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“Want to bag skate ’em, Coach?” Coach Seville asked.
Coach Gizzard snapped his fingers and pointed at the assistant coach. “That’s a great idea, Coach Seville! Let’s bag skate these highly paid, unmotivated junior leaguers until they remember how the fuck to dig deep and win games!”
“On the line!” Seville called, blowing his whistle.
Hell. I hadn’t been bag skated in years. Coaches reserved this punishment for a reason—it was physically and mentally exhausting. There was a solid chance I’d be puking up my breakfast by the end of this.
Collectively, though, we deserved this. Coach Gizzard was right—we made too much money to play like we had on our road trip. We also had more pride in ourselves than that. The loss of our former team captain, Ben Whitmer, had hit us all hard and we honored him by winning.
Coach Gizzard brought his A game to the bag skate, making us come to a full stop on the lines because it was harder. We skated line drills and laps, followed by more line drills and more laps.
“This is bullshit,” Boone murmured while his mouth was hidden behind his water bottle during a thirty-second water break.
“Shut the fuck up,” I murmured back.
As soon as we started skating again, Lars and Eric quickly had to stop to vomit up the water they’d just drank.
“How long does it take to puke?” Coach yelled out. “Get your ass moving, Alvarado!”
My entire lower body hurt by the time we were done. Konstantin Volkov, our backup goalie, fell to his knees on the ice, completely gassed.
“You wanted to quit an hour ago, but did you?” Coach called out. “Next game I better see every one of you skating like you’re being chased by a goddamned axe murderer and fighting for that puck like your opponents just fucked your mothers, you hear me?”
“Yes, Coach,” we said in unison.
I hadn’t puked during the drills, but I felt everything I’d eaten or drank coming up now. I knew better than to interrupt my coach, though. Someone had brought a stack of buckets out to the ice for those that had to puke, and I was just going over to grab one when Coach waved toward the locker room.
“Get your asses out of here! We’re doing this after every game someone slacks in, so you may want to order your own buckets with unicorns and hearts on them for next time.”
I hadn’t seen our head coach so pissed in a long time. It probably had something to do with his job being on the line if we didn’t make the playoffs for a second year in a row.
The pressure was always on for all of us. When people commented that it must be fun to play a game for a living, they never seemed to consider that we weren’t just expected to play the game. We needed to consistently win it.
I ran the last twenty feet to the locker room, barely making it to a trash can in time. My body didn’t quit until I’d puked up every bit of food and water I’d had today.
When I stood back up, Josh, one of our trainers, was next to me. He passed me a wet hand towel and said, “Meet me in the training room.”
I nodded, wiped my face off and tossed the towel in a laundry bin on the way into the training room.
It felt good to lie down on a padded massage table. Tony put a pillow beneath my head and gave me some Gatorade to sip while he stretched out my legs. I felt myself sliding into sleep.
It wouldn’t hurt to give in to a quick nap.
I woke up and swiped the back of my hand across my mouth to wipe away a little drool.
The lights were off in the training room. Through the light streaming in from the window in the door, I could see two other guys were asleep in here, too. Someone had covered all of us up.
Looking down at my watch, I saw that it was two thirty p.m. Wow. I’d slept for a couple of hours.
When I slid off of the table to the floor, my sore legs immediately reminded me of the grueling bag skate. My stomach was painfully empty but I still felt like eating might make me sick again.
I quietly left the room and headed for the shower. By the time I finished rinsing off and got some clean clothes on, I felt like myself again.
There was no one left in the locker room, so I’d be having lunch alone. Probably for the best. I’d just pick something up and take it home in case I got sick again.
But first, I had to stop by the front office to talk to our team’s video coordinator, Mo. I’d watched the footage of the games she’d compiled for me on our road trip, but she always liked to talk to the players after she’d had a chance to watch it all herself.
