to myself,
She smirked and giggled to herself as I felt my face heat up. fuck. I didn't just think that, I said that out loud.
"um oh ah... sorry I didn't mean to say that out loud" she smirked again as I turned around to avoid her seeing my bright red face. I felt her arms wrap around my waist and her warm breath on my ear...
"Don't be sorry it's cute. you're cute"
what. the. actual. hell. just. happened.
I now had a smile from ear to ear on my face, receiving me a confused look from Lucy.

Due to the fact that my mind was now distracted, in a way I was very grateful that the training session was games and competitions. My team consisted of me, Harper, Cleo, and Isla. Firstly we did our usual warm-ups, before moving on to some shooting drills that were made up into a competition. All of the games and competitions we played and/or won in the session equaled to a number of points and then the team with the most amount of points at the end won. The first few rounds were fairly even, but as time went on, the winning title was between my team and Niamh's team (which consisted of her, Lucy, Jodie, and Maya). The final game was where a net was in the middle of the two teams and we had to somehow pass the ball back and forth without using our hands allowing only 2 touches before it had to be passed. Loss of control or more than two touches from one team enabled the other to claim the point. In the last game the scores where:

1. Lily (me), Harper, Cleo, Isla -  54
2. Niamh, Lucy, Jodie, Maya - 52
3. Penelope, Aria, Charlotte, Jessie - 36
4. Ali, Hope, Lizzie, Ava - 28
5. Hannah, Emma, Lola, Sophia - 19

The final round was my team against Niamh's and we were all in winning mood. When we were preparing to start everyone gathered and sat around the 'pitch' to cheer on and support. The point system worked as 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and no points for a loss. This meant that if Niamh's team won this match they could win overall as they were only 2 points behind us on the table, so therefore we still had to win this match in order to win overall. The match was to last 5 minutes and before we knew the whistle blew signalling it had started. The first points given were earned fairly making it 3:2. At about 4 minutes in the ball was passed to Cleo who kicked a high ball for Isla to header over to Niamh's team, but her small short figure misjudged when the ball would make contact with her head and landed with half of her body either side of the net that separated the teams. Isla was the sort of person who never got embarrassed nor cared what people thought, so as soon as this happened her loud laughter (the type that immediately make you smile) invited everyone to reciprocate the joyful expression. Eventually everyone composed themselves as the race for the final and winning point was on. Concentration was channeled as Niamh passed the ball over the net, I headered the ball back which Maya caught perfectly on her left foot before kicking a high ball for Jodie to knock over with her chest. This carried on back and forth until Niamh headered a low yet powerful ball which no one on our team could get to so the ball fell to the floor, however the ball landed on the line. This meant for the next minute all you could hear was my team arguing that the ball landed outside the line and Niamh's team arguing that the ball landed inside the line. Eventually the coach that was acting as the referring gave her verdict.....