Page 20 of Catch and Cradle
We’ll add a few new players after tryouts this year, so for now, we’re odd-numbered. I join my roommates Bailey and Rachelle as an extra partner after passing out the balls.
“Supple with the wrists while you’re cradling,” I remind everyone before we start. “You don’t want to be floppy, but you don’t want to be locked up like you’re in a cast either. Keep the movement smooth. Tender, even. Supple.”
Once again, I really shouldn’t look at Hope, but I do. She’s staring at my hand as I demonstrate the wrist movement used to keep the ball in the stick’s basket.
My mouth goes dry. If she was anyone else and if we were anywhere else, I’d be pulling her into the nearest dark corner to pin her wrists above her head. She chews on her bottom lip as I finish up demonstrating the drill, still not aware I’m watching her, and I grip my stick so hard my knuckles go white.
“All right!” My voice comes out hoarse. I clear my throat and try again. “Let’s do this! Three, two, one, go!”
We make it through a couple of rounds. The team is in good shape, any rustiness after a summer off the field polished away by a solid week of double daily practices. I catch a perfect pass from Bailey, tipping my stick back a little to follow the arc of the ball and then bringing it forward to begin the rocking movement of cradling as I sprint up the field.
I let my muscles take over as my body settles into a rhythm it’s known for most of my life. I started playing lacrosse when I was nine, and I went all the way to the national U19 team when I was in high school. That’s when the American college scouts came looking, but with all the paperwork and flights and extra testing and costs involved, it made more sense to take the scholarship from the Canadian Women in Sports Association.
After a few more passes, I stop the drill and start getting set up for the next one. Coach shows up just before we’re about to begin, and for the next ten minutes, it’s pointless to even try getting anyone back on the field. They swarm around his daughter, Khadija, after he sets her carrier down on the sidelines. She’s got chubby cheeks and huge brown eyes, and he even put her in her Lobsters onesie for the occasion. I walk over to stand beside him after I’ve finished obsessing over her with everyone else.
“Why don’t I get this reaction when I show up to practice?” he jokes. “I have half the same DNA as her.”
“I guess she gets the cuteness from her mom, then,” I joke back.
He pretends to be scandalized. Coach has had that ‘I totally used to be a frat boy but now I’m a dorky dad’ vibe since before he even became a dad. He’s always got a UNS baseball cap on over his curly black hair, and he has a fondness for aviator sunglasses.
He stood by me after everything that happened in freshman year, even after half the team left. I wouldn’t have accepted the nomination to become captain without him sitting me down and telling me the team needed me to step up. I owe him. I owe everyone who decided to trust me, and I push myself to show it every day on the field.
He claps his hands together after a few more minutes of watching the team flock around the baby carrier like moths to a streetlamp. “Okay, ladies!”
I nudge his arm with my elbow.
“And people of all identities,” he adds. “Please leave my baby alone and get on the field. We’ve got some lax to play.”
By the time we wrap practice up, my whole body is drenched in sweat from the roots of my hair to my lacrosse socks. I’m panting for breath as my heart pounds in my ears and slows itself back to its resting rate while we make our way through some cool-down stretches.
“Beautiful work today, team!” Coach paces in front of us with Khadija clutched to his chest, and even my very gay ovaries have a reaction to the sight. “I have a few words prepared to bring this inaugural training camp to a close, but first I want to take a minute to acknowledge this beautiful field we play on and this campus we walk around every day as Mi'kma'ki territory. It’s a privilege to be on this land, and it’s a privilege to play this game that came from its native people. We all need to remember that.”
I join the chorus of players thumping the ends of their sticks on the ground in answer. Before Jamal, I’d never had a coach dedicated to making sure the whole team remembers where lacrosse came from. It can be way too easy to forget we’re playing a game that came from First Nations culture on the land that was stolen from those same people, but Coach never takes the easy way out when it comes to living with that truth.
“As for our playing” he continues, “if we can keep that up until November, we’ve got the season in the bag. You’ve given your all to this training camp, and it’s paying off. We’re prepared. We’re ready. We’re hungry.”
I try to stay focused on the rest of his pump-up speech, but just the word hungry has me thinking about Hope’s eyes on my hands during the drill. The rest of the team cheers, but I just breathe deep as I bend my head to my knee in a runner’s stretch.
I can’t do this. I can’t let somebody throw me off course again. I have something good here, something stable and solid in my life that nobody is going to rip away unless I give them a reason to. My whole world here in Halifax is supposed to be the complete opposite of how things were back home.
I miss the rest of Coach’s words and only tune back in when I hear him saying my name.
“Does our fearless captain Becca have any words for the team?”
I had an end of camp speech planned, but now I can’t remember any of it. I step out of a lunge and face the group, doing my best to pull myself back into the moment as I scan their faces. There are only a few girls in my year left on the team—the ones who didn’t accuse me of buying my way in with the donations I won and corrupting the entire athletics department.
I thought I was past all this, but my stomach is twisting itself in knots as I try to come up with some sort of inspiring message.
“This year,” I begin, “is for us. Every practice, every game, every time we get up at six instead of putting our alarms on snooze, every sore muscle and bruise...It’s for us. It’s so there can be an us. We’re not just a bunch of people running around with sticks doing their own thing. We’re a team. We may not be the world’s premier lacrosse program. We may not have a private locker room and funding for flights across the country, but that just means we’ve earned everything we do have. We’ve built it together. We’re...a family.”
A few people go, “Awww!” Coach lifts one of Khadija’s hands up to make her look like she’s doing a fist pump.
“That’s what’s going to take us to the top this year,” I continue, the words flowing now. “That’s what’s bringing the trophy home. We didn’t tattoo lobsters on our ankles for nothing, right?”
“RIGHT!” the team shouts back.
“Right,” I agree, “so let’s spend this season showing everyone what UNS has got. Claws out!”