Chapter 20 – Bachelor Auction
Friday October 11
After the Lakeview game, I buckled down and did everything Bo Harrington wanted. If I wasn’t in school or church, football consumed ninety percent of my day. If I was lucky, I found an hour a day right before bedtime for myself. I spent most of that time talking to my friends on video chat. Tracy snuck out a couple of nights and we spent the night together. I loved having my apartment over the garage.
Tracy and I were becoming a team. She understood the demands on my time and she did a lot of little things that were a big help. One example was her mom would make me an egg sandwich each morning that I would eat right before first bell. She was also the keeper of my schedule. Throughout the day, she would text me where and when I needed to do things.
I also put her in charge of my recruiting and social media requests. The Lakeview game had caused a media frenzy. Headlines across the country read ‘David Dawson, freshman quarterback for Lincoln High, sets State single-game passing record.’ She was quoted in an AP article and even made the evening news. She was a dream as my press secretary and the media loved her. You could tell she had a real future in broadcasting. She soon had all the reporters eating out of her hand and kept them off my back as much as possible.
Recruiters started to make noise too. Joe, from the University of Florida, planned a trip to this week’s game. State started to recruit Luke, Magic, Kevin and Bill. They wanted us as a package deal and pushed me to come see their campus with the other four. I talked to Tracy about it and we agreed that it wasn’t in my best interest because State wasn’t a winning program, but for the other four it was a perfect fit. We agreed we would play along to help them out. Tracy created talking points where she or I mentioned our excitement at the possibility of continuing to play with our friends in college.
Tracy worked with Lily to set up all my social media sites for my recruiting. They worked with the coaching staff to put together videos of the Lakeview game and highlights of some of my plays. My Superman video had nearly eighty thousand views. It was Lily’s idea that made everything have a Superman theme. My tweets and postings on Facebook had a similar theme. Anything that needed my input on she sent to Tracy.
The thing that surprised me most was that girls started to become brazen in their approach to me. Saturday night I woke up to some random girl crawling into my bed. Luckily, she wasn’t a serious stalker. She was in a sorority and one of their pledge tasks was to take a picture in bed with a football player. Even though it was somewhat funny, my parents agreed to put a lock on the apartment and floodlights with motion sensors. When I related the story to Bo, he was in shock that we didn’t have a lock on the apartment. I explained to him that in our small town the only people that had locks on doors were the ones trying to hide something.
Even though Tracy and I had formed a team, there still was the issue of the non-relationship. Neither one of us mentioned our concerns, but they were still there. For the most part, things were good for us. I was ready to take on Mount Vernon in tonight’s game.
MOUNT VERNON ROLLED into town with a four-game win streak and featured one of the better defenses we would see all year. They were in the race for a playoff spot, and a win by either team would go a long way to locking up a place. Last week they played Eastside and won 14–10. That was the fewest points Eastside had scored since the California kid took over their offense. The media made a big deal out of our weak competition last week and that everyone would find out if I was for real this week.
All the hype had caused the school to bring in temporary bleachers for each end zone. Mount Vernon also planned to bring their marching band. The town had called the State Police to help with crowd control since our six deputies weren’t going to be enough. After the game, it was estimated that nearly ten thousand people had attended.
In the locker room before the game, I put on headphones and listened to rock music. I do that before tests and games to pump me up. Coach Engels, in his role as the new offensive coordinator, called the starting offense together.
“Okay, is everyone here?” He looked at me and I counted ten other noses, so we were all there. I gave him a nod.
“I wanted to talk to everyone and give you the first play of the game. We’re concerned that David’s on edge early in games. Last week the only low point was the opening interception. I think we need to see the old David.” I could see the guys starting to grin. “I think we need to run Student Body Right with David keeping the ball.” There was a collective, “Yeah!”
Coach Engels smacked my shoulder pads.
“I want you to hit someone so hard that they can hear it up in the press box!”
Coach Lambert called everyone together and we could see the rest of the team wanted in on the secret. One of the local clergy led us in a team prayer, and then we were surprised when Coach Lambert didn’t launch into his normal pregame speech. He just turned to Coach Engels and in his best soft southern drawl asked, “What’s the first play of the game?”
“Quarterback keep, student body right!”
The whole locker room erupted and Coach Lambert led us out to the field. Coach Engels held me back as the rest of the team ran out and broke through a huge banner as the band played our school song. Mount Vernon was already on the field. As the crowd quieted down, Coach Engels told me to join the team. The announcer came on.
“Introducing the new state single-game passing record holder... DOUBLE D... DAVIIIIID DAAAAWSON!”
Talk about embarrassing. Football was a team sport, and if I’d known they were going to single me out I would never have let Coach hold me back. Of course, when I got to the sidelines I was met by Kevin, who hated all forms of hotdogging. He just grinned at me, and I nodded to let him know that we wouldn’t be doing that again.
I peered across the field and saw the sun start to set with the distant clouds tinged in orange. The light breeze and the crisp autumn air made it a perfect night for football under the lights. We won the toss and elected to receive. The kickoff team muffed the return and we were on our own 3 yard line. The old USC play was not a good choice to run in a situation like this. It was slow to develop, and if a team blitzed, you could potentially be taken down behind the line of scrimmage.
We didn’t bother to huddle up.
“Blue. Set. Hut, HUT!”
The center almost hiked the ball over my head. I had to leap to get the ball, and when I brought it in I was four yards deep in the end zone. Their defensive end had shed his block and bore down on me. I lowered my shoulder and exploded through him. The distinctive crack of pads had the crowd on its feet, because I should have been brought down for a safety. Fortunately, the impact was enough to bounce the big defensive end backwards. He went to wrap me up and missed. The video of the play was hilarious. It looked like the poor kid tried to hug himself as he fell on his butt.
Mount Vernon started the game with five defensive backs. When our linemen got into their secondary, it was over. They punched me a huge hole and I broke free. The place went nuts. I was suddenly in the zone. Hitting the defensive end and putting him on his backside was what I needed. I had only green grass in front of me when their safety made a great shoestring tackle at their 15 yard line. The next play I threw a quick screen to Luke, he found a seam, and we were up 7–0.
From that point on, the game was almost a repeat of last week. I settled in and we picked them apart. Working with Bo had improved my technique to go along with my arm strength. My throwing motion wasn’t there yet, but I was getting rid of the ball much faster. I only had to scramble twice all night. They learned their lesson when I broke a twenty-yard run when they tried to blitz. We as a team had worked hard and added six more pass plays and three running plays. We racked up over 600 yards of offense with a little over 400 of it passing yards. Final score was 49–0.