#someone snagged her in the first game i played so i was deadlock and i played horribly

[toxichem]

i played a game of unrated, and didn't realize i had aced until i had won the round and the announcer called it. im also like, horribly bad at this game, and cant aim for shit/forget half of my util, so me acing was a surprise to myself.

[thefoxholecourtgames-blog]

GAME 01: PALMETTO STATE FOXES vs. USC-COLUMBIA GAMECOCKS

PRE-GAME

Almost overnight, the Palmetto campus turns into a riot of orange and white: ribbons and banners fluttering in the breeze, hung from every conceivable corner; the Orange Notes blaring the Foxes’ fight song across campus at all hours of the day; the Vixens donning their uniforms for the week’s classes, revving up spirit wherever they can.

It’s the start of the Exy season, and the anticipation is nearly electric. The Foxes have been practicing for over a month, honing their new lineup, and this is their first test, their chance to shape how the rest of their season will go—though they’re forced to sit through a day of classes first, trying to keep their minds on their studies instead of on the court, though for many that’s a hopeless task.

The Foxes arrive at the court an hour before first serve, donning their white-on-orange home uniforms for the first time this season. Once they’re all dressed, Wymack gathers them in the lounge, but there isn’t much to say that they don’t already know: this isn’t practice anymore, it’s time to go out there and do it for real. Time to show everyone what they’re made of.

Half an hour before first serve, the Foxes are allowed onto the court for a brief warm-up. They line up in order of position—Strikers, then Dealers, then Backliners, then Goalkeepers, with Grant and Claudia in the front as Captain and Vice-Captain—and enter the stadium. With USC-Columbia so close by, games against their state rivals are always raucous affairs, the sold-out stands as full of garnet and black as they are orange and white.

While the Foxes take to the court for their warm-ups, the Vixens take to the crowd, revving up the orange-clad sections of the stands in an attempt to drown out the visiting Gamecocks—as the Gamecocks’ cheerleading squad tries to do the same.

Once warm-ups are over, Grant steps onto the court to meet the Gamecocks’ Captain for the coin toss that will determine who gets first serve—and, hopefully not for the only time that night, the Foxes win the toss.

FIRST HALF

STARTING LINEUP:

Goalkeeper: Grant Rollins (Sub: Cecil James)

Dealer: Claudia Jewell (Sub: Sasha Hart-Ashby)

Strikers: Brayden Sykes, Arlo Booth (Subs: Jay Wright, Akira Sato)

Backliners: Colin Jessup, Sydney McCray (Sub: Graham Sosa)

The Foxes take their positions: the starting players line up by the court doors, while the rest take their spots on the Fox bench—including River and Paxton who, due to the depth of the Foxes’ roster for dealers, won’t be playing tonight unless unexpected injuries or red cards necessitate it.

As Captain, Grant was the first one to set foot on the court for this first game of the season, and he does it again, leading the team’s starting lineup through the doors and to their starting places. The crowd is loud, but once the doors shut the sound is deadened by the thick walls and the whirring fans in the ceiling: on the court, it’s almost silent, both teams tense and focused as they wait for the starting buzzer and first serve.

Claudia serves to start the half, and that quiet is broken immediately, Foxes and Gamecocks breaking from their starting positions. Brayden is faster off his mark than most, and gets to the ball before any of the Gamecocks can fight him for it—but doesn’t get more than two steps with it before the Gamecocks’ backliners are there, blocking his path.

The Gamecocks, who have always been overshadowed by the Foxes’ notoriety even when they weren’t overshadowed by their play, have always brought a heightened level aggression to their matchups, and this game is no exception. The first hit of the game is a big one, taking Brayden down to the court floor, and though Claudia dives in to the ensuing scramble for the free ball, it’s the Gamecocks that come away with possession.

The Gamecocks are able to push it all the way to the Foxes’ defensive zone, meeting Sydney and Colin in a clash of bodies and racquets. Their deadlock ends when, while one striker has Colin locked up, the other striker is able to wrest Sydney’s racquet from her hands—giving the Gamecocks the opportunity for a breakaway goal, an opportunity that Grant roundly denies them, knocking the ball away from the goal with a swing of his heavy racquet.

With her racquet back in a secure grip, Sydney is able to place herself at the end of Grant’s deflection, the ball landing solely in her racquet’s net and allowing her to run it up the court to Claudia, who then passes it off to Arlo.

For the first time since he suffered a concussion during the Foxes’ Championships run last season, Arlo is back on the court—and, after missing so many games, he feels like he has a lot to prove, and doesn’t intend to waste any time. When his ten steps don’t take him close enough to the goal for a solid shot, he passes off the wall to himself, and is then able to fire off a fast shot into the goal’s lower corner that the Gamecocks’ goalkeeper is too slow in his dive to block.

The players retake their positions for the Foxes’ serve, and with the Foxes on the scoreboard the tension is notably higher. After Claudia serves, the Gamecocks strike out hard, zeroing in on Brayden as he sprints to meet Claudia’s serve and checking him to the court floor once again before he can get to the ball.

And as the Gamecocks take possession. the hits keep coming—to the delight of the garnet-and-black clad fans in the stands, the orange sections joining in as the Foxes’ frustrations slowly mount, as they start hitting back harder, battles for possession drawing out into long, physical struggles before someone emerges victorious.

It’s all legal until the racquets hit the ground and the fists fly, and from the Foxes it’s Brayden who snaps first, a shoving match that Arlo and Sydney are there to break up before the referees can get onto the court, saving Brayden from getting a red card. He does get a yellow card, however, and the Gamecocks are awarded possession, with play being reset to the half-court line.

The Gamecocks dealer serves to restart play, and the team capitalizes on the advantage, executing a neat set of passes up the court that leave Colin and Sydney scrambling to catch up. The Gamecocks get off a shot, one that Grant blocks, leaving both the Fox backliners and the Gamecocks strikers scrambling for possession.

Colin and a Gamecocks striker get tangled up near the wall, until a particularly hard shoulder check from Colin sends the striker into the wall. He goes down and stays down for a few moments, and it’s enough time for the other Gamecocks striker to take offense to the hit, coming at Colin with fists raised.

Colin tries not to rise to the bait, at the expense of a few unanswered hits before his teammates and the referees can fully break up the fight. His restraint is rewarded—the striker gets a red card, and the Foxes get a penalty shot.

It’s around the midpoint of the half, and Wymack uses the stop in play to send on his subs: Cecil for Grant, Sasha for Claudia, Graham on for Sydney, and Jay and Akira for Brayden and Arlo—and sends Jay to take the penalty shot for the Foxes.

Jay takes his position for the penalty shot, between the far court line and the away goal. He should have an advantage: on the bench, he’d had plenty of time to observe how the Gamecocks goalkeeper moved, but the goalkeeper didn’t have the same opportunity to learn his shot—but his mind is somewhere else, on a past life and a wedding that’s coming right on the heels of this game, and when he winds up and takes his shot, the Gamecocks goalkeeper bats it harmlessly away, to the audible groan of the crowd.

The players on the court re-take their positions, and Sasha serves to restart play. The Foxes are still in the lead, but the missed penalty shot lit a fire under the Gamecocks, and Jay and Akira aren’t able to make a dent in their defense. Between the two of them, the Gamecocks zero in on the distracted Jay as the weak link in the Foxes’ striker line, hounding him into mistakes that they convert into turnovers, allowing the Gamecocks to push play back towards the Fox goal.

Making his freshman debut, Graham intends to make his mark—though, when he does, it’s not in the way he probably intended. Swept up in the speed and aggression of Class I play—and possessing no small amount of aggression himself—it isn’t long after tangling with the Gamecocks’ defense that play is halted and he is given his first yellow card, for an illegal stick check against the torso of an opposing player.

The Gamecocks are awarded possession, and play is restarted from where it was halted, too close to the Fox goal for comfort. With no space and no time to work with, Graham and Colin can’t quite cover their striker marks in time, and it isn’t long at all before the Gamecocks fire a shot past Cecil, putting them on the board for the first time that night.  

The Gamecocks serve to restart play and, energized, the Gamecocks are quick off their marks: the dealer heaves a huge serve that rebounds off the far wall and into a striker’s net, and then just as quickly into the Foxes’ goal—scoring another point on Cecil not even a minute after the first.

And, just that fast, the Gamecocks are in the lead. They serve again, attempting to repeat the same maneuver, but this time Graham is there to intercept the Gamecocks’ serve, checking a Gamecocks striker into the wall to get them out of the way. He doesn’t get far with the ball before he’s met by the Gamecocks dealer, and instead of passing to Colin he attempts to barrel through—but an illegal trip is met with another stoppage in play and another yellow card, meaning he’s off the court for the night, his debut something less-than-glorious.

With Graham out of the game, Sydney is sent back on. And, when the Gamecocks serve again, she’s fast enough off her mark to beat their striker to the serve, snagging it and firing it up the court to Sasha, who takes her ten steps without letting anybody muscle their way into her path, before passing the ball off to Akira.

The Gamecocks defense puts pressure on Akira, succeeding in driving him closer to the wall, out of optimal scoring position. At the end of his ten steps he’s left without a clear shot to Jay or Sasha, and so he puts all of his strength into a quick shot on goal—one that, from a tricky angle, manages to hit just within the edges of the lines marking the goal. The Foxes on the bench and their fans in the stands are ecstatic, and even Akira’s surprised that he managed to pull it off.

The players retake their positions and Sasha serves, and though the Foxes do their best to use the momentum from Akira’s goal and push to pull themselves into the lead, they’re unable to make anything happen as the clock runs down.

The buzzer sounds to signal the end of the half, and the score remains tied: 2-2.

HALFTIME

The Foxes retreat to their locker room for half time, where tension and tempers are running high. A tied score isn’t where they wanted to be at this point in the game, and they know it will take tighter, more focused play to pull out a win in the second half—they can’t give away opportunities for the Gamecocks to score, and they have to be better at seizing the opportunities that the Gamecocks leave open in turn. That they have to be, and they can be, better. Back on the court, halftime belongs to the Vixens, who feed off the energy of the crowd, where both Fox and Gamecocks fans are pumped up by the closeness of the game, a first half that had seen many of the squabbles and hard hits that Exy fans always hope for. After fifteen minutes, both teams are called back to the court, and they take their positions for the restart of play.

SECOND HALF

STARTING LINEUP:

Goalkeeper: Cameron Trask (Sub: Lucy Yoon)

Dealer: Teddy Ryker (Sub: Adam Radford)

Strikers: Kent Cheong, Logan Trask (Sub: Marley Reid)

Backliners: Casey Hendrix, Justin Acevedo

The Foxes and the Gamecocks’ fresh lineups take their places on the court as the court doors seal behind him, each side grim and determined, the outcome of the game still very much up in the air, still up for the taking.

Teddy serves to start play, and the game is on once again. Kent and Logan make an early push for the Gamecocks goal off of the strength of Teddy’s serve, but the Gamecocks goalkeeper deflects Logan’s shot on goal—a deflection which the Gamecocks dealer is quick to scoop up and whip up the court to their strikers, turning the tide of the game towards the Fox goal.

Both of the Fox backliners on the court had particularly disappointing ends to their season: Casey was taken out by a broken arm early in the Foxes’ Championships run, and didn’t get back on the court before the Foxes were knocked out; and Justin gritted his teeth through an undisclosed shoulder injury right up until the end, when it became too bad to ignore.

They’re both healthy now, though, and more than most want to get the season off to a good start. They’re tested early, however, as the Gamecocks mount an aggressive offensive, their dealer jumping into the fray as a third striker, forcing Teddy to fall back as well to help Justin and Casey out.

With the crowd of bodies around the Fox goal, it’s hard for Cameron—who’s also back on the court after an eventful season, one which saw her family’s past literally unburied—to keep an eye on the ball. The goal that slips by her isn’t a pretty goal by any means, isn’t one that will make the highlight reels, an opportunistic shot by a Gamecocks striker that gets just enough room to get off, but it still lights up the goal red same as any other, still counts as a point.

Cameron is more than a little rattled, but she takes a deep breath and tries to gather herself: the Gamecocks have a one point lead, but it’ll take very little to change that, if she holds her ground and shuts down the goal—which she knows she can, because she’s done it before.

The Gamecocks serve, but aren’t able to get far with the ball before Casey is there, neatly sending a Gamecocks backliner’s racquet flying out of his hands and coming away with the ball, running it up the court to Teddy, who then passes it to Kent.

On edge every time he catches a glimpse of white-and-orange pom-poms out of the corner of his eye, Kent finds himself slipping back into old habits. Always an aggressive striker, the extra edge to his play is hard to notice, but it’s enough to get him in trouble—after too many protracted struggles for possession against his opposing backliner, his hits get a little dirtier, leading up to an illegal trip using the shaft of his racquet.

The Gamecocks backliner doesn’t take it passively, getting to his feet and in Kent’s face. The altercation seems ripe to grow into an all-out brawl: closest to the action is Teddy, who got into his fair share of scuffles last season, but instead of throwing himself against the Gamecocks he devotes himself to pulling Kent out of the fray, assisted by Casey’s quick intervention.

It’s not fast enough to avoid the referees getting involved—but they award Kent and the Gamecocks backliner each a yellow card: the first for tripping, the second for escalating to a fight, though the Gamecocks are awarded possession, and play is reset to the half court line.

The Gamecocks serve, taking play into the Foxes’ defensive zone. In their game against the Gamecocks last season, Justin earned himself an uncharacteristic red card, and as he faces off against the Gamecocks strikers, behind one of the helmets is a familiar face, trying to bait him with a smirk on his face like he’s sure it’ll work. This time, however, Justin refuses to lose his temper, holding his ground against each borderline-dirty shove and check.

But the Gamecocks’ aggressive play is enough to wear down the Fox defense, enough for their strikers to make another attempt at the Fox goal. This time, however, Cameron isn’t taking any chances that the Gamecocks might get a bounce, and she swings her racquet with all her might, clearing the ball all the way back behind the half-court line.

It’s Kent who’s there at the other end, snagging the ball out of the air before any of the Gamecocks even come near it, taking it as far up the court as he can before passing it back to Teddy, who passes it back to him just as quickly for a shot on goal—one of the fast, hard-to-anticipate trick shots that first got him noticed by Wymack, and that the Gamecocks goalkeeper is too slow to block.

With the score tied again, Wymack uses the stop in play to make some substitutions to his lineup, sending Lucy on for Cameron, Adam on for Teddy, and Marley on for Kent. The new players take their positions and Adam, making his debut on the court as a Fox after a rollercoaster season playing with the University of Texas Longhorns, serves to restart play.

Sitting on the bench for the majority of the game gave Marley plenty of time to doubt and, when she takes to the court in her first official game as a striker, she’s less aggressive than she’s been in practice—less aggressive than she knows she can be. It’s frustrating, especially when her backliner mark is all too happy to capitalize on her mistakes, muscling her out of the way and bypassing both Casey and Graham for a shot on goal that Lucy only just manages to block.

Clearing the goal took Lucy to the edge of the goalkeepers’ marked-out area, and one of the Gamecocks strikers takes advantage of that fact, and the crush of players around the Foxes’ goal to block the referees’ view, to make bodily contact with her—just as the Gamecocks dealer whips a shot past, one that she’s unable to block, that lights the sensors embedded in the wall up red.

The Foxes’ outrage is immediate: the scoreboard above counts a point for the Gamecocks automatically, putting them in the lead, while below the Foxes and the Gamecocks are shoving each other. In the thick of it is Lucy—while she doesn’t have much cause to fight as a goalkeeper, she used to be a striker, and physical altercations on the court are nothing new to her.

Roped into the fray against her will is Marley, targeted by the same Gamecocks backliner that’s been dogging her heels her entire time on the court, full of sly cutting remarks that get under her skin—first shaking her, but then making her angry.

It takes all six of the referees, streaming onto the court through the thrown-open doors, to break up the scrum. But, once they do, a different kind of fighting breaks out—this time a tense verbal one between Wymack, the Gamecocks’ coach, and the referees.

At the end of it, the Gamecocks goal is overturned—the score is restored back to 3-3, tied once again. Because of the size of the fight that broke out afterward, the referees opt not to give out any yellow or red cards, though they do award the Foxes possession as play is reset to the half-court line. On the court and on the bench, however, the Foxes are unsatisfied, as are their fans in the stands.

Adam serves, but play stalls out near the half-court line, both teams with new energy to break the stalemate on the court. When play opens up again it’s Adam who does it, shaking off the Gamecocks’ opposing dealer long enough to heave the ball further down the court towards the away goal, forcing both the Foxes and the Gamecocks to give chase.

With a disappointing start on the court, Marley’s determined to make a difference in the game, and it puts a little more speed in her stride. She’s the first to the ball, and quick to feint around the Gamecocks backliner, creating an opening for herself—and her first point as a striker, breaking the tied game with a goal that can’t be argued with.

The Foxes on the court are elated, clacking sticks and tapping Marley on the helmet as they all retake their positions, a celebration that takes an extra minute to die down—but once it does, they’re focused again: the clock is running down, now, but there’s still enough time for the Gamecocks to tie the game up again.

But they don’t get a chance to: Adam serves, and Marley is there to catch it. This time, aided by her years of experience as a dealer, she doesn’t make the shot herself, but puts herself in a position to set up Logan in the perfect place to slam another shot home—turning what was, at one point, a nail-biter of a game into a decisive lead for the Foxes.

The players on the court gather for another serve by Adam, but there’s no time left on the clock for anyone to make a play—the stands are loud, now that a Fox victory seems assured, and when the final buzzer comes, it’s almost completely drowned out by the sound of the crowd.  

When the first game of the new season is over and the score is final, the Foxes have secured a victory, winning 5-3.

POST-GAME

It’s the first victory of a new season—the first, hopefully, of many more to come. The Foxes take their time to bask on it, the team converging at center court over their orange-painted Fox paw to celebrate, and Wymack indulgently lets it go on for long moments while the Gamecocks look sourly on, before gathering them for the customary post-game handshakes, the Foxes forming a line behind Grant and going down the row of Gamecocks players before they retreat into their own locker room.

But despite the celebration there’s a note of caution: it was a hard fought game, and though the Foxes won, there were long stretches of the game where it seemed like it could have easily gone the other way. It was enough to beat the Gamecocks, but soon they’ll have to face more difficult opponents, and if they make the mistakes they made tonight against the Jackals, or the Ravens, they likely would not get the same result, not manage to salvage a win in the second period.

Wymack and their coaching staff know it, but they don’t say anything tonight, entreating the Foxes to enjoy their victory—everything else can wait until practices resume after the weekend. After he’s extended his usual gruff congratulations, Wymack puts Cameron and Marley on press duty, and when they leave to meet with the waiting reporters, the rest of the Foxes retreat into their locker rooms to shower and change out.

Most of the Foxes take their time, making plans to take over the study rooms in the basement of Fox Tower for an impromptu victory party, but someone they could expect to be in the middle of such a conversation, Jay, is nowhere to be found, gathering himself faster than the rest and leaving before almost anyone can say anything to him—he has a wedding to attend.

Everyone except for Jay waits in the lounge for Cameron and Marley to finish with press duty, and then they file out of the stadium to fight their way through post-game traffic back to Fox Tower, where the rest of their night awaits—everyone save for Arlo, who is taken by surprise in the dark shadow of the court by a past he thought wouldn’t come calling after last year’s game against the Ravens—by associates of his father, who died in prison last year.

ADMIN NOTE: An ominous note to end on, but thanks for sticking with me through the first game of the new season! As a reminder, you’re welcome to set threads during any of the periods listed above (pre-game, expanding on the events of the game itself, halftime, post-game) and I can’t wait to see what you come up with! As always, please let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

The next game will be taking place on September 15, and it will be an away game against the Belmonte University Terrapins. We’ll be following that up with the Fall Banquet, hosted by the Foxes and including all of the teams of the Southeastern District, on September 22. The schedule for additional games will be announced sometime in the future, and I’ll be sure to make an announcement when I update the schedule!