Gym Candy

The season ends, and Mick’s team does not make the playoffs. Without football, Mick has difficulty filling his time. Over Christmas break, his grandparents visit. The first week of January, his dad is offered a different time slot at the radio station. He’ll no longer be working with Ben Braun, and would mean he worked in the afternoon, instead of early in the morning. Mick and his mother both encourage him to take the job, and he does, even though he says it will make Ben Braun unhappy. 

During January and February, Mick does little besides spend time with Drew and strategize about spring football. They tell each other that they are both sure to make the varsity team. In April, Mick receives a call from Mr. Downs, the head football coach at Shilshole High. He invites Mick to the spring football camp at school the following week, stressing that it doesn’t guarantee that he’ll be on the varsity team. It will, however, give them a chance to observe Mick’s skills and make their decision. Before he hangs up, Mick asks if they’re going to call Drew as well, and Mr. Downs says yes. 

By the end of the weekend, Mick’s excitement over the call turns to anxiety. On Monday afternoon, he walks to the high school with Drew, who is just as nervous as he is. In the locker room, the other guys look so much bigger than them that Mick is intimidated. During the practice, Mick performs poorly. He is slow in the drill and drops the ball several times when it is thrown to him. Five other guys are trying out for his position—running back—and he’s sure that he’s the worst of them. Drew does not do any better.

Mick gets better with every practice, however, and by the end of the week he feels like he has a shot. On the final day of practice, the coach posts the results. Mick and Drew both make varsity. 

Every morning that summer, because official practice has not started yet, Mick and Drew practice together on their own for two hours. They improve steadily. However, given the heat of the summer and the cost of joining a gym, they allow themselves to stop lifting weights, which costs them strength. Mick asks Drew how good he thinks a player named Drager really is. Drager is the running back a notch above Mick. Drew says that he thinks he’s only slightly better than Mick, but is built like a man. Drew has his own equivalent to Drager: another quarterback named Clark. Mick and Drew promise each other that they’ll overtake them.

In June, Mick gets his learner’s permit and can drive, as long as he is accompanied by an adult. His dad tells him that when his mother agrees, he will let him drive his Jeep and teach him how to work the clutch. 

Official, two-per-day practices start the week that Mick gets his learner’s permit. He and Drew are on the second team, while Clark and Drager are on the first team. Mick studies Drager every chance he gets. Drager is stronger than he is, and never seem to get knocked backwards, no matter how big of a player he is hit by. But Mick knows that he is a split-second faster, which he thinks will give him an opportunity to surpass Drager at some point. He gets his chance at a practice when Drager takes a break, which lets Mick work with the first team. He takes a pitchout, then sprints around all of the tacklers for a touchdown. Coach Downs compliments him on the run and then asks Drager why he can’t do the same thing. Mick’s pleasure fades quickly when he notices Drager staring at him. Drager spits on the ground right on front of Mick and never takes his eyes off him.

Downs makes a speech about how the following Monday, there might be some changes to the starting lineup. Mick believes this means that he will be replacing Drager on the first team. However, over the next two weeks, his position doesn’t change, even though he outworks Drager consistently. Another player finally tells Mick that it’s hopeless: Coach Downs does not play freshmen. Unless Drager gets hurt, it is unlikely that Mick will see much action on the field for the next two seasons. When Mick tells his father about Downs’s policy, he responds that Mick only has one choice: he has to play harder than Drager every day and force Downs to play him. 

Mick practices harder than ever but realizes that he’s not doing it to beat Drager. He’s doing it because it’s the only way he knows how to play: “It didn’t matter that it was only practice. Football was in my blood” (61). When the official games start, he is only involved in a few minutes each time, usually only on kickoffs, but he makes big plays and catches Downs’s eye. His father won’t come to the games, however. He says that he’s only interested in watching if Mick is playing running back and running the ball.

Halfway through the season, Downs asks him to come to his office after practice. Downs tells him that in all his years of coaching, he has never coached someone with such a good attitude. He has also never had a freshman as a team captain, but he tells Mick that from now on he will be the Special Teams Team Captain. When he calls his father to tell him, he is complimentary, but asks if Mick will use this new status to leverage his way into playing time at running back. Mick says that his father’s words “sucked everything good out of [him]” (63). Downs’s policy hasn’t changed. Over the weekend, Mick thinks about his father saying that he should insist to Downs that he be allowed to start in the games. He decides to ask Downs about it. But when he does, Downs cuts him off immediately: “I decide who plays and who doesn’t, just like I decided who is captain and who isn’t. You got that?” (65). Mick leaves his office, discouraged. 

The season continues. Mick plays hard and well, but his status doesn’t change. He begins to look forward to a hard summer of practices and an improved next season. However, one Sunday, a week before the championship game with the team from Foothill, Drager and Clark get caught drinking by the cops, who are then forced to handcuff them when they resist arrest. Downs tells Drew and Mick that they will both be starting in the game. That Thursday night, Mick tells his father that he’ll be starting in the championship game the following evening and asks him to come. 

In the locker room before the game, Mick can barely sit still: “A sense of power filled me. It started in the back of my head and spread like a wildfire until I felt as if I were going to explode” (69). Coach Downs makes a speech and then the teams take the field. Mick looks into the stands and sees his dad there. 

Foothill has not lost a game all season, but Mick is not intimidated. On his first two runs, he is quickly stopped after a gain of only a few yards, but he doesn’t get discouraged. For most of the first half, no one can gain an advantage. But just before the half-time buzzer, Foothill manages to score a touchdown, although their kicker then misses the extra point.

In the second half, Downs changes his strategy and begins a series of passing plays. Mick feels like this means the coach had given up on his running ability. After a series of passes, Drew tells the team, in a huddle, that he is changing Downs’s play and running a play for Mick. Mick receives the handoff and runs nearly the entire length of the field for a touchdown. Their kicker scores the extra point and they are leading, 7-6. Near the end of the game, one of the Foothill linebackers tackles Drew and forces a fumble, which leads to a Foothill touchdown. Drew’s elbow is injured during the tackle, which leads Downs to call a series of runs for Mick, since Drew will have trouble passing.

Mick drives the team up the field, bringing them to within three yards of the end zone with less than a minute left, but on their final chance, he collides with Foothill’s best linebacker. Mick drives with his legs, trying to force his way forward, but the turf begins slipping beneath his cleats and he is brought down. He is twelve inches short of the endzone and Mick’s team turns the ball over on downs. Foothill wins the game.

Mick rides home with his father. When he tells him that the turf caused him to fall, his father cuts him off: “What happened is, that linebacker stopped you. He was stronger. It was one-on-one, and he beat you […] it’s okay to lose as long as you learn from it. So learn from it” (80).

In his bedroom that night, Mick looks at the posters of famous NFL running backs on his walls. He wants to tear them all down. He feels that he failed in the game because he has no talent.