Page 130 of Hometown Halftime

“Yeah, okay,” he says laughing as he heads to his seat by Darren in the bleachers.

The team took the Harrison Grove loss personally last week, and it shows once the whistle blows.

The girls come out aggressive from the first possession.

Brooke drives through contact hard enough to force an early turnover near midfield, while Dani scoops the loose ball and fires it wide. The back line finally starts clicking the way Kinsey and I have been trying to build all season, hands moving quickly down the line until Paige breaks free down the wing.

The crowd erupts when she scores the opening try. Kinsey fist-pumps beside me so fast she nearly smacks my shoulder.

“Yes!” she shouts.

I shout out over the field too, because her excitement is contagious as hell.

The next forty minutes turn into the best rugby we’ve played all season. The girls communicate, trust each other better and recover faster when mistakes happen.

Even after Jefferson Prep answers with a try of their own near the end of the first half, no one spirals this time. The younger players regroup while Kinsey keeps them focused along the touchline.

“Play your shape!” she yells while pointing toward the defensive line. “Trust your support!”

And they do.

In the second half, Paige demolishes a girl near the forty-meter line with a tackle that makes the crowd collectively lose their minds.

Kinsey gasps beside me. “Holy shit.”

I grin proudly. “Beautiful form too.”

The turnover leads to another scoring sequence two phases later, and suddenly Cedar Falls is up by two tries with less than ten minutes left.

By the final whistle, the girls are exhausted, dirty, and absolutely losing their minds.

Final score: Cedar Falls 24, Jefferson Prep 12. That puts our record at 3-1.

The entire team rushes the field yelling while parents clap from the sidelines and someone starts blasting music again near the benches. Megan tackles Tara into a hug hard enough that both of them eat grass.

Kinsey laughs beside me while shaking her head. “We aren’t going to stay injury-free until the end of the season if they keep celebrating like this after every win.”

“They earned it.”

Her eyes shine when she looks up at me. “Yeah. They really did.”

And for a second, everything else around us fades out. Until—

“RILEY!”

I turn just in time to see Emma barreling toward me at full speed.

“Oh, no,” I say.

She crashes into my legs while I catch her before she can take us both out.

“There’s my favorite menace.”

Emma beams proudly while wrapping herself around me like a koala. Behind her, Jackson and Lucy walk across the grass with my mom trailing after them, carrying a travel mug and looking amused.

“You know, Emma,” Mom says dryly once she reaches us, “normal people say hello before attempting bodily assault.”

Emma laughs. “I said Riley first.”