Lucy on the Ball (3 page)

Shawn and his mother were in the kitchen. Mrs. Quinn had Lucy on her leash.

Lucy pranced about. She knew being on her leash meant one thing. She was going outside. And she wanted to go now!

On the way to the park, Bobby and Shawn were quiet.

Bobby was pretty sure they were thinking about the same thing. They would know a few kids on their team, like Candy. But everyone else would be strangers.

Bobby couldn’t remember the last time he had met a whole group of kids at one
time. Even though he was sometimes shy with his classmates, they weren’t strangers. He had been with many of them since kindergarten.

Lucy had helped Bobby become less shy.
She had helped him make new friends. But he didn’t see how Lucy could help him make friends on the soccer field.

As soon as Mrs. Quinn dropped the boys off in the park, they saw Candy. She ran over to them.

“Hi, guys! I wondered where you were. The coach is about to start,” she told them.

Before the boys could say anything, Candy went on. “There are seven boys and four girls here. Dexter from our class is one of them. In this league, we play with seven kids on the field.” Candy counted on her fingers. She wasn’t very good at math. “That means four kids will sit out at every game. Of course, that doesn’t mean for the whole game. The coach can take players in and out—”

A shrill whistle blast stopped Candy in the middle of her sentence.

“We better get going,” Bobby said.

Shawn and Candy hurried toward the field. Bobby lagged behind.

Coach Morris blew on his whistle once more. “Team! When you hear this whistle you stop what you’re doing. You look at me.”

All the kids looked at him.

“We are here to play soccer,” he told them. “We will practice hard. That will turn us into a good team. Then we will play hard.”

Some of the kids were nodding. Shawn was one of them.

“Now we are going to introduce ourselves. I’m Coach Morris.” He pointed at Candy. “Say your name.”

“I’m Candy. I’ve never played soccer before but—”

“Your name is enough,” the coach said in a firm voice. “Next.” He looked at Shawn.

Shawn said his name so quietly Bobby could barely hear him.

“Juan?” the coach asked.

“No. Shawn,” he said more loudly.

“All right, you’re Shawn,” Coach Morris said. “Let’s all try to speak up.”

Bobby said his name. He tried to speak up.

Pretty soon, everyone had given their names. Bobby tried to remember who was who, but only a few names stuck in his head.

“The next thing we are going to do is pick a name for our team,” Coach Morris told the group. “We need something that goes with the color of our shirts. What’s brown?” he asked.

“Mud’s brown,” Candy said.

The coach frowned at Candy. “Do you think the Mud is a good name for our team?”

Candy looked embarrassed.

Bobby and Shawn glanced at each other. Candy almost never got embarrassed.

A boy named Tim said, “Bear cubs are brown. Like the Chicago Cubs.”

Tim must be a Cubs fan, too
, Bobby thought.

“Yes,” the coach agreed. “Cubs are brown, but they are not very fast, are they? In soccer you want to be fast. Anybody else?”

Nobody said anything for a few minutes. Finally a girl named Jane said, “Maybe cubs aren’t fast, but some bears are. I did a report on them in school.”

“Bears.” Coach Morris thought about that. “Well, bears at least seem tough. Let’s take a vote. How many of you like the name Bears?”

The kids looked around at each other. Slowly, most of them raised their hands.
Nobody seemed to have a better suggestion.

“Okay, then. We are the Bears,” the coach said. “Now comes the most important question. How many of you have played soccer before?”

Bobby was worried. He was afraid that he and Candy might be the only ones who had never played. It made him feel better when only about half the kids raised their hands.

It didn’t seem to make Coach Morris feel better. He shook his head.

“Okay, I guess I better start at the beginning,” the coach said. “Even though some of you know how to play, I want you to listen up anyway. There are some things you might have forgotten.”

The coach took them over to the field. It was a large rectangle, with a circle in the middle and a goal at either end.

“The most important skill you need to play soccer is good kicking,” Coach Morris said in a booming voice. “Kicking is what moves the ball from one player to the next. And kicking is how you score goals.”

Coach Morris stood in the middle of the field and showed the group the proper way to kick. He picked up a soccer ball and kicked it hard. It went almost as far as the goal.

“You’ve gotta practice your kicking,” he said. “Make a target and try to kick to it. Practice kicking the ball with your friends.”

Bobby thought kicking the ball correctly looked plenty hard. But there was more. Much more.

“You also have to learn how to pass the ball to another player. That’s how we move the ball down the field.” Coach Morris
looked around at his team. “You,” he said, pointing to Shawn. “Come here. We’ll pass the ball back and forth between us.”

Bobby was glad the coach hadn’t picked him to pass the ball. Shawn didn’t look nervous. Not very nervous, anyway.

“This is how you pass a ball,” the coach said. He showed them how to use the flat, inside part of the foot. “You can control the ball this way.”

Raising his foot and swinging it forward, the coach passed the ball to Shawn. When the ball came to him, Shawn used his foot to pass the ball back. They passed the ball between them a few times.

“Not bad,” Coach Morris told Shawn. Shawn grinned.

By the time Coach Morris had explained a few more rules and showed them what to do if they were protecting the goal, Bobby’s head was swimming.

“I’ve got some booklets to hand out after practice,” Coach Morris said. “I want you to study them. They explain more about the rules of the game.”

Bobby looked over to the sidelines where his mother was waiting. Maybe it was time to go home.

Mrs. Quinn was sitting on a park bench. She was talking to one of the other mothers. She didn’t seem to be paying much attention to Bobby’s soccer team.

Lucy
was
very interested in what was happening on the field. She was tugging on
her leash. When Bobby waved at her, Lucy gave several short barks.

“Bobby!” Coach Morris was staring straight at him. “Can we have your attention, please?”

Now it was Bobby’s turn to be embarrassed.

“As I was saying,” Coach Morris went on, “we’re going to spend some time running up and down the field. We will divide into two teams. One team will try to kick the ball down the field. The other team will try to steal the ball. Then it will be their turn to kick it up the field.”

Soon the players were ready. The black-and-white soccer ball was placed in the circle in the middle of the field. The coach blew his whistle.

Kickoff!

Dexter kicked the ball. Other kids kicked
it, too. Bobby didn’t come close to putting his foot on the ball. But still he ran. Up the field. Down the field.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Bobby saw something. Something running fast across the field. Something that could bark.

“Lucy!” Bobby yelled. “Go back.”

Lucy glanced at Bobby. Her leash was flapping behind her. That didn’t matter. She kept running.

Now the other kids on the soccer team noticed Lucy. They kept kicking the ball. But they were laughing and pointing, too.

Lucy gave a sharp bark. She had spotted the ball! Lucy loved to chase balls. She cut across the field in front of some of the kids. She got closer and closer to the ball. Then, when she was right on top of it, Lucy pushed the ball hard with her nose. She caught up with it, and pushed it again. Really hard. It went right past the goal line!

“Hey, hey!” Coach Morris shouted. “Where did that dog come from?”

The kids were laughing and cheering. Lucy finally stopped running. She sat on her haunches, panting. She looked very happy.

Bobby was not happy.
Uh-oh
, he thought. Wait until the coach found out that Lucy belonged to him. “She’s mine,” he squeaked.

Mrs. Quinn hurried up to the huddle. “I’m so sorry. Lucy is our dog. She got away from me.” She frowned at Lucy as she grabbed her leash.

The coach shook his head. “She’s a wild one,” he said. “But she sure is fast.”

“Hey,” Dexter said. “Lucy is brown. Why don’t we call our team the Beagles? You said
we should name it after a fast animal.”

For the first time all afternoon, Coach Morris cracked a smile. “The Beagles, huh? What do the rest of you think? Raise your hand if you like the name Beagles.”

Everyone liked the idea. Dexter clapped Bobby on the shoulder. “We’re naming the team after your dog.”

Bobby was happy now. It was always the same. Everyone loved Lucy.

The Baby Lady

O
nce again, Lucy was helping him make new friends. The boys and girls on the soccer team were excited about calling their team the Beagles. When practice was over, everyone wanted to pat Lucy.

Lucy loved all the attention.

That was the best part of practice. But Lucy wasn’t at the next practice. Bobby was on his own. His kicking wasn’t very good.
Not very good at all. He was happy when practice was over. But soon he’d have to go back on the soccer field again. Was he looking forward to it? Absolutely not!

There
was
something Bobby was excited about. Planet Man! He was eager to get home after practice and start drawing.

When Bobby got home, however, he could see right away there wouldn’t be time for drawing.

The first thing he smelled when he opened the door was furniture polish. The first thing he saw was a vase of flowers in the living room. The first thing he heard was the vacuum cleaner.

Something was up. The house was never this clean unless company was coming.

“Mom?” Bobby yelled. He tried to make his voice heard over the noisy machine.

The noise stopped. Mrs. Quinn came into the living room. She looked frazzled.