He sighed and said to the phone, “Time out, Lou… the arch thing.”

John jogged over and joined camcorders and cell phones overhead with a GQ dude who was everything John was not: tall, handsome, Hollywood hair, athletic build, wearing a starched white shirt, a stylish tie knotted like he knew how, and a beeper clipped to his belt-a college jock upgraded to real estate, no doubt. Another football dad.

“Great game, huh?” the dude said through outstretched arms.

“Yeah, great.”

“Who’s your girl?”

John sighed again. He never missed Gracie’s games, and he couldn’t help but enjoy himself, his daughter the star player, particularly since he had never been much of an athlete himself. Fact is, he was so lame at sports that back in grade school the girls were picked for the recess teams before he was. Little Johnny Brice. He was ten years old before he realized Little wasn’t his first name. Fast forward twenty-seven years and now Little Johnny Brice was standing in the middle of a soccer field across a victory arch from one of those guys who was picked first for every recess team and the dude’s asking him who his daughter is and his daughter is the best athlete on the field but he doesn’t want to tell this room-temperature-IQ lamer that because he knew all too well what was coming next. John braced himself.

“Number nine,” he said.

“ Gracie? ”

The dude’s thick eyebrows shot up, and he looked John up and down with that familiar bemused smile.

“Gracie’s your daughter?”

It wasn’t the first time John had suffered that bemused smile at one of Gracie’s games. Point of fact, it had become an every game thing ever since the football dads started attending the girls’ soccer games. Five years ago when Gracie had first started playing soccer, John had been the only dad at the games, the football dads no doubt thinking, What’s the point if the girls can’t even hit each other? But now, Elizabeth had informed him, federal law required gender equality in college sports, so girls were getting scholarships to play soccer, softball, volleyball, and just about every sport but football.