NOVA
The team hotel had a bar on the mezzanine level that was trying very hard to look like it hadn’t been designed by a committee. Dark wood. Edison bulbs. A cocktail menu with descriptions longer than most of my clinical assessments. The kind of place that wanted you to believe you had discovered it, even though it was connected to a Marriott by a carpeted hallway.
I should not have been there.
The postgame routine for support staff was clear: team dinner, debrief with Coach Brentwood if requested, return to your room. The bar was for the players. It was where they decompressed after a win, where the adrenaline and the competitiveness bled off into overpriced whiskey and loud arguments about whose goal was better. I was not a player. I was not a wife. I was a psychologist with a contr
