"You wanna go?"
Elijah Godfrey was standing in the door of the "computer room" in our new, three-man dorm room at ACU. We were finally sophomores. The angst and frustrations of our freshman year were behind us and the air was full of promise. I had become friends with Elijah over the past year. He was a farm boy. From the Panhandle of Texas. Tough as nails and soft as silk all at the same time. Elijah knew how do two things well: Work hard ... and play football.
Our Freshman year had been a blast. He and I played on the same flag-football team, of which he was obviously the quarterback. There were few at ACU who could throw like Elijah, fewer still who could run like him, and none who could see the field like he could. Elijah was a football maestro. In his eyes, it was a dance. He watched it move at whatever pace he wished. He could slow it down, speed it up, turn it over, pull it inside out; all in the space of his mind. Others needed film, chalk-boards, x's and o's. But Elijah breathed football. It gave him life.
So, appropriately, our team had blitzed through the competition to a speedy championship victory. For the rest of us, it was one of our proudest moments. We were champions. Better than everybody else. The Best ... trophies and all. But Elijah wanted more. Elijah wanted to be a legend. And he knew how to get it.
It may sound odd, and indeed it is, but at ACU the flag-football season is not one of masculine exhibition. It is not dominated by Boys' games, and the last game of the night, under the lights of the Sanders Intramural Complex, when the crowds are at their fury peak, is very rarely between teams of men. At ACU ... it's all about the girls ...
From the time they are in pig-tails, the little girls of ACU heritage are told the stories. Their heads are filled with the lore. The graceful, elegant women, who they know to be their mothers, soon become the shadows of a previous life. Women of dirt and blood. Desire and Grit. Triumph and defeat. In the tradition of ACU, moms are the bearers of lives once lived under the lights, where the air is crisp, the grass is cool, and the soul can be filled ... or tragically ripped away.
At ACU, the Flag-football season is ... for some reason ... all about the girls.
And so, Elijah knew how to get his legend. He would coach the greatest women's team, in a place where coaching women's teams, made men legends.
I looked up from my computer. "You want me to come with you?"
He was holding a clipboard. A stopwatch hung around his neck. "If you want ... "
It was 7:30 in the evening, on the Saturday before school started. At most schools this would be the last great fling before classes began. The final hurrah of summer. But here, at Abilene Christian University, it meant one thing: The draft.
We pulled up to the Complex. Evening was coming on. Elijah stopped the truck and we sat for a moment. The complex was flooded with Freshmen girls. Each with a different name, different hometown, different story. Elijah had been scouting the "run-throughs" for almost a week. He knew who he wanted. And as luck would have it, he had drawn the number 2. He would get the second over-all pick.
He pointed through the windshield toward a group of girls on the other side of the Complex.
"You see that girl over there ... with the tall yellow socks. The one in the Aggies shirt."
I nodded.
"Thats my first pick. Emily Wallace. She has a gun, dude. A gun." He paused and stared through his Oakley's.
"That's my first pick."
"As long as Foster doesn't take her first ... "
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