Chapter 9 Dina
Dina
‘Wow, you really look the part of a coach,’ Jen says when she meets me at the park on Monday morning.
I’ve dug out one of my old tracksuits – black with a green stripe down the sides.
Deen has even bought me one of those whistles that coaches wear around their neck.
I tried to decline it, thinking it made me look a little too dorky and overenthusiastic, but he insisted.
Now, I feel a blush creep up my face at Jen’s appraisal.
‘My brother gave this to me. He insisted.’ I hold out the whistle for her to see.
‘Well, you’ll need it, so it was good thinking on his part. Come on, I think the girls should be here already.’
She leads me through the wrought-iron gates and along a weaving dirt path to an open space, but there’s no sign of the group of girls that were in the restaurant last week.
Jen frowns, checking the time on her phone. ‘They’re not always good at being on time. Don’t worry, they’ll be here soon.’ She says it to reassure me, but she seems more worried than I am.
‘It’s fine. I mean, it’s the summer, I guess,’ I say. They didn’t actually look like the most enthusiastic football players the last time I saw them, but I decide to keep that thought to myself.
Finally, after a few more minutes, I spot a few girls shuffling over, looking tired and uninterested, though they do pass me cursory curious glances.
‘Good morning,’ Jen says, in her stern teacher voice. ‘You’re late.’
‘Sorry,’ one of the girls says – she has long blonde hair and is, for some reason, wearing a full face of make-up. Never a good idea when playing football.
‘Jade, you can’t come to practice wearing that much make-up. And tie up your hair, for God’s sake.’ Jen tosses her a hair tie, almost as if she expected this.
‘Will do, coach,’ Jade says with a sickly-sweet smile. She catches the hair tie but doesn’t seem to be in haste to tie up her hair. Instead, she takes out her phone and starts taking some selfies.
‘They’re not usually … They’re usually better,’ Jen says, checking the time on her phone again. Which doesn’t really make me believe that they’re usually much better.
‘It’s fine,’ I mumble, trying to swallow back the worry already building inside me.
I’m not sure how Jen and I are supposed to coach this group of girls.
It’s not like I expected our old team to show up in the park today, but I hoped for at least some kind of excitement about football, or getting a new coach, or something.
Definitely not this.
Slowly, more groups of girls come strolling in, though I notice a lot of them are not dressed ready to play. There’s one girl who’s wearing flats instead of trainers, another wearing jeans instead of tracksuit bottoms or shorts, and a few more with their long hair loose.
Jen seems prepared for all of this: she has extra kit, hair ties and even a beaten-up pair of boots that are a little too small for the girl that needs them.
She reprimands all of them as she hands these out, but her words seem to fall on deaf ears.
I try to remember if we were like this when Jen was our coach, but I mostly remember the excitement of my first football practice.
‘All right, girls, good morning. Thanks for finally making it in!’ Jen says with faux cheeriness.
‘Morning,’ the girls mumble back, barely sparing her a second glance. Some of them still cast me curious looks.
‘I have some exciting news. This is Dina, our new assistant coach!’ Jen waves an arm towards me.
I smile as some of the girls’ eyes flicker up towards me, but their piqued curiosity seems to quickly dissipate. I guess I’m not as exciting as they thought I might be.
‘Cool,’ one of the girls towards the front mumbles, her eyes glazing over as she goes back to her phone promptly. Definitely not very cool.
‘I thought you were our coach,’ another one of the girls says, looking between me and Jen with a confused expression. She’s one of the only ones who has come dressed to play football.
‘I am, Sophie, but Dina will be helping me out with coaching,’ Jen explains.
‘That’s why she said assistant coach,’ another girl beside Sophie says, rolling her eyes. Which earns her a glare from Sophie and a frown from Jen.
‘Sara, come on. It was a fair question. Now, let’s do some warm-ups, OK?’ Jen ushers all of the girls on to run some laps.
After some initial groaning, they put away their phones and head onto the field, jogging the length of it back and forth. They don’t look happy about it, and they’re not what I would call fast or energetic. But at least they’re doing it.
‘They just need a little time to get going,’ Jen whispers to me.
‘Yeah, sure. We always did too,’ I say, though it’s not really true.
I check the time on my phone. We’re already halfway through practice and most of it has been taken up with their tardiness, getting them prepared to actually play and with warming up.
‘We’ll get them to do some drills. What do you say?’ Jen asks.
‘I’ll get the cones set up,’ I offer, excited to finally have something to do instead of just despairing over the state of the team.
I pick up the stack of cones that Jen brought and start arranging them at different angles around the place.
Once I’m done, my eyes drift to the touchline, for some reason expecting Baba’s familiar face to be there, telling me what a good job I’m doing.
Of course, he isn’t there. It’s been five years since he passed away, but sometimes it still feels difficult to wrap my head around it.
Soon, the girls are running drills around the cones, dribbling the ball from one cone to the next.
They’re not bad, but it’s clear that they don’t have a lot of practice.
The main problem I notice is that they’re a little too easily distracted.
They argue and they fight. They want to gossip and talk about celebrity scandals.
And one thing is perfectly clear: they have absolutely no interest in the game.
By the time practice is over, I’m reconsidering everything.
Ma’s words in her garden over the weekend are flashing in my mind.
Why did I ever think that coming back to football was a good idea, even in this minuscule capacity?
My mother always knows best about everything.
I might as well throw in the towel, and maybe I should even tell Deen that he should forget about his dreams of the restaurant.
Clearly, dreams are better left to our imaginations, because the reality of my dreams of returning to football feels nothing like I wanted it to.
Jen turns to me, and it’s almost like she can see the panic in my face. She gives me a much-needed encouraging smile. ‘I’ll walk you out of the park, come on.’
She gathers up the last of her belongings and the two of us walk side by side, silence washing over us.
All the while, my mind is whirring with all the reasons why I should quit right here and now.
Surely, there’s a better use for my time than coaching a team of girls who know nothing about football.
‘I know they can be a lot,’ Jen says finally, hesitantly. It’s almost like she can read my mind. ‘But you saw that they were talented, right?’
‘They don’t like football. They didn’t want to be there and they definitely didn’t want to play,’ I say.
‘They’re kids, Dina. You have to cut them some slack,’ Jen says. ‘And … OK, maybe their dreams aren’t playing football but—’
‘They don’t even like it.’
‘But they’ll learn to like it with time and practice. It’s still the start of summer; they’re getting the hang of things.’ Jen sounds way more confident than I feel.
‘I don’t know, Jen,’ I say. ‘I didn’t … I mean, I wasn’t sure what to expect but—’
‘You know why I wanted you to be assistant coach?’ Jen stops in her tracks, turning to look at me with utter sincerity in her expression.
‘Because I was the only one who would do it?’
Jen smiles. ‘I wanted you to do it because I think that if there’s anyone who can get these girls to like football – maybe even love it – it’s you.
You can show them what you liked about it, and you can help them hone their talents.
If nothing else, you can get them to enjoy it for this summer, and maybe even win a few matches. ’
Jen’s confidence in me is baffling, and totally misplaced. Especially when I’ve never coached in my life.
‘I know you can do this, Dina. And you’ve got me. I’ve got you. We’re going to get this team into shape together,’ Jen continues.
That, at least, brings a smile to my lips.
It’s nice to have Jen around again. Her energy is a little infectious, and the fact that she’s unwilling to give up is pretty commendable.
It was one of the things I admired about her back when she was our coach.
No matter how much we struggled, Jen never gave up on us.
She always believed that we could do whatever we set our minds to.
And she could be right – maybe between the two of us we really can do it.