My Four Superstar Ex-Boyfriends

Chapter 5: Boys in Action

"This is really enough! The first day she had us practicing passing, the second day she had us practicing running on curves with the ball! Day three she had us practicing grabbing laps! Day four day five day six she had us do nothing but physical workouts then still practicing grabbing hoops! Where's the shooting! Where's the shot, man?"

On Sunday afternoon, three starters of the varsity high school soccer team in the small town of Cromlover got together. They stood on the bridge that stood over the winding river. It was the middle of a delightful summer day, blessed with bright but not hot sunshine, and the town would enjoy rubber boating during the summer months!

Of course, biking around the town with friends would also be a great weekend activity.

But the boys, who had a week's worth of fun with the new soccer coach, couldn't feel the joy of summer! The boys, who loved to show off their shooting skills to their friends on the varsity team, had to be put out of their misery by the "new guy"! Straw-Head Luther had made his displeasure with Emily clear from the first day she arrived, and now he was making his displeasure clear again!

So freckle-faced Matz, who was slumped over the railing of the bridge, said, as if he were on the verge of losing it, "Doesn't she remember that soccer involves kicking the ball into the goal?"

Luther: "I'm serious, the first round of the South Bohemia Intercollegiate Soccer League is about to start, and we can't afford to keep tossing the ball around! Heinz will be a junior this year, and we've got to finish in the top eight of the state tournament in our last year of school, so we don't end up not even making the final round!"

Strawhead Luther's words could be considered to have found the point at once. The freckle face that had been lying softly on the railing as if he had no bones immediately came to his senses and turned his head to look at Heinz, the best kicker on their varsity team, "Heinz, are you going to go and talk to the principal about changing the coach? I'll go if you don't!"

The tallest of the three boys remembered how their Asian female coach would always check the field for them before each lesson, bring a first aid kit, and carefully prepare spare shin guards for them, and how Ms. Emily would watch each of them carefully and take notes every time she took them to practice. He wanted to refuse his friend's offer, but then he thought that this was the last year he would be on the varsity team, so he just stayed silent as a sign of acquiescence and didn't give a rebuttal to Matz's words.

Strawhead Luthor, being the most action-oriented of the three when it came to this kind of problem, took Freckleface along with him to the principal's office during his lunch break the next day, and protested to Mr. Principal as a varsity starter, stating that they needed a new, proper coach for the team!

"Mr. Principal, you can't have a lady coaching us. That's just weird!"

"Son, it sounds like you're being a little sexist towards your new coach?" Mr. Principal asked Luther with a smile, "That's not good, your mother and sister will not be happy to hear that. Even in the German B professional league, there are female team head coaches. There's no way I'm going to fire a competent teacher just because of her gender. You see, Ms. Emily has checked the field for you every day since she became your coach before practice began, and she has watched over you carefully and meticulously and done everything in her power to eliminate all possibility of you getting hurt on the field. Isn't that right?"

"But doing that well isn't enough to make her the kind of coach we need! The kind, the kind of coach who can get us to win in the Intercollegiate League!" Luther felt that the ones the principal had said were irrefutable to him, but they weren't the issues he wanted to bring to Mr. Principal's attention! He had to tell Mr. Principal the point of the problem! The point!

At this point in the game, Luther's friend on the varsity team, freckle-faced Matz, immediately delivers an assist when his little buddy needs him, "Sir, Miss Emily is a kind lady, but she's always making us practice passing the ball! We don't even rehearse the plays, and she doesn't take us to practice shooting! It's like she's just teaching us what's in the textbook. That's not what we want. We want to improve in the intercollegiate league this year!"

"So, boys, you want me to fire your coach when the team hasn't had a single loss?"

[So, boys, you want me to fire your coach when the team hasn't had a single loss?] Luther and Matz talked to Mr. Principal about the many, many grievances that were on their minds. They had even thought long and hard the night before about what they should say when the time came. But in the end, that elderly gentleman sent them all back with just this one sentence! By the time Heinz asked them how things were going before the start of the afternoon's training, the two of them couldn't mention how upset they were, which was sitting on the lawn, stifled and disgruntled.

Raising his eyes to see that chubby woman again, this is even more angry directly to the ground lying in large letters. Sight good Heinz see Emily again is carrying a first aid kit, the hand also carries four small bucket, this will pat his friend, and then stand up and run over to take those things from Emily's hands.

When receiving those small buckets, Heinz subconsciously glanced at the things inside, and then looked at Emily with some doubt and asked, "Are these ......?"

"Command tiles! I noticed on the first day I came over here that you guys all used to look at the ball when you carried it instead of looking in front of and behind yourselves. I've been reminding you guys about it since then, but it's not working. So I came up with this idea!"

Emily's face was glowing as she talked about the new gadget she'd whipped up this weekend, and she gestured for Heinz to take a look at the label she'd put on the outside of the little bucket containing those command tags before waiting there for the varsity captain to give her her sentiments.

"Blue, accelerate. Yellow, steer. Red, ball out. Black ...... stop?"

Heinz kicked the ball well and spoke English and German fluently. This made communication between Emily and the members of the varsity team much less difficult. After hearing Heinz read out these instructions in English, Emily, who had spent the night forcibly memorizing and still deepening her memory of the four instructions, glanced again at the labeled paper attached to the four kegs with the instructions in Czech, English, and German, and then nodded happily and said, "Yes! Exactly right!"

With that said, Emily then high-fived the members of the varsity team to come over and asked Heinz to help translate her words.

"After a week of spending time together, I've noticed that you guys have a habit of always looking down at the ball when you play soccer. I know it's a completely subconscious move, and you guys worry that if you don't keep your eyes on the ball, the ball will be lost to you. But this is very detrimental to you during the game."

Emily paused with each sentence and waited for Heinz to translate the words over. She waited until the other woman nodded at her when she was finished before she continued.

"When playing soccer, we often emphasize a player's 'big picture'." When it comes to more obscure proper nouns, Emily glances at her notebook and replaces the English she's speaking with that word in Czech. This also allows her to communicate her ideas to the boys more unhindered.

"We also often emphasize the 'extraordinarily broad vision' of a particular player. I'm sure there will be some of you who are gifted in this way, but to be able to do both, you first need to learn to lift your faces when you play soccer, rather than keeping your heads down. You need to see where your teammates are at all times. And where your opponents are. You need to be alert enough to be ready to play and protect the ball at all times."

After Emily said these words, a boy in the team who still looked childish expressed his opinion, "We all understand the reasoning, and we also want to be like the professional players who know where the ball is without looking at it, as if the soccer ball is a part of our body. But it's really hard to do."

When the boy got impatient, he added Czech to his English, which Emily couldn't understand, so she subconsciously turned her head to her varsity captain, Heinz. Heinz translated the boy's words for her. After hearing those, Emily smiled.

Although the devastating rise in weight had made her whole person already fat and different from her former self, when Emily showed this smile, she had a vague shadow of the girlfriend of that soccer superstar, Emily.

"So I came up with an idea!"

After having Heinz explain to the boys the use and meaning of these signal command signs, Emily this said, "We're going to stand every thirty meters and hold up the four-colored command signs. The rest of you will line up and run towards us with the ball. When I raise the blue sign, you will accelerate with the ball, and when I raise the yellow sign, you will turn. When I hold up the red card, you will go out, and black will stop the ball! Of course, we can skip steering today. Once we've practiced these three commands, then we'll add the change of direction! If you just keep your heads down when you carry the ball, you're sure to miss these commands. At the end of this drill, I'll count the number of times each of you made a mistake."

Upon figuring out this new training method Emily was talking about, more than one person expressed their interest in it. The boys even laughed. Then someone asked Emily, "What about after you've tallied up the number of times each of us has been wrong?"

Emily said, "There are eighteen of us here, and the four who made the most mistakes will have to continue with physical training. The remaining fourteen can practice against the seven!"

Confrontation practice! Look what they had heard! During the week before, their new coach had only taken them through the basics, and endless laps! The boys were bored to death! But now, they could finally train against each other!

But while everyone else was happy, straw-headed Luther and freckle-faced Matz were frowning and turning their heads fiercely towards each other, both of them looking as if they were saying: what the hell is going on?

How could you improve like this after we've only just told the principal about the problem!

How can you suddenly take us on a program we want to play when we haven't even had a joint protest with you!!!!

It's not okay!!!

During the training of changing moves on command, Strawhead Luther and Freckleface Matz, being too gullible, ranked fourth and third from the bottom of the team in terms of error rate under the new training regimen, and didn't qualify for the first seven-on-seven matchup training session since the new trainer took over!

But while the two boys were still practicing their tossing and turning under the mutual supervision of the other two, they could still hear Emily not far away shouting out the words in the Czech language she had been doing homework on for days, "Stay alert! Remember what you guys practiced in the previous week's time in the circle-jumping drills! Players on defense! You need to pass the ball to your teammates on defense just like you did in the circle-jumping drills! Heinz! See the two defensive players in front of you! They and the one player chasing after you now form a circle of three! Recall what you practiced in last week's training! Pick up the tempo! Quickly and quickly! Don't stop moving when you have the ball! Run the ball all the way!"

Tears filled the hearts of Luther and Matz who heard those shouts, and they felt that a traitor had appeared among them!

It was at this time that one of the other two boys who were doing basic training with them couldn't help but look in the direction that Emily and the others were in, and said in a very yearning tone, "They seem to be having a lot of fun over there ......... ..."

Luther: "Shut the f**k up!!!"

Matz: "You shut up!!!"