The Woods' household was dark and quiet. Well, it was in all rooms except one. Jackson sat in his bed, headphones jacked into his laptop, which sat against his knees. The screen was the only illumination in the room, shining into eyes untouched by weariness.
He should've been sleeping. It was past midnight, meaning it was already Monday; he had school in several hours, but sleep would not come. He'd tried, but his mind wouldn't quieten for even a second. The games of football he'd seen that day were too enthralling. So he watched them again, and again, and again. Eventually sleep would come, but when it did, those games would be burned into his mind.
First, the Dons and Shamrocks. Again, somehow, Tyrese Samuels had pulled it off. He'd looked human in the early stages of the game, yet that made his dominance in the second half all the more terrifying.
Granted, the rest of the Dons deserved plenty of credit. They all played well after the break, like a completely different team. They'd suffocated the Shamrocks and never allowed them back into the game from the first snap of the second half.
There was a simple elegance to the Dons' offence. In the few Dons games Jackson had watched, most of his focus had been on the Dons' opponents, namely the duel between their star Receiver and Ty. Today was different.
The Dons rarely bit off more than they could chew when it came to their offence. Sometimes they were a bit too safe, yes, but their calm, practical outlook ensured they were never rattled. And after the opposing defence played its hand, they reacted and countered.
It was as if their Receivers were drawn to the gaps in defences, and they were so in sync with their QB that he could even lead them into the openings. He always knew just when and where to place the ball for each different Receiver to play to their strengths every play.
One could easily think such was the benefit of playing together for four full years, but it was more than that, you needed a deeper bond to achieve such a thing. He wouldn't be able to replicate it just by practising with Petey extensively, though that was still a part of it.
"Can I even call myself his friend? What do I know about Petey outside of football?" However, if Petey was anything like Jackson himself, there wouldn't be much else outside of football.
While seeing how the Dons' offence ran the Shamrocks defenders around and created their own openings was fun—add the duel between the two giants on the field and it was an even better experience for both learning and entertainment—Tyrese taking down Jeremiah Byrd was still the main event.
In that regard, both halves had been like different games. For the first half, the Dons were trying to overwhelm the towering, terrifying Byrd with numbers, and the Shamrocks responded in kind by attacking the weakpoints such a strategy left behind. When Ty was isolated in the first half, he was mostly helpless. So what changed?
It was a question Jackson struggled with for a long time. In hindsight, once he learned the answer and where to find it, he realised he'd spent too long looking in the wrong place. The half-time break hadn't revealed anything, nor had Ty or the Dons concocted some devilish strategy to give them the upper hand. The foundation of Ty's game plan was found in the dying moments of the second half.
It was too easy for a Receiver to get tunnel vision when it came to making a catch, thinking claiming the ball was all you needed to do. There was so much to the art of catching than that. A catch wasn't complete until the whistle blew; you had to protect the ball and yourself until that moment.
Jeremiah Byrd forgot that. He had the height advantage, yes, and most would've looked at that and thought it impossible for him to lose, especially to someone like Tyrese Samuels, but Ty had two clear advantages which made up for his small stature—grit and experience.
That was the necessity of failure, and, more importantly, picking yourself back up after it. Jeremiah had his first taste. He'd be a scary opponent if he recovered from this embarrassment.
Training, and putting that training into actual practice was another necessity. That's why pee wee football was a thing, why people like Jackson and Ty gave themselves to the sport from as soon as they could run.
"I need to be stronger."
Jackson slipped his headphones off and set his laptop aside, sliding out of bed and onto the floor. Burpees weren't the quietest exercise, but he tried his best to be as silent as possible as he rushed through a set, not bothering with counting, just pushing himself until he was sweating and couldn't launch himself back off the ground.
Panting, he dragged himself back up. Taking his water bottle for a refill. When he returned to his room, he was ready to go over the Longhorns versus Red Elephants game again.
The two games couldn't have been more different. Actually, it wasn't too different from the first half of Dons versus Shamrocks, except unlike the Dons, the Red Elephants didn't have any bright spots, and the half-time break didn't bring a change of fortune.
It was dominance throughout for the Longhorns. From the first play Kentavious Rice Junior established he was the best player on the field, and the game was in his grasp.
Jackson had never seen anything from the Red Elephants before, but he remembered the name Adonis Varly from the New Year's Gala. An All-American Cornerback, yet he was dismantled with barely a fight.
The rest of the defence put up more of a fight containing the rest of the Longhorns' offence, however, the Longhorns didn't need much from their other Receivers, and only required the odd run to pick up a few extra yards here and there which they earned with harsh, gruelling runs.
Jackson had to rewatch the first drive repeatedly just to pick something valuable from the plays. Each time Kentavious blew by Adonis with such ease, it was hard to grasp exactly how he'd done so even when you were watching closely. It looked too simple, like they were on vastly different levels—what would there be to learn from watching a high-schooler dismantle a middle school defence?
But that wasn't the case. They were on the same level, no matter how far ahead Kentavious was in compare. Jackson rewound the footage, slowed it down, zoomed in tighter around Kentavious and Adonis.
The footwork was key. Whatever physical advantages either boy had, were minimal enough that they may as well have been equal in almost all aspects, so it came down to skill. … However, it felt as if there was more just waiting on the edge of realisation, yet the more Jackson focused on it, the further from realisation he became.
Maybe it was how fearless and decisive Kentavious was. As soon as he saw a weakness, the moment Adonis put a foot wrong, Kentavious pounced. He was quick and ferocious enough when pouncing on these openings, you could've thought he was predicting them. But he was never wrong.
Once Kentavious had the advantage, he never relinquished it. The Longhorns didn't bite off more than they could chew, either. They didn't try to force a touchdown with every play. Instead, they were content to take smaller, yet still productive gains with each pass, earning 10 or more yards with each of Kentavious's receptions until they cracked the end-zone.
With that first touchdown, the game was over. Even seeing the Red Elephants for the first time, it was clear they'd been relying on their defence to do most of the heavy lifting. Surely they'd usually get some support from their offence, but Jackson wouldn't have been surprised if neither side cracked double-digits in most of the Elephants' previous games.
Whatever the case, the Longhorns shut them down and out for the entire game.
After the first touchdown, it was more a game about how the Red Elephants could stop Kentavious. That was the first step to their comeback, yet no matter what they tried, they simply couldn't.
Blitzes were called to put more pressure on the QB, but the Longhorns shifted their protection and ensured their was always an open lane, no matter how small, to escape through to avoid the pressure.
The Red Elephants brought one of their Safeties down to double Kentavious, but all that achieved was highlighting how far above them he was as it gave him free reign to show off what set him apart from all others; what earned him the spot at the top of everyone's ranking.
Kentavious was unmatched in the sky. Even with two defenders challenging him, they couldn't reach the same heights he could. He jumped over them, and came down with catch after catch after catch.
If the Red Elephants threw more defenders at Kentavious, that opened up too much for his teammates. It was hopeless.
The game was a slaughter, ending with a score of 50–0 as the Longhorns scored seven touchdowns, and for some odd reason ran in a two-point conversion on one of them. The teams nearly came to blows after that, though the game was almost literally over, even if it had been figuratively for a while, so tempers were kept in check.
Yet, even after such a big loss, Adonis Varly—the one who'd had most of the touchdowns scored against him directly—kept his head up, and stood tall as he consoled and controlled his teammates, bringing them over to shake the Longhorns' hands.
His spirit wasn't broken, despite being so outmatched. Nobody on the Red Elephants gave in to despair. Maybe that wouldn't have normally stood out, how could someone make it that far and still be psychologically fragile? But Ty and the Dons had just shattered the Shamrocks, and their game came down to a Hail Mary.
Maybe a close loss on the final play was more damaging than a blowout … or maybe it was a difference in what it felt like to go up against Ty versus Kentavious.
Either way, the result was almost unbelievable. A semi-final for Nationals ended in a fifty-point shutout? Jackson's first thought was the brackets being uneven. Sure, the Longhorns had demolished their opponent last week, and Kentavious looked great in that outing, but this was … it was different. It was a statement.
Looking back at both teams' record and results through the season quickly squashed thoughts of the Red Elephants being undeserving of their place in the final four.
Like the Longhorns, the Red Elephants were undefeated through the season. While their scoring had slowed in Nationals, no team had put up more than nine points against them, and there was plenty of shutouts in those games going back to their regular season.
The Longhorns, however, were consistently beating everyone by over twenty, almost thirty. Most impressive was that they'd scored at least forty in EVERY game.
Jackson lay back, closing his laptop. It was a strain to keep his eyes open, though checking the time showed it was already past three in the morning. He wasn't going to have a good time at school after he woke up, but he couldn't think about that at the moment.
Even as he closed his eyes, he was still thinking about next weekend.
The Dons versus the Longhorns. What a game that would be. The number one defence, versus the number one offence. Which side would prove themselves as the real number one?
Everything pointed to the Longhorns. The Dons were strong, and miraculous, but how could anyone compete with what the Longhorns had done to every opponent before them? How were the Titans supposed to compete with either side? How was he supposed to compete with Kentavious and Tyrese?
They were in the same year as him, both freshmen. Yet they were already competing to prove who was the best player in high school. Every time he took a step forward, the mountain he needed to climb grew a mile higher.
However, as Jackson drifted off, picturing this ever growing mountain that pierced the clouds and continued upwards until its peak was nestled amongst the stars, he smiled. The mountain could keep growing, Ty and Kentavious could keep running ahead. He WOULD catch them. Not only that, but he'd overtake them too.
He dreamed of scaling a mountain of infinity. Sometimes he climbed for days, weeks, years even—at one point he climbed so long his hair was grey and falling out, and a beard longer than himself trailed off behind him, blowing in the wind—and though the peak was always within sight, it was never within reach. He fell every time, endlessly, for all of eternity. Yet every time he did, he got back up, dusted himself off, and began the climb again.