Girl Football

Thirteen

After everyone was dressed I was allowed in the boys' locker room for our pregame speech before we took the field for warmups.

It was kind of nice to have the whole girls' locker room to myself before games because the quite let me relax and really focus on my goals before the game. Because when I got into the boys' locker room they were hooting and hollering, all pumped up for the game. I could understand why; this was the first time in years we had the opportunity to go undefeated in preseason if we won tonight. However, County was good, really good. So, the possibility of a win was slim but there was still a small chance we could do it.

I looked around the room as they all danced around, yelling and screaming and I knew we had to get our heads on straight before Coach came in.

I stood up on one of the benches, "Hey!" As soon as the loud yell came out of my mouth, everyone immediately turned toward me, dead silent.

"What are we doing? Coach is going to be in here any minute now and do you think he's going to be overly thrilled with our pregame?" I asked, raising my eyebrows and looking around the locker room.

"Why should we pay attention to you?" Someone from the crowd in front of me asked. I didn't see who it was but it didn't really matter.

"Because I'm your quarterback tonight, your leader. And whether you like it or not, I'm going to be leading you all onto that field -- into battle. Yes, County's going to be tough and no, no matter how good we are doing we shouldn't take them for granted. And yes, I know this is just a preseason game, but some where along the lines come playoffs, it's going to matter. So, get your heads on straight and let's focus on coming out strong tonight." I jumped down from the bench. It was so quite now in the locker room that I could hear my cleats click against the cement floor when I jumped down.

Coach walked in a split second later.

"Y'all ready to go to battle tonight?"