Dunk Under Pressure (8 page)

Back home to Hudson City.

C
ould anything be harder than this? Donald sat with his back against the gymnasium wall, eyes shut and sweat streaming down his face. His legs hurt. His shoulders ached. His left foot was starting to cramp.

He opened one eye and looked at the clock on the wall: 4:27 P.M. Coach Mills had said practice would end at five. Three minutes of rest and then thirty more minutes of conditioning drills.

There was an inch of water left in his bottle, and he sucked it right down. The water was warm but it quenched his thirst a little. The corner of his mouth stung where the bottle had touched it. He put a finger to his lip. When he pulled it away there was a dot of red. He curled his tongue to that spot and tasted blood.

I’ll live,
he thought.

He felt a shoe against his leg—not quite a kick, but a rather hard nudge. Freddy Salinardi was standing there, peering down at him. Freddy was an eighth-grader and one of the team captains. “Let’s go, wimp,” he said. “Nap time is over.”

Donald scrambled to his feet. Freddy called everybody wimps, at least all of the seventh-graders. This was the first day of practice, so the newcomers were getting tested by the veterans. Donald stepped toward the mat. Freddy was already hassling Mario and Kendrick, making them stand up, too.

What a jerk,
Donald thought, but he’d never say that out loud.

He had already started to figure things out. Coach worked the wrestlers hard but he was a nice guy, and he certainly seemed to know his stuff about the sport. But he let the eighth-graders push the younger guys around. That seemed to be how he kept order.

They’d learned some basic wrestling moves earlier in the session, but the past half hour had been all about conditioning. Jumping jacks, sit-ups, running in place. Donald knew this sport would be difficult, but he hadn’t envisioned anything like this.

“Line up!” Coach called. “The fun starts now.”

Donald joined the others in a straight line against the wall.

“What now?” asked Mario, tugging on Donald’s arm.

Donald turned and shrugged. Mario was one the few kids here who was shorter than Donald, but he was stockier. His dark curly hair was matted to his forehead with sweat.

“Some new form of torture,” Donald whispered.

Coach was looking over the thirty or so wrestlers, sizing them up with a smug smile. He was young—three years earlier he’d still been wrestling for the college team at Montclair State—and had the build of a solid 140-pounder. “Nobody said this would be easy, right? You new guys are getting a taste of how tough this sport is. You can’t even begin to be a good wrestler until you get into shape. The whole key is conditioning. Without that, you’re nothing.”

Coach pointed to Kendrick, a quiet newcomer to Hudson City who sat next to Donald in English class. “What’s your favorite sport?” he asked.

Kendrick looked around and scrunched up his mouth before answering. “Wrestling?”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“A statement, I guess.”

“Good answer.”

Now Coach looked at Donald. “What’s your least favorite sport?”

Donald put a finger to his chest as he asked weakly, “Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

At this point Donald could have said wrestling and he wouldn’t have been lying. But he said “track,” which would have been true any other time. His best friend Manny Ramos was a standout distance runner, but Donald had wanted no part of that sport, despite Manny’s frequent urging to join him at it.

Coach’s smile got broader. “That’s too bad,” he said, “because guess what? Wrestlers run their butts off.”

Coach made a circular motion with his hand. “Laps around the gym,” he said. “A nice steady pace. We’re not racing here, just staying in motion.”

There was a collective groan from the group, but all of them started jogging. The gym was small and the corners were tight, but the jogging did seem easier to Donald than all those calisthenics.

That changed in a hurry when Coach gave his next directive. “Every time I blow my whistle, I want you all to drop and give me five push-ups. Then pop up and get right back to the running. Start now.” And he blew his whistle.

Donald dropped with the others and managed the five push-ups, feeling the strain all the way from his shoulders down to his fingers.

Why am I doing this?
he wondered.

He kept wondering that for fifteen more minutes as they alternated running with push-ups. But when the session finally ended and he looked around at the exhausted wrestlers making their way to the locker room, he couldn’t help but feel more than a little bit proud to be one of them.