All You've Got

Chapter One

She raced up the hill, chanting her secret mantra to the steady beat of her running shoes slapping the pavement. The words helped her focus: “Every day, every way…”

They calmed her and gave her courage. And Lauren McDonald was definitely going to need courage tonight. Plenty of it. In less than eight hours, she would lead her high-school teammates against Sacred Heart Academy at the world’s largest female athletic event, the National Girls Volleyball Championship. To win, she needed to play the best game of her life. But first, she had to get up the hill: “Every day, every way…”

Big games on Saturday night were a major stresser, an endless day stretching out before you, no school to take up time, to distract you. Lauren’s teammates dealt with the pressure in different ways. Some slept in late. Some plugged into Ipods and disappeared into a book. One of Lauren’s teammates actually did homework. But Lauren liked to run up hills.

As she climbed the steep incline, she saw a sweeping view of the South Bay of Los Angeles, a curve of coastline with south-facing beaches with sand so soft they actually sold and shipped tons of it to Wakiki in Hawaii. Three distinct piers stretched out into the ocean in one-mile intervals: Redondo Pier, Hermosa and the last, Manhattan Beach Pier, was barely visible in the morning haze. Manhattan was Lauren’s favorite beach because it was wide enough to accommodate miles of volleyball nets. The mansion owners on the Strand sometimes complained about the noise from the raucous games, but even City Hall ignored their whining. Because this was the home of volleyball, the place where it was born. Kinda like when they talk about the cradle of democracy, only more important - to Lauren, anyway.

As the words of her mantra echoed in her head, she imagined entering the world-class stadium tonight and looking up into the crowd. Ten thousand fans would be there. Some had come from as far away as Hawaii just to see these girls rumble.

She rounded the bend and started up the final six switchbacks. Waves pounded the jagged rocks below. Off in the distance, a scant twenty-six miles away she could see the rolling hills of Catalina Island. Lauren and her friends often took the shuttle to the port of Avalon to shop, hang out and to do seven-mile ocean swims. The other major sport on Catalina was hooking up with college boys. USC, UCLA, Long Beach State, whatever. Her best friend Becca was a superstar tease, but flirting was the one and only game that Lauren didn’t play.

At five foot eleven, Lauren was tall like her dad. Her teammates envied her endless legs, her six-pack abs and her mad hops. She was a California blonde with natural honey highlights. Although she occasionally wished her breasts were a little bigger, she didn’t spend a lot of time stressing over how her body looked. She was more concerned with how it performed. She had a twenty-inch vertical leap and a killer serve. She was the league’s premiere outside hitter. She slammed the ball hard. Everyone said she hit like a man.

And that was no surprise.  Lauren grew up in a house full of men.  She had four older brothers, all super jocks in their own right.  And all had failed in some way, both big and small, to meet their father’s expectations.  Lauren knew that she was her father’s last chance to sire a true champion.  Earlier that morning before she left on her run, Sam McDonald gave her a pep talk, saying stuff like “Dig deep and do your best.”  And “Leave it all on the court.”  And don’t forget, “You’re the best player in the state when you bring it.”   Recalling how he patted her on the back after each encouraging cliché, she stumbled as she rounded the curve and started up the narrow path that led to the bluff.  Why did the sound of his voice sting like criticism?  I should be used to it by now.  She regained her footing and kept running: “Every day, every way…”

Lauren had survived seventeen years of her brothers’ teasing. She had been thrown in rivers, hung upside down off ladders and one time, her favorite brother Luke had forced her to climb down into a storm drain to retrieve a runaway baseball. She’d been left out, cut out, put down, dressed down and subjected to a constant stream of practical jokes designed to toughen her up, as if she wasn’t tough enough already. In spite of it all, she loved her brothers and until she turned fourteen, she had always been comfortable in the company of men. But high school was different. She was the only of her girlfriends who still had never had a serious boyfriend. Okay, forget serious. She’d never had a boyfriend at all.

Finally cresting the PV bluff, Lauren, stopped and pulled out her sports water bottle. She shaded her eyes with her hand and swept her gaze across the curve of coastline to her high school nestled into the rolling hills below. An elite, all girls Catholic school perched above the Pacific Ocean in the affluent community of Palos Verdes, it looked more like an elegant small college with its Mission-style buildings and park-like grounds. Her freshman year, she made the all girls orchestra but after two practices, she dropped out. Like her dad always said, “It was better to be really good at just one thing.” And being good at volleyball was a full-time job. She worked out over four hours a day, even off-season. She barely eeked out enough time for schoolwork. She was an expert at completing homework on the road while being driven to and from practices and personal trainers and coaches.

Villa Madonna’s parking lot was empty now, but on schooldays it was filled with BMW’s, porches, SUVs and electric colored Volkswagon bugs. In L.A., you are what you drive, and these girls were nothing if not first class.

No one was surprised to see Lauren’s school make it into the finals. Villa Madonna had a ten-year tradition of churning out super girl athletes. Three Olympians. Two world champion surfers. And lots of college volleyball stars. This year’s team was young. Lauren was the captain and only a junior herself. Pressure was on. She felt it in every breath she took. Nothing short of winning would do. Second place was for losers.

“All you have to do is dig deep and do your best.” Her father’s words inched their way back into her head. But she pushed them aside and replaced them with words of her own. Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes and repeated her secret mantra three more times, the words she lived by, the best advice her brother Luke ever gave her. On the third and final time, she popped her eyes open and said the words out loud, “Every day, every way, I’LL GET TOUGHER. I’LL GET TOUGHER!”

Chapter Two

“Hurry up, mija, we don’t want to be late for the Ball!” Victor Espinoza yelled affectionately to his daughter, “We could hit traffic on the bridge.”

“I’ll meet you outside.  I can’t find my hair bands,” Gabby shouted back as she skimmed her bureau, searching for the scrunchie hair bands that kept her unruly black curls in check on the volleyball court.  Finding none, she grabbed her gym bag and raced out of her room.  She tore into the bathroom and skidded to a stop in front of the mirrored vanity.  She did a quick and critical glance at herself in the mirror before searching through the medicine chest.  She liked what she saw.  She almost had her game face all the way on, a face that mirrored the intensity and determination that she could feel bubbling up from the bottom of her soul.  She could not wait to get on that court.  But first, she had to find those hair bands.

It might seem inconsequential on the eve of the biggest game of her life to be stressing over hair bands, but they were as essential a piece of sports equipment as the kneepads she wore to protect her knees from being bloodied when she skid across the floor. There were even rules about what you could wear in hair, no metal clips, no bobby pins. Only one brand of scrunchie worked for Gabby so she bought them in bulk. How could they have all disappeared?

Gabby had big dreams.  She wanted to play college volleyball at USC, a Division One school with several National Championship titles of its own, which was a tall order for a short Hispanic girl from San Pedro, California.  A natural athlete from the get-go, she beat all her cousins at the games of soccer, softball, chase and tag that they played at family fiestas and reunions.  Everyone had expected her to follow in her father’s soccer-cleated footsteps.  But Gabby was a natural contrarian.  You could call her a walking contradiction only Gabby never walked anywhere.  She ran everywhere.  And at age twelve, she ran off the familiar soccer field and into the gym where she took up volleyball.  So what if it was a sport dominated by tall, leggy and mostly blonde Amazons, Gabby could handle it.

You know that old saying about the game not being over until the fat lady sings?  Well, Gabby like to say she was there every time “that dama gorda dared to open her mouth.”  She prided herself at being the first to show at grueling two-a-day practices that started at 6:30 in the a.m.  On the court, she was even fiercer.  A comeback kid, she always fought hardest for the ball.  She never gave up and she never gave in.  She was Sacred Heart Academy’s starting setter, the quarterback, and she had muscled her team through a nearly perfect season.  Even the snotty seniors bowed down to her, a mere junior.  They unanimously elected Gabby captain and their confidence had paid off.  Because tonight, Sacred Heart’s was in the finals at the National Volleyball Championships.  Gabby would lead her team, Las Reinas to victory over those snobby Villa Madonnas.  If only I can keep the hair out of her face.  Oh, where the hell are those hairbands?...

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