Tanya West - Sports Shorts

Joseph Bruchac
David Lubar
Marilyn Singer
Terry Trueman
Dorian Cirrone
Tanya West
Alexandra Siy
Jamie McEwan
Edited by Tanya Dean

Minneapolis

Text copyright for Bombardment 2005 by Joseph Bruchac
Text copyright for Two Left Feet, Two Left Hands, and Too Left on the Bench 2005 by David Lubar
Text copyright for First Position 2005 by Marilyn Singer
Text copyright for Finishing Blocks and Deadly Hook Shots 2005 by Terry Trueman
Text copyright for Finding High-Jump Fame 2005 by Dorian Cirrone
Text copyright for Line Drive 2005 by Tanya West
Text copyright for Riding the Century 2005 by Alexandra Siy
Text copyright for On Being Written In 2005 by Jamie McEwan

Cover design 2005 by Darby Creek Publishing All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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Cataloging-in-Publication

Sports shorts : an anthology of short stories / by Joseph Bruchac ... [et al].

p. ; cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58196-040-2 Trade hardcover

ISBN-10: 1-58196-040-9 Trade hardcover

ISBN-13: 978-1-58196-058-7 Trade paperback

ISBN-10: 1-58196-058-1 Trade paperback

Summary: A collection of eight semi-autobiographical stories about the authors experiences with sports while growing up. They range from the game Bombardment over the lunch hour, sports from gym class, karate, ballet, and wrestling, to baseball, basketball and football. Contents: Bombardment / Joseph Bruchac Two left feet, two left hands, and too left on the bench / David Lubar First position / Marilyn Singer Finishing blocks and deadly hook shots / Terry Trueman Finding high-jump fame / Dorian Cirrone Line drive / Tanya West Riding the century / Alexandra Siy On being written in / Jamie McEwan. 1. Sports Juvenile fiction. 2. Athletic ability Juvenile fiction. 3. Sportsmanship Juvenile fiction. [1. Sports Fiction. 2. Athletic ability Fiction. 3. Sportsmanship Fiction. 4. Short stories.] I. Title.

II. Author.

PS648.S78 S667 2005

813/.0108357 dc22

OCLC: 58434746

Manufactured in the United States of America
9/1/11

eISBN: 978-0-7613-8536-3 (pdf)

eISBN: 978-1-4677-3099-0 (ePub)

eISBN: 978-1-4677-3100-3 (mobi)

CONTENTS

Two Left Feet, Two Left Hands,
and Too Left on the Bench

Bombardment

by
Joseph Bruchac

READY?

Coach Fasulo held the three volleyballs cupped in his big hands like a juggler about to begin his act. But that was not what was going to happen. Far from it. And right now those volleyballs were not just volleyballs. They were ammunition.

SET?

A hundred pairs of eyes watched intently from the two ends of the gym. Some were fearful, some eager as wolves waiting for the first rabbit to show itself, some uncertain of whether they were predator or prey. I was pretty sure of what I was, though. My role was as set in my own mind as it was in the minds of all the other boys who were invariably a head taller than I. I was fresh meat.

I hadnt joined those who managed to manufacture some lame excuse so they could sit it out on the bleachers below the five-high, arched, screen-protected windows on the north side of the old Saratoga High School on Lake Avenue.

I gotta cold.

Turned my ankle.

I dont feel so good, Coach.

I broke my fingernail.

My own imagination was more fertile than that. Id memorized from my grandmothers unabridged dictionary at least one major disease or debilitating condition for every letter of the alphabet from arthritis to zoophobia. But I never took the easy way outeven though I knew Id be an easy out whenever I caught the eye of one of the big boys on the other side who knew a soft target when he saw one. Even though Id had three pairs of glasses broken, had suffered two bloody noses, and had the wind knocked out of me a dozen times over the last year, I needed to be out there. A part of me felt like a lemming following its fellows over the cliff into the Arctic Ocean, but I couldnt resist.

When noon recess came and we were given the option to go to the gym, I always trotted so fast down the hall on my little doomed feet that I was often the first to step out on the wooden floor where combat would soon ensue.

GO!

Coach Fasulo tossed the balls up and back-pedaled for the safety of the sidelines as the bravest or most foolhardy players on each side leapt forward to grab those dangerous globes that glistened like three spinning full moons.

Red, a lanky, long-armed kid who was also a baseball pitcher, caught one of the white spheres one-handed and hurled it at our side.

WHOMP!

Reds shot nailed a chunky kid. I didnt know his name, but hed had the misfortune of stepping in front of me just then. He was hit so hard that he fell to his knees holding his stomach and then crawled to the bleachers.

I should have sympathized with him, but I was too exultant. That ball had been meant for me. Bombardment had begun, and, for once, I wasnt the first man out.

KA-THOMP! WHAP! THUNK!

The three balls that hit in rapid succession, taking my feet out from under me, spinning me around, and bloodying my lower lip made it painfully clear that I was, however, the second.

Bombardment. The way it was played and the rules of the game could not have been simpler. Imagine a typical school gym. Take a group of kidsten, twenty, a hundredand divide them into two equal sides. The line in the middle of the court splits the two territories. Step over that line, and youre a goner, banished to the bleachers with other early failures of survival of the fittest.

The laws of nature had nothing on Bombardment when it came to the pitilessness of the three ways you were eliminated from play.

Step over the line. Out.

Get hit clean (not on the bounce) by a ball from the other side. Out.

Throw the ball and have it caught by your victim. Out.

It didnt matter how much I loved that gameI was always the last one chosen. I was different from the other kids. (I know now that every kid is different from all the other kids. Even the kids whom Id thought had it made in the shade had their own hard rows to hoeas Grampa Jesse used to put it. But I didnt understand that back then.)

I was different because I was being raised by my grandparents. All of the other kids I went to school with lived with their parents. Their dads went to work eight hours a day from nine to five. Their moms stayed home and took care of their families. My grandparents, who ran a little general store, were always home. My grandmother, the head of our family, was an intellectual whod graduated from Albany Law School and passed the bar, but never practiced. My dark-skinned grandfather had left school in fourth grade, jumping out the window when they called him a dirty Indian one too many times. My grandparents had met while Grampa was working as a hired man for Gramas father. Their marriage had been, to put it lightly, a scandal.

None of that was as important to me. Our home in rural Greenfield was miles away from Saratoga. I read my grandmothers books, helped out at the store, and spent the rest of my free time in the woods. In town, kids got together to play games and learn how to get along.