Page 25 of On His Team

“You took STAT 215.”

“Everybody in the major takes it.”

And that’s — okay. I did know Rowan was in Sport Management. I think I knew. It’s the kind of thing you absorb about somebody’s teammate without ever once having a conversation about it, the way I know that Percy doesn’t sleep and that Stanley pays for everything anywhere they go. But I’ve never talked to Rowan about his major. I’ve spent two years in the same rooms as this guy and we have talked about approximately four things about nothing important.

“How’d you do?” I ask.

“B minus.”

“Benson got an A.”

“Benson had a tutor, and I’m not so sure he got an A. Pretty sure he didn’t have Schaefer.” He shifts his weight against the counter. He continues, “It gets better after the first month. The first month is all sampling, and it’s the worst part, and everyone thinks they’re stupid, and then he starts doing tests, and it turns into steps. You’ll be able to do it.”

“Sorry, sir. I don’t think you know anything about me.”

He doesn’t look offended. I catch Evan’s face across the room. He would be eavesdropping. I put another guard in the bin.

“What else are you taking?” Rowan asks.

“Finance. Sport Law. Public speaking, which is going to be a joke, and Event and Facility.”

“Two-forty?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“That’s the event project.”

I turn around. “You know about it?”

“Did it when I was your age.”

I put my hand on my hip. “Okay, old man.” I look at him. “What’d you do then?”

“Youth clinic.” He answers like he knew I’d ask. Again, he’s not offended by my remark, and I like him a little more now. “Saturday morning, second sheet, eight to eleven. Forty-two kids from the Camden youth program. We had eight of the guys from the team come run stations, borrowed gear from Donovan, did concussion waivers through the athletics office, no money changed hands, so we didn’t have to touch ticketing or a cash box. Set up at seven, out by noon.”

I wait like he’s not done telling me. “That’s it?”

He nods. “That’s it.”

“You had eight Camden hockey players in a building, and you didn’t charge anybody anything?”

“It was free on purpose. That was the point.”

“No — okay, no. Listen to this.” I put the guard down. “You do it on a home game Saturday. You do the clinic in the morning on the second sheet, and every kid who registers gets a ticket to that night’s game, and their parents buy tickets because they’re already driving there twice otherwise. That’s forty-two kids and eighty-four adults you just put in the building on a Saturday. You get one sponsor — one, the sporting goods place on Ferris, or the pizza place, anybody — to cover the jerseys, and the kids wear them at the game, and then you walk them out on the ice during first intermission and their families lose their minds and take four hundred photos with your sponsor’s logo in every single one of them.”

Rowan looks at me.

“Then you evaluate it on ticket revenue instead of a survey,” I say. “Which is a real number. Which is the whole thing Ives said this morning.”

He nods slowly. “That would’ve been a lot more work.”

“But it would’ve been better.” I grin.

He shrugs. “Mine got an A.”

My smile drops. “That’s not the point.”

“It was kind of the point,” he says easily.