Juice - Eric Walters [2]
In the center of all the confusion and celebration stood Coach Reeves. He’d hugged each player as we came into the dressing room. He’d been in tears. Big tears. He hadn’t been trying to hide them. I think he was still crying, but those tears had been lost in the tons of soda that had been sprayed all over him, soaking him from head to toe.
I sat off to the side, my back against the wall, drinking it all in. This was like a dream. Not just today, not just winning the championship, but the whole season. Me, Michael the Moose, making the senior team, then becoming a starter and then becoming more than a starter—becoming a star. I had to smile. I wouldn’t say it to anybody else, but I had been one of the most important people on the team. I was the Moose. I’d led the team in sacks. And when I tossed down a quarterback, the stands would erupt, everyone making moose noises and yelling out “The Moose is on the loose, the Moose is on the loose.”
I still cradled the football in my arm. I’d held onto it on the field and I hadn’t let it out of my hands after the game. I knew that eventually I’d have to let go of it, but not yet.
“Could I have your attention!”
It was Coach. He was standing on a chair, waving his arms above his head. Slowly the noise and activity faded until all eyes were on him and the room was silent.
“This is all unbelievable,” Coach Reeves said. “Unbelievable, but in another way, totally believable. How could we not win with this amazing group of individuals?”
Everybody cheered and clapped until he raised his hands. The noise died away.
“First things first. I need to award a ball. Where is the ball?”
I stood up and held it out.
“Toss it here, Michael,” he said.
Coach was pretty well the only person besides my mother who called me Michael. I pitched him the ball.
“What I should do is cut this ball up into thirty-two pieces because everybody was the player of the game.”
Part of me agreed, but another part felt disappointed. I thought that maybe he was going to give the ball to me. I had made the sack and recovered the ball. I’d saved the game, but that was okay. Whatever Coach said was okay. If he wanted to give the ball to somebody else, if he wanted me to eat the ball, I would have done it. It was only fair considering all that he’d done for us, what he’d done for me.
“But I’m not going to cut this ball up,” Coach Reeves said. “It’s too special. I am going to give it away. I’m going to give it away to the player who most represented what made this team so special, who brought us all the way to the championship game and then won that game. Before the game I met with my co-captains, and we all agreed that that honor should go to one player.” He paused. It felt like everyone in the room was holding his breath. “Michael, could you please come forward.”
My heart leaped into my throat. Had I heard him wrong?
“Way to go, Moose!” somebody yelled. Everybody started to cheer.
I jumped to my feet and stumbled forward. My teammates patted me on the back and cheered and continued to scream out my name.
Coach gave me a big hug. “Congratulations, Michael. You deserve this,” he whispered in my ear. He handed me the ball.
“I really don’t need to explain this decision to anybody in this room, but I am going to anyway. In my twenty-seven years of coaching, this is the first time that the most valuable player on the team wasn’t a graduating senior. Michael, you are a player who improved with every game, who played with heart, who never quit and never let anybody else quit. You are why this team is a champion!”
Everybody started cheering again and the coach gave me another hug. I had to bite down on the inside of my mouth to keep myself from crying. I didn’t want them to see me cry. I was Michael the Moose, football star, not blubbering baby.
“I have one more announcement to make,” Coach said, silencing the crowd. I moved away, grateful that the attention was off me again.
“I’ve been coaching football at our school for twenty-seven years.”
“Don’t you mean one hundred and twenty-seven