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Checking my watch, a surge of dismay rose inside of me when I saw that I had already missed fifteen minutes of the forty-minute class.
Decision made, I climbed over the low wooden fence that separated the training grounds from the footpath and power walked toward my destination.
With my head down and my heart hammering violently against my rib cage, I hurried through the empty fields, hesitating only when I reached the largest of the training pitches—the one filled with boys.
Huge boys.
Dirty boys.
Angry-looking boys.
Who were glaring at me.
Oh crap.
“What are you doing?”
“Get off the fucking pitch!”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Fucking girls.”
“Move, will you!”
Panicked, I ignored the shouting and jeering as I hurried past them, obviously disturbing their training. Mortification seeped through my body as I upped my pace, breaking into a clumsy jog.
The ground was wet and muddy from the rain, so I couldn’t move as quickly as I—or those boys—would have liked.
When I reached the edge of the pitch, I felt like crying in relief as I hobbled up the steep bank. However, my relief was only a momentary, fleeting feeling that was quickly replaced with a searing pain as something very hard and very heavy smashed into the back of my head, taking the air from my lungs and my feet from beneath me.
Moments later, I was free-falling backwards, tumbling down the muddy bank, the pain ricocheting through my head making it impossible for me to think clearly or break my own fall.
My last coherent thought before I hit the ground with a thud, and a thick cloud of darkness cloaked over me, was this: Nothing changes.
I was wrong, though.
Everything changed after that day.
Everything.
3Flying Balls
Boy Wonder Captivates the Coaching Staff at the Academy—Young Johnny Kavanagh, 17, a native of Blackrock, Dublin, currently residing in Ballylaggin, County Cork, sailed through his medical evaluation to secure his position at the prestigious rugby academy in Cork. Nursing a chronic groin injury since the start of last season, the youth has been given the all clear from team doctors. The Tommen College secondary school student is set to win his fifteenth cap for the Academy this weekend, having been named as starting 13 for the esteemed youth team.
The natural center has been drawing attention from coaches at the international level, including clubs in the U.K. and Southern Hemisphere. When asked to comment on the schoolboy’s accelerated rise through the ranks, Ireland’s U20 team’s head coach, Liam Delaney, had this to say: “We are excited about the level of caliber in the up-and-coming players throughout the country. The future looks bright for Irish rugby.”
When asked specifically about the Cork schoolboy, Delaney said, “We have been aware of Kavanagh since his playing days in Dublin and have been in close talks with his coaches and trainers for the last eighteen months. U18s’ coaches are impressed. We are keeping a keen eye on his progression and are impressed with the level of intelligence and maturity he naturally exudes on the pitch. He’s certainly one to watch out for when he comes of age.”
JOHNNY
I was exhausted.
Seriously, I was so tired I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open and my focus on point. My day from hell was turning into the week from hell, and that was a special feat considering it was Monday.
Falling straight back into school, not to mention training and the gym six nights a week, did that to a guy.
To be honest, I’d been running on empty since last summer, having returned from an international campaign with the U18s, where I was playing alongside the best in Europe, only to head right into an intense six-week conditioning camp in Dublin.
