Top Prospect Page 5

  An electric current shot through the locker room, like Coach G. had hit some secret switch. I could feel the spark starting in the soles of my feet, running all the way up my spine. I went charging toward the door along with everyone else, with Carter already far ahead of me.

  Carter’s Take

  Standing inside that dark tunnel, waiting to run out onto the field as a Gator for the first time, was the most incredible feeling in the world. My teammates and I were squeezed so tight, we practically stood on top of each other in our cleats. No one could keep his feet still.

  Up ahead, in a glimpse of sunlight, I could see a row of huge, pointed teeth. They belonged to a thirty-foot inflatable gator covering the outer mouth of the tunnel.

  “Make way for Coach G.!” a voice shouted from the back of the line. “Everybody, slide left!”

  I felt the crush of my teammates as we hugged the tunnel wall. Then, as Coach G. strode past, I actually trembled a little bit.

  A moment later, I could hear the theme music from Jaws—Bump, bump, bump, bump. Bump, bump, bump, bump.

  I’d been to enough games as a fan to know that the Jumbotron was playing a clip of a gator moving through a grassy swamp toward its helpless prey.

  Then Coach G. screamed, “That’s our cue! Gators, let’s move! Go! Go!”

  I charged through the tunnel toward the bright light, onto the field, to the sound of that cheering crowd.

  Turning back around, near the end of the line, I saw Travis pass beneath that same row of teeth. Coach G. put a hand on the back of his neck and guided my brother over to the sideline as photographers snapped their photo.

  I tried not to let it get to me. I really did. But I couldn’t help what I was feeling. I needed to go out and make my mark. I needed to become a big-time college football stud. Not the brother of the kid who got the scholarship.

  Chapter 8

  For most of the game, I stood on the sideline next to Carter. Only, he’d walk away every time a photographer or TV camera came anywhere near us. Carter got on the field for just three offensive plays, without making a catch. The quarterback didn’t even throw the football in his direction. But Alex caught seven passes and scored two touchdowns.

  On one of those scores, Alex was running full speed along the sideline. A defender had a perfect angle on him, ready to shove him out of bounds. But just as the defender got there, Alex threw on the brakes. He moved like a Ferrari in reverse, going from sixty to zero in a split second. That defender ran right past Alex without ever touching him. Then Alex accelerated again, outrunning the rest of the Panther defense to the end zone. His celebration dance lit up the Jumbotron as Alex spun the football on its end and pretended to warm his hands over it, like it was a roaring fire.

  I tried to joke with Carter that his uniform had stayed as clean as mine was after my Pop Warner game. Only, he didn’t come close to smiling.

  In the locker room after the game, Coach G. was all over the team for every little mistake they’d made.

  “Sloppy, egotistical, and a total lack of commitment!” he ranted. “That’s what struck me the most about our play today!”

  Somebody walking into that locker room, who hadn’t seen the game, probably would have thought the Gators lost 47–0 instead of winning by that score.

  The Gainesville Sentinel

  Section D/Sports – Columnists

  Top Prospect

  Karen Wolfendale

  This is the first in a series of articles looking at the life of top football prospect Travis Gardner as he begins his five-year trek from Westside Middle School to a football scholarship at Gainesville University.

  After scrimmaging with the snooze alarm on his clock radio, Travis Gardner drags himself out of bed. It is 6:40 a.m. Still in his pajamas, Travis places both his palms flat against the chilly hardwood floor, preparing to knock out a set of twenty-five pushups.

  Since August, when Coach Elvis Goddard offered him a football scholarship, Travis has pushed himself to do six such sets a day in order to build more muscle.

  From down the hallway echoes the voice of his mother: “Don’t lose track of time! Oatmeal or cold cereal for breakfast?”

  “Cap’n Crunch! No milk!” Travis answers between pushups six and seven.

  Travis has exactly forty-four minutes before the school bus arrives. If he isn’t waiting on the street corner opposite his modest single-story house, the driver will leave without him—football scholarship or not.

  He has already had to make the nearly two-mile walk once this semester.

  After Travis’s seventeenth pushup, Galaxy, the family’s black Labrador retriever, interrupts the set, begging for attention.

  “That’s eight pushups I have to make up later,” Travis says, scratching the streak of white fur on the dog’s chest.

  Despite the sudden fame that has come with his scholarship, Travis’s life isn’t so different from that of other eighth graders. Friends, school, and Pop Warner football all make demands on his time. Of course, he also has nearly 200,000 Twitter followers as @TravisG_Gator. And on the bus ride to Westside Middle School in Alachua, Travis is the only student with a reporter riding shotgun.

  “Other kids look at me like I’ve made it. Lots of people do. I don’t want to let any of them down,” said Travis. “Sometimes it’s a lot of pressure.”

  It isn’t all a world of worries for Travis, who sports an off-the-charts “cool” factor normally reserved for teenage pop stars.

  “Everybody wants me to sit with them in the cafeteria. So I’ve been spreading myself around, sitting at three or four different tables a week,” said Travis. “Other kids want to help me with my homework now too. That’s good, because it leaves me extra time to train. My mom’s even excused me from some of my house chores. That way I can concentrate more on football.”

  Travis’s older brother, Gainesville University freshman Carter Gardner, plays tight end for the Fightin’ Gators. His scholarship offer came late in his senior year at Beauchamp High School.

  “I got here the hard way, living in the weight room and running extra pass patterns by myself in the backyard,” Carter said after a recent Gator practice. “But I think it’s great that Coach sees something special in my brother.”

  Has the publicity surrounding Travis distracted Carter as he tries to establish himself as a college player?

  “People ask me things like, ‘Aren’t you the brother of that kid who got a scholarship?’” said Carter, who has not caught a pass in his first three games with the Gators. “I usually joke around and say, ‘That’s me, just keeping a space warm for him until he gets here.’ But I’m really focused on my own college football career.”

  Travis’s Pop Warner team has won its first three games this season. He has also thrown nine touchdown passes against only two interceptions. Yet reservations about Travis’s scholarship still exist, as well as charges that the offer lends the Gator program positive publicity in the face of an NCAA investigation. Under the condition of anonymity, an opposing Pop Warner coach spoke to the Sentinel about these allegations.

  “There’s no doubt Travis is the best quarterback in our league, really advanced for his age. But a scholarship to someplace as competitive as Gainesville? This early? Elvis Goddard is ten times the coach I’ll ever be. Who am I to second-guess him?” the coach stated. “But I do.”

  A sea of students parts in front of Travis as he makes his way from the curb to the green cinderblock Westside Middle School building. His classmates meet him with cheers of encouragement and high fives.

  “Way to go, Travis!”

  “Rock that interview!”

  At the school’s doors, an assistant principal dutifully checks students’ ID cards as they enter the building. Travis strolls past without having to produce his. Another perk of his newfound celebrity.

  Chapter 9

  I got invited to seven Halloween parties. That had to be some kind of eighth-grade record. Only, I didn’t get to enjoy it for
long, because Mom made me turn most of those invitations down.

  “How come I don’t get to decide for myself which parties I’m going to? They’re my invitations, not yours,” I argued.

  “Travis, if I haven’t met the parents, the answer’s an automatic no,” she said. “And I’m not a car service. I’m not going to be driving you from house to house. I think two parties in one evening’s a good limit for you.”

  I wanted to argue about it more. But whenever Mom pulled that I’m not a car service line, I knew she’d heard enough. I didn’t need to tick her off. The last thing I wanted to do on Halloween night was to take the bus, or walk and have kids think I was out trick-or-treating.

  I came up with the idea for my costume watching a horror movie on cable. I smeared fake blood on an old, deflated football before cutting it in two with a pair of garden sheers. Then I had Mom sew one half of the football to the front of my jersey, and the other half to the back, like it had knifed completely through my chest.

  “There, that’s a sight I hope I never live to see,” she said, pulling the last stitch tight as I modeled the jersey.

  “Don’t be silly, I’m the quarterback,” I said, looking at myself in a full-length mirror. “I’m the one who fires the football.”

  Kids loved my costume and made a fuss over it all Halloween night. First, I went to Patty Young’s party, where half of my Pop Warner team was hanging. Five or six cheerleaders kissed me hello on the cheek. I spent most of the time pretending I could dance and playing drums in Rock Band for a while. When it was time to leave for Damon and Lyn’s, I didn’t even think about wiping off the lipstick marks from those cheerleaders. I figured it added to my costume. But I guess Lyn, who was decked out as a cowgirl, didn’t agree.

  “Travis, exactly what kind of games did they play at that other party?” she asked at the door. “We have Wii Sports and Just Dance here. But that might be a little tame for you.”

  Later on, Damon told me that somebody had texted Lyn a picture of those cheerleaders kissing me.

  “Who? Haters?” I asked Damon.

  “Did you think everybody was a fan of yours?”

  The rest of that night, Lyn played me pretty cold. I couldn’t get her alone to talk even once. I had a bigger problem, though. The report card for my first marking period was coming out in a couple of days. The deal Mom always had with me was that I needed a B average to keep playing football. She’d actually pulled the plug on my season two years ago, when my average slipped down to a C-minus. I’d just gotten blasted on both my math and science quizzes. So I was already planning damage control.

  * * *

  The next day, while the two of us were eating dinner, I told Mom, “You know, teachers purposely don’t give high grades at the start of the semester. They don’t want you to get a swelled head, thinking you know everything already.”

  “I can see how that might stop you from getting straight As for now, not Bs,” she said, stabbing her meatloaf with a fork.

  “Well, it’s the same principle,” I said, pushing my peas behind the mashed potatoes, like they were the walls of a fort. “If you really deserve a B, you might get a C-plus. Just to keep you hitting the books.”

  “Are you getting all Cs?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I answered. “But if I were, how would it look to Coach G. if you didn’t let me play football this year? It could cost me my scholarship.”

  “Travis, if you don’t get good grades, you won’t get into college. There’ll be no scholarship.”

  “I’m not failing or anything. There’s been a lot of distractions this semester. It’s harder than you could imagine.”

  Mom paused for a second.

  Then, with a hint of sympathy, she said, “I’ve thought about that, how all of this attention might affect your grades.”

  “I just need a little cushion.”

  “I suppose,” she said. “We’ll see what your report card looks like when it comes out. Then I’ll decide.”

  When dinner was done, I took all the dishes to the sink without being asked and started to scrub them.

  * * *

  My first-marking-period average turned out to be a B-minus. In the end, Mom was happy with that. So was I, because I felt like I’d won something from her that I could use in the future, in case my grades really took a hit.

  * * *

  “Guess what? I’ll be in Florida late tonight,” Dad said. I’d just gotten out of school on Friday when he called. “I made reservations a few minutes ago. I’ll meet you at your game tomorrow morning. Then we’ll drive down to Disney, come back Sunday night, and I’ll fly out first thing Monday. So get all of your homework done pronto.”

  “Really? You’re coming here? One-hundred-percent sure?”

  “I’m packing a bag right now,” Dad said.

  “You know Carter’s in Arkansas,” I told him. “The Gators are playing the Razorbacks there tomorrow night.”

  “I could only juggle my schedule so much. It had to be this weekend for me,” Dad said. “Just be ready with everything you need to do. Oh, and I’m not flying across three time zones to see you lose a football game.”

  “You show up, and I’ll guarantee a win,” I said.

  The next morning, Mom dropped me off at the field with my travel bag. Only, she wouldn’t drive away until she actually saw Dad standing there.

  Dad wrapped his arms around my shoulder pads and gave me a hug. “I can’t believe that’s you, Travis. You look like a college football star already. You’ve grown up almost overnight.”

  “You think so?” I asked, as Dad took the bag from my hand, leaving me with just my helmet to carry.

  “I sure do,” Dad answered. He leaned in close to me and said, in almost a whisper, “Travis, there isn’t another player here with his future mapped out the way yours is. That’s special.”

  Dad had brought his video camera to record the game, to show everyone he knew back in California what I could do. My left arm had nearly doubled in strength since the last time Dad saw me play. Still, I felt really anxious about it, like I had something to prove to him. As I took my first snap, I forgot all about my mechanics, and my opening throw sailed a foot over the receiver’s head, incomplete.

  “That’s on me,” I told my teammates coming back to the huddle. “It won’t happen again.”

  Calling signals at the line of scrimmage, I was thinking about my next pass, figuring how to adjust my release. Then I took the snap from Damon. Almost everything was perfect on the play. The protection, the route the receiver ran—I even had a clear alley to throw. But I overcompensated. The ball felt awful coming off my fingertips and handcuffed my receiver at his knees, falling incomplete again. I kicked at the ground, launching a clod of turf through the air, cleaner than any pass I’d thrown so far.

  Eventually, our defense got me a turnover close to the other team’s goal line. I walked back onto the field, concentrating on what Coach G. had preached to me in the backyard: calmness and execution. So I cleared my mind and let my muscle memory take over. That’s when my passing game finally started to click. I called a fade route for the left corner of the end zone, near where Dad was standing with his camera.

  “Shiner sixty! Shiner sixty!” I barked. “Hut, hut!”

  I took a quick one-step drop. Then I lofted the ball high into the air. After reaching the peak of its arc, the football floated down like a feather, over the outstretched arms of the defender, and into my receiver’s hands. Just like playing lawn darts as a kid against Carter and Dad.

  I raced into the corner of the end zone with both hands high over my head, signaling a touchdown. That throw took a lot of the pressure off me. Afterward, I settled down and passed the ball with much more accuracy. It wasn’t close to being my best game of the season. And I knew every mistake I’d made was captured on Dad’s video. But we got the victory I’d guaranteed him, 23–14.

  @TravisG_Gator New TV ad? Travis, you just won your 4th str
aight game. What are you going 2 do now? I’m driving to Disney World with my dad!

  Dad rented a red two-seater Corvette. The drive from Alachua to Orlando is a little more than a hundred and twenty miles, and on the way down there, Carter called my phone.

  “I saw your tweet,” Carter said. “Are you with Dad?”

  “Yeah, he’s here. We’re heading to Disney right now. I’ll put you on speaker.”

  “Saw your brother play quarterback this morning,” Dad said, resting one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the stick shift. “It was a bit of a struggle. But he got it done with that left arm of his.”

  “When did you guys plan this?” asked Carter.

  “Listen, it’s all on me that it happened while you’re on the road,” Dad said. “My schedule broke just right yesterday, and I jumped on a plane. I’ll be back to catch one of your home games soon. I promise.”

  “Whatever,” said Carter. I could hear him exhaling into his phone. “All right, I need to go get ready for tonight.”

  “We’re going to watch it on TV. It’s on ESPN, I think,” Dad added.

  “Be sure to take Travis on that Mission: Space ride. Maybe he’ll puke his guts up again.”

  “I was ten back then,” I said, as we zipped past another road sign. “I’ll give your best to Minnie Mouse. I hear she likes guys with big ears.”

  Carter disconnected after that.

  * * *

  First thing at Disney, Dad and me hit the Magic Kingdom. There were long lines everywhere, but we waited it out to ride Splash Mountain and Space Mountain. Then we did my favorite, the Haunted Mansion, with the stretching room, the creepy wallpaper with the watching eyes, and the portrait of the young guy who turns into a skeleton right in front of you. After that, we went over to Epcot. We tried Soarin’, where you’re suspended above the floor on a fake hang glider. There’s a big movie screen in front of you, and they do all kinds of things to fool your senses so you feel like you’re really flying. Dad got excited when we soared over a bunch of California sites, like the Golden Gate Bridge and the beach at Malibu.