Football Champ (4 page)

TROY’S SEMIFINAL GAME
on Saturday came fast. Seth worked the Tigers extra hard the remaining nights that week. The rest of the team picked up on the new calls Troy would be making at the line so that if the Dragons really did have the team’s playbook, the Tigers would be ready. And still, Troy wished he had even more time to prepare. This would be the biggest game he’d ever played in, and the need to win it crept through his bones like the ache from a fever.

“These guys can’t be seventh graders,” Nathan said, peering across the field at the Dunwoody Dragons in their all-red uniforms.

“They look like a high school team,” Tate said, removing her helmet and shaking loose her long dark hair.

Troy didn’t say anything. He just stared and blinked,
thinking that maybe the bright sunshine gleaming off their bloodred helmets might somehow be creating an optical illusion, making the Dragons look twice the size they really were.

“Don’t worry,” Seth said, stepping into their midst and tapping the rolled-up paper that was their game plan against the palm of his free hand. “We’ve got a plan.”

“Better plan on lots of ice and ibuprofen,” Nathan said. “Sheesh.”

“You can block them, Nathan,” Seth said. “Just hit them low.”

“I’d have to be seven feet tall to hit them high,” Nathan said.

“Every pass play we run is going to be a roll-out,” Seth said, “so you just trip them up. Troy’s faster than any of those defensive linemen, and he can throw on the run.”

“Are we going to use any running plays at all?” Troy asked.

Seth shaded his eyes from the sun, squinting across the field at the Dragons. He cringed and shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Go on, they’re calling the captains for the coin toss. You three get out there and give us some luck.”

Their cleats sunk into the fresh turf, kicking up the warm smell of dirt and cut grass to mix with the scent of popcorn, hot dogs, and burgers cooking in the
concession stand. The Dragons’ three captains stood nearly as tall as the referees, and the one Troy figured to be Jamie Renfro’s cousin was actually taller than three of the five adults. When Troy shook their hands, the cousin clamped down on Troy’s fingers and flashed him a wicked smile. Troy snatched his hand away and sneered right back.

They flipped the coin. Nathan chose tails. It came up heads.

“How about best two out of three?” Nathan asked the ref.

The ref curled his lip and said, “What are you talking about? No.”

Nathan said, “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

As they parted from the middle of the field, Troy felt someone tug his arm. He turned to see Jamie’s enormous cousin glaring at him through the bars of his face mask.

“We’ll see how bad you want to play quarterback after I mash your bones,” he said in a nasty whisper that the refs couldn’t hear.

Seth rallied the team together in a tight circle and said, “Look at you guys. All I see is a bunch of kids ready to lay down and get beat. Well, that’s not going to happen. You guys got to realize where you are. We win this and we’re playing under the lights for the
Georgia state championship
on TV! Do you realize how many great athletes work their entire lives and never win
a championship? It’s something no one can ever take away from you, but you got to go get it! I don’t care how big they are. You got to take it from them!”

Seth’s face turned red and his chiseled jaw rippled with intensity. He stabbed his finger at the other sideline with the thick muscles in his arm bulging.

“But you’re bigger than everyone,” Tate said quietly.

Seth’s face softened.

“Not when I play I’m not,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m as small on an NFL field as you are against these guys. It’s not all about size. It’s about here and here.”

Seth pointed to the center of his own chest, then his head.

“Heart and brains,” he said, pulling the game plan out of his back pocket and brandishing it at them like a kid showing off a straight-A report card. “Me and your team captains? We got the brains part handled, but
you
guys got to have the heart. You gotta believe we can beat them, and I promise you, we will.

“Now, bring it in here and let’s hear it: ‘Heart’ on three. Ready? One, two, three—”

“Heart!”

The word echoed through Troy’s skull. They broke the circle, and the kickoff team jogged out onto the field. Troy paced the sideline, willing the Tigers’ kickoff team to hold. Behind them, hundreds of fans from Duluth cheered and waved the blue and gold pom-poms Troy’s mom and the other moms had handed out to relatives,
friends, and Duluth football fans. On the other side, a sea of red, twice the size of the Tigers fans, roared while performing a sweeping wave. Troy shuddered at the demonic sound the Dunwoody fans called their Dragon Roar.

Tate kicked the ball to start the game. End over end it sailed, high and far. The Dragons’ runner had to retreat ten yards to field it, but when he did, he turned on a jet of speed that left the Tigers’ defenders zigging in his zags. When the Dragons’ runner crossed the fifty, Nathan threw himself at his feet. The runner hurdled Nathan easily. Only Tate now stood between the runner and the end zone. Instead of trying to avoid Tate the way he had the other Tigers’ defenders, the runner lowered his shoulder and churned straight at her, looking to mangle her and plow her over on his way to a touchdown.

Tate, thin as a wisp of smoke but wiry and quick, darted forward with her arms spread wide, straight at the oncoming freight train.

Troy flinched and waited for the Dragon Roar.

TATE LAUNCHED HERSELF LIKE
a javelin at the runner’s knees, upending him so that he somersaulted through the air, landing on his back with a thud Troy could practically feel.

The cheers came from the Tigers fans.

Tate sprang up off the grass and left the Dragons’ runner lying in a heap, twisting from side to side. As the Tigers’ battered kickoff team jogged to the benches, the Dragons’ coaches helped the runner to his feet and tugged him off the field.

The Tigers’ defense took the field with a war cry, half of them stopping along the way to high five Tate.

“That was incredible, Tate!” Seth said, slapping her shoulder pad. “You just saved a touchdown.”

“Hey,” Tate said, grinning from ear to ear, “I’m not
just a kicker. I’m a football player.”

Troy slapped her five and told her she was awesome. Together they watched their defense take on the Dragons’ offense. Nathan, who played both ways, battled it out with the Dragons’ massive offensive line, sometimes even breaking into the backfield. But their size was too much for the rest of the defense, and it took the Dragons only six plays to march forty-four yards into the end zone and set off a Dragon Roar loud enough to make Troy cover his ears.

“Look,” Tate said, pointing toward the top row of the Dragons bleachers.

Troy followed the line of her finger and saw a big man and a tall boy with dark curly hair, each of them dressed in red, cheering with the rest of the Dunwoody crowd: Jamie Renfro and his father.

“The rats,” Troy said.

Seth came up from behind, put an arm around Troy, and said, “It’s gonna have to be a shoot-out.”

“What’s a shoot-out?” Tate asked.

“Both teams score every time they touch the ball,” Seth said. “Whoever has the ball last wins.”

“We have to score every time?” Troy asked.

Seth pressed his lips tight, then lowered his voice and said, “Unless we get a turnover, I can’t see how our defense is going to stop them. The good news is that I know you can do it.”

The energy in Seth’s voice went through Troy like an
electric current, and as he ran out onto the field after the kickoff, he believed he really could do it.

Because they were going to call all the plays at the line, the Tigers’ offense didn’t bother to huddle. The “no-huddle” offense would put extra pressure on the defense, making it harder for them to get plays signaled in from the sideline and to make adjustments to different formations. Troy knew the no-huddle offense would cut down on the Dragons’ ability to run complicated blitzes.

Hopeful, Troy lined up behind the center and called out his first play as part of the cadence.

“Red Tango 17,” he said, barking out the signals above the noise from the crowd. “Red Tango 17…”

The Dragons’ defensive backs and linebackers crept up toward the line of scrimmage and shifted to the left, expecting the Tigers to run there. Troy broke out into a huge grin. It was all he could do to keep from laughing with joy.

He knew now for certain that Jamie Renfro’s father
had
given the playbook to the Dragons. But the
new
Red Tango 17 play would send Rusty Howell, the Tigers’ fastest man, straight down the field for a pass.

“Hut!” Troy said. “Hut! Hut!”

He took the snap and rolled to his right. Nathan and the rest of the Tigers’ line chopped at the defenders’ knees but slowed them only a little. The enormous Dragons surged toward Troy in a wave. He ran for his life toward the sideline. Rusty sprinted downfield,
passing the defenders who raced toward Troy thinking the play was a run.

Just as the red wave of defenders was about to crash down on Troy, he set his feet and fired the ball.

TROY WATCHED THE BALL’S
flight and Rusty racing toward the end zone with his arms stretched. The thought that maybe he’d thrown it too far flickered in Troy’s mind, only to be snuffed out—along with everything else—when the Dragons’ linemen swamped him.

“I cut my guy down like a blade of grass, but half the defense buried you and rang your bell,” Nathan said, helping Troy to his feet.

“What happened?” Troy asked.

“With me blocking for you? Touchdown. What else?” Nathan said nonchalantly. “Can you hold for the kick?”

Troy wobbled a little on his feet but shook the cobwebs out of his head and started a slow jog down the field toward the end zone, where Tate was already
setting up her tee for the extra point.

When Tate kicked it through to tie the score, the three of them ran off together, slapping high-fives and smacking shoulders with the rest of the team. Troy took off his helmet and pointed to Jamie Renfro up in the stands, grinning and giving him a big thumbs-up.

“Looks like his head is about ready to explode,” Tate said, giggling when she saw what Troy was doing.

“Serves him right,” Nathan said. “The traitor.”

The game was indeed a shoot-out, with each team seeming to score on every possession, but the rest of the Tigers’ touchdowns didn’t come as easy as the first one. As the game wore on, the Dragons relied less and less on the plays they thought they knew and more and more on their superior size, strength, and speed. Still, Troy’s ability to read the defense, some good play by the Tigers’ receivers, Tate’s sure leg, and Seth’s strategy of having Troy throw on the run all worked. With less than a minute to go in the game, the Tigers were down by just seven points, 42–35.

Troy worked the offense down the field on what would be the last Tigers’ possession. With only four seconds remaining, he hit Rusty in the end zone for a touchdown, making it 42–41.

The Dragons crowd went silent, and the Duluth fans pumped out a roar of their own that rose and fell in Troy’s ears like ocean waves. But instead of celebrating with Rusty and his teammates in the end zone, Troy
made a beeline for Seth, who wore a worried look.

Kicking the extra point would tie the game and send them into sudden-death overtime. If the Dragons won the coin toss, they’d likely score and win. The Tigers’ other option was to go for a two-point conversion by either running or passing the ball into the end zone from the three-yard line. That would win the game by a point and send them to the Georgia state championship.

“What do we do?” Troy asked Seth, gritting his teeth so hard that his cheeks ached.

The NFL linebacker looked down at him and asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t want to win or lose on a coin flip,” Troy said.

“We can’t run it,” Seth said. “They’re too big. It’d have to be a short pass, but only the long passes have been working for us. I don’t like our chances.”

“Then let’s fake the kick,” Troy said. “Get them out of their regular defense.”

Seth’s face brightened and he grinned at Troy. “I love it.”

Seth cupped his hands and yelled to his players, “Kicking team!”

“I’ll roll right,” Troy said, his heart hammering away now, “and send the ends up and to the right on different levels.”

“Like two
L
s,” Seth said, nodding.

“Only I don’t throw to them,” Troy said. “That’s something they might be ready for.”

“You can’t run it in,” Seth said. “They’ll have a safety on either side.”

“I won’t run it,” Troy said.

The referee set the ball on the three-yard line and signaled Seth to get going.

“You’re talking in riddles,” Seth said, scowling.

“A throw back,” Troy said. Everyone would go to the right, but they’d send just one player back to the left, a classic trick play.

“To who?” Seth asked.

“The kicker,” Troy said.

“
TATE? WELL, I DON’T
call you a football genius for nothing,” Seth said, grinning again and nodding. “They’ll never pick it up. Go!”

Troy sprinted out to the huddle. As he went to the line, Troy couldn’t help glancing up at Jamie Renfro. Like the rest of the Dragons crowd, the Renfros were on their feet. Troy wanted to win for a lot of reasons. He wanted to be a star player. He wanted to be noticed by coaches and college scouts. But he also wanted to show Jamie Renfro and his coach-dad how foolish it had been to sit Troy on the bench all season.

The fans in both bleachers cheered wildly now, and Troy had to shout. He drew the play in the grass for his teammates as he spoke, then looked at Tate.

“Tate,” Troy said as loud as he could, looking into
her big dark eyes, “you fake the kick, actually swing your leg. I’ll pull the ball at the last second and you take off into the end zone. They’ll all come for me, and you’ll be wide open.”

“Me?” Tate said. Her eyes widened and glistened at him like glass.

“You can do it,” Nathan said, slapping her shoulder pad.

Tate rolled her lower lip under her upper teeth but nodded.

Troy broke the huddle. They jogged to the line. Tate set her kicking tee down in the grass and marched off her steps. Troy knelt down over the tee and looked back at her.

Tate smiled weakly. Troy smiled back and winked with an affirmative nod. He turned and signaled for the snap. It came like a bullet. Troy snared it and rested it on the tee for a split second before pulling it up just as Tate swung her foot.

From the corner of his eye, Troy saw his line collapse and a blur of red surge at him like a typhoon. He tucked the ball, jumped up, spun around, and sprinted for the right side of the end zone. The Dragons came fast. The safeties covered the ends, sticking to them like glue, but that’s where Troy kept his eyes, knowing that if he looked at Tate it might give the trick away.

He was nearly to the sideline with defenders all around him and no chance at running into the end zone
before he cranked his hips and head around and set his feet to make the throw. He held it as long as he could, then launched it an instant before being buried in red. Little comets of light exploded across his field of vision, then went out. In the darkness at the bottom of the pile, Troy grunted in dismay.

When he’d let the ball go, Tate was nowhere to be seen.