The Walk On by John Feinstein

Author:John Feinstein [Feinstein, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-75348-7
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

Buddy Thomas stood up and pointed a finger at two of the backup linemen on the sideline, indicating he needed them to help get Matt off the field. That was actually a relief: if Matt was seriously hurt, Buddy would have asked for a stretcher. Two of the backup defensive linemen raced onto the field and helped Matt to his feet.

He was holding his right leg in the air, clearly not wanting to put weight on it. Buddy had taken his shoe and his sock off. His helmet was off too and Alex could see that his face was masked in pain. As he was slowly helped to the sideline, the crowd on both sides of the field stood to applaud him.

Buddy walked with him, pointing to the cart that sat behind the bench and in front of the stands. It was used, most of the time, to transport equipment. “Get him on the back of the cart. Is Doc here …?”

“Right here,” Alex heard someone say behind him.

He looked up and saw Dr. Joe Vassallo, who was the team doctor—unofficially, of course, since he didn’t get paid, according to what Alex had been told. His son had played at Chester Heights and was now on the team at Virginia.

“Good,” Buddy said. “It’s his ankle.”

“What do you think?” Dr. Vassallo said as they helped get Matt situated as comfortably as possible on the back of the cart.

“Hard to tell. At best, it’s a sprain; at worst, he broke something.”

“I’ll take a look. We’ll want an MRI tomorrow to be sure.”

The entire team was standing in a semicircle, listening to Buddy and the doctor. They were blasted out of their trance by the sound of the whistle. Alex looked back to the field and saw his teammates breaking the huddle.

Oh yeah, he thought, the game is still going on.

Jake stood behind center in the shotgun formation, calling signals. Alex knew that pitch ninety-four, the play Coach Gordon had called, was a simple sprint to the right—the even number, four, indicated that the play was going right. And the nine meant Jake would be running wide, meaning the linemen should try to force the defenders to the inside so he could run outside. Josephs, the tailback, would trail him for a possible pitch.

Jake took the snap and went right. Alex could see that the entire defense was within two yards of the line, knowing a cold quarterback coming into the game wasn’t likely to throw. Just like Matt on the play before, Jake was surrounded before he could take two steps. In desperation he tried to pitch the ball back to Josephs. But his arm was hit as he pitched and the ball ended up at Josephs’s feet. He was swarmed as everyone went after the football.

It didn’t really matter who fell on it because it was fourth down and the ball was going over to the Cougars regardless.

“Should have kicked the field goal,” Alex said—to no one. Jake and Jonas were both on the field and no one was standing near him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.