On Saturday morning our buses pushed into UNC’s campus, where the parking lots were already teeming with tailgaters and the sidewalks astream with fans eager to get to their seats. Our buses were unmarked and the windows tinted, but we didn’t get far before fans realized who we were. I looked down to see a ten-year-old boy dressed in a Carolina blue replica jersey, a dimple-faced kid who raised both of his little middle fingers to us.
We dressed for warm-ups in the small visitors’ locker room, and I followed Coach Hightower and the linebackers to a corner of the sold-out stadium’s end zone. This placed us spitting distance from a group of what are, objectively speaking, the very worst group of fans: middle-aged men untethered from their wives, lives, responsibilities.
—I fucked your mom’s hairy asshole last night!
—No calculators in football, faggot!
—Look at that one—you’re supposed to take your tampon out before you get on the field!
The last was directed at me, and I made the mistake of looking at the man who said it. Up to then, the men had been shouting generally, but now they latched onto me for tailored abuse.
—Nice jeans, Mary!
—Look how small that fucker is. You get lost on the way to the soccer game, sweetheart?!
Back in the visitors’ locker room we knelt in a half circle, waiting for Coach Zeller’s speech. Players looked defeated already as they listened to crowd-throb that seemed to get louder, more tactile, the longer we waited. And that wait proved unusually drawn out. The clock signaled we were getting close to kickoff, and yet there was no sign anywhere of Coach Zeller. Assistant coaches shared concerned glances, while Devonté and the other captains looked impatiently toward the doors. Was Coach Zeller puking in a bathroom stall? Was he hiding, terrified of the humiliation we were about to undergo?
I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Coach Zeller, and as he passed me, the rolled-up bedspread he was carrying brushed against my forearm.
—Help me with this, he told two student trainers as he took his place at the head of the half circle.
The trainers each took a side of the spread and unfurled it, showing us the same banner we’d seen hanging from the dorm window. Zeller scowled and sunk his hands into his khaki pockets.
—Somethin’ has been naggin’ at me ever since I moved to Blenheim. Somethin’ about this school. First I thought it was the way students treated you. How these people acted like they were fuckin’ royalty and y’all were peasants. But over time I realized that wadn’t the problem. Not the real one. It was just the symptom. The real problem was that students were allowed to treat you like that. They were allowed to say, “We’re royalty, and you ain’t.” They were permitted to beat that idea into your minds, into your hearts…. It’s a head coach’s job to protect you. And I’ll just come out and say it—your old head coach failed. Didn’t protect you, not one bit. I remember thinkin’ to myself: I ever get the privilege to lead these men, well, I’d see to that.
What, exactly, Zeller meant by “see to that” I can’t say. What I can tell you is that the image that entered my mind—Zeller bursting into that King student’s room and tearing that banner from his windowsill—is probably what a lot of other players were envisioning.
—Now it’s your turn, Zeller continued. Your turn to show these motherfuckers how wrong they’ve been. Your turn to show them how they should be grovelin’ at your feet. I want y’all to stay right where you are for two minutes. I want you to just look at that thing.
One of the uncanniest experiences of my life was standing in that silent locker room for the next 120 seconds. I could hear the plastic squeaks of players angrily masticating mouth guards. The creaks of shoulder pads shifting. Even, I swear to God, the sound of sweat slowly pushing out of pores. Finally, Coach Zeller lifted his chin at Devonté to signal it was time to bring it up. With a gush we converged on him, laying arms onto one another and screaming:
One one two three
Who the fuck you came to see?!
King King motherfucker!
We played our best game of the whole season, going score-for-score with UNC into the fourth quarter. With two minutes remaining in the game, our long-snapper snapped the ball high above our punter’s head. UNC recovered the fumble and shortly thereafter scored what figured to be the winning field goal. We received the kick and Devonté was tackled at our own 31. Sixteen seconds left in the game, UNC leading by three.
What most coaches would have done next was send every receiver and back we had downfield for a Hail Mary pass. But before Coach Zeller surrendered to fickle fate, he wanted to make sure Reshawn touched the ball at least once. So we threw Reshawn a short out route ten yards down the field. The play was designed for him to sprint to the sideline, get out of bounds, and stop the clock. What he did instead was stop dead and, with rat-a-tat juke, tangle the ankles of the linebacker who’d been covering him, which freed him to sprint at an angle toward the middle of the field, and though a cornerback and safety both were closing in on him, he kicked into an even higher gear and outsprinted them to the point of convergence, breaking free—40, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, crossing the goal line as time expired, touchdown.
We ran onto the field to mob Reshawn, with a flushed, screaming Coach Zeller leading the charge.
The shuttles that had felt like hearses on
