Space is at a premium at the high school fields tonight. Two sets of adolescent stormtroopers are prepping for their military careers by hitting each other with lacrosse sticks and being excessively macho. A couple of men’s baseball teams are waddling around the bases showcasing a selection of the finest duplex beer bellies in America. And some cheerleaders are jumping around noisily while their mothers sit in lawn chairs and spread gossip.
Despite the lack of room, our practice goes quite well. I make the kids run for 50 minutes non-stop without the ball and with only one brief government-mandated stop for hydration. This is the kind of heavy mileage 10 year old boys need in pre-season. Against my better judgment I then start a scrimmage. As usual, it’s the starters versus the scrubs. The problem is the scrubs’ goal leads onto where the cheerleaders are doing whatever cheerleaders actually do apart from shouting in unison.
The first time a ball goes flying into the cheerleaders, they say nothing. The second time, there are a few murmurs of complaint. The third time, however, the cheerleading leader (I mean I can’t call her a coach, can I?) decides to pick a fight with me.
‘Can you please stop your boys kicking the ball over here?’ she asks.
‘No, I can’t,’ I respond. ‘This is a sports field. You and your dancers don’t need to be out there.’
‘They are not dancers, they are cheerleaders, they are elite athletes!’ she shouts, already losing the plot.
‘Whatever you want to call them honey, they are taking up space on a sports field and whatever they are doing, it certainly ain’t sport.’ I use ‘ain’t’ for effect and it seems to work in annoying her.
‘How dare you?’ she says rather menacingly before storming away. A minute later, this unstable force and a dozen other women start to walk towards me. I’m so scared I can’t even figure out the collective noun for a group of cheerleader moms. A coven? A gaggle? A cackle?
‘Practice is over for tonight kids,’ I shout while walking rather briskly to my car. Some people call fleeing like this cowardly, I prefer to think of it as common sense.
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