Page 38 of Campus Heat

I stood there for a moment, hands on my knees as I tried to regain my composure. Lucas reached the top as well, and I did my best to grab him before he crashed into the railing.

“You know,” Lucas grasped. “I’m starting to think he doesn’t like us.”

“Move,” I forced out, grabbing onto the railing to steady myself before heading down as well.

On the fifth run, Dylan’s foot slipped, and he stumbled. Malik grabbed him by the arm and pulled him upright without breaking his stride.

“Eyes up,” Malik mumbled as he moved past Dylan.

It wasn’t a tease or a bite. He was hyper-focused on what he was doing, and he wanted the rest of us to be in the same mindset. He was clearly used to that type of grueling exercise.

We hit the bottom stair with two seconds to spare, but no one celebrated. We were so exhausted and broken that we didn’t even speak. We just stood there with our hands resting on our thighs and our lungs dragging in ragged breaths. Coach paced in front of us. His movements were slow and calculated so that he could see the expressions on our faces.

“Are you embarrassed?” he asked calmly.

No one responded. We didn’t even look in his general direction.

“You should be,” he added.

His words were like a blow to my gut. I thought we’d done okay. We finished before time, and even though we suffered through it, all of us made it to the end.

“Get to the field,” Coach ordered. “It’s time for sled pushes.”

His comment was met with a few groans, but no one really protested. We just did as we were told, hoping this nightmare would end sooner rather than later.

We found a few sleds waiting for us, with their weighted metal biting into the dewy grass. I lowered my shoulder into the moist pad and dove. My cleats dug deep and my legs churned, but the sled barely moved. I tried again; this time my thighs trembled violently, but the result was the same. I stopped, trying to catch my breath.

“Lower,” Harris shouted as he walked past me.

I looked at the piece of equipment to see where my mistake was, and then I thought I saw what he meant. I adjusted, leaned harder, and as I struck it, I felt the pressure grind into the tender line of muscle behind my shoulder. Pain flared through my back, but I ignored it, thinking it was part of the process.

Next to me, Cam pushed his sled as if he had something personal to prove. His face was set, jaw rigid, and eyes fixed on the line of grass in front of him. Sweat dripped from his chin, as if we needed more evidence that he was trying his absolute best.

“I didn’t know the kickers trained with the real men,” Dylan wheezed as he came up behind him.

Cam didn’t respond. He just pushed harder.

My sled finally lurched forward, tearing the grass beneath it. My vision blurred at the edges, and my quads were shaking so badly that I wasn’t sure they’d hold. I released my pressure when someone threw up behind us halfway through the next rep, but they didn’t even get Coach’s attention. He just kept walking like nothing had happened.

“You think they’re tired?” He called. “Do you think the noise dies down if you fold?”

Harris seemed to have changed overnight, and I didn’t want to get on the bad side of this new version. Who knew what would happen if I did? So I grabbed my sled again before he could tell me to. Malik fell in on the other side, and Lucas slid behind us to add some weight. We didn’t exchange words. The task was about grit, and that was exactly what we were trying to achieve.

The sun was barely rising when we transitioned to sprint intervals, and my body already felt hollowed out. We ran suicides until our cleats dragged. Then we used our dead legs to run routes. And every time the spacing was off, even if it was just by a couple of inches, we reset and ran them again. We were exhausted and temperatures were starting to crack.

A freshman receiver missed his break, causing us to reset yet again, and I lost it.

“Are you guessing or running the play?” I snapped.

The kid flinched as if I had struck him, and I instantly regretted my decision.

Lucas stepped in quietly. “Your angles need to be tighter. I know it doesn’t make sense to you right now, but just trust it. It will work.”

I exhaled through my teeth. This whole training session was taking a toll on the entire team, but it wasn’t the physical work that was frustrating me. It was the reason we had started the day like this that had me seething. It was Penny with her articles and that pathetic site with its memes. The way our own stadium felt hostile instead of supportive. It was the way Elizabeth stood there and defended us while I couldn’t bear to look.

Contact drills came next, and our short-tempered exhaustion made everything worse. The hits sounded louder. The pads cracked harder, and our bodies collided with enough force to rattle teeth

“Again!” Harris barked.