Last Chance Cleats

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I knelt on the sidelines. I had given the boys a little talk. The man in motion came in, slow and easy. He cut fast when the ball was snapped. The timing was just right. The take came off well, and the hand-off was clean. It made nine yards right through the middle, with the safety coming in fast to help smear the play.

I was proud of the boys. Weston Walker, the new head coach, was standing just behind me. I half-turned and grinned up at him. “How about that, Wes?” He had insisted that with each other we should be “Wes” and “Mike.”

I had met him eight years before, and hadn’t seen him since. The occasion of our first meeting was the annual fracas between my Philadelphia alma mater and his outfit, the national champs that year. Wes was a senior and I was a sophomore. I was line backer-up behind the shaky side of our line. He was the hardest charging back I have ever seen, before or since. I stopped him almost all afternoon. Each time I got up slower. It was like stopping a runaway milk horse.

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