Friday, 8/29/08 (a)

As the Clover Valley runners changed in the cramped locker room for the last practice of the week, Coach Adamson waited outside and stretched his calves in preparation for the short warm up run over to Thompson Park. After a week of running, he was starting to feel pretty good about his conditioning and some of the muscle soreness was starting to abate. Lost in his thoughts after his first full week of teaching and with his back to the school's courtyard he was surprised by the sudden arrival of J.T., the school's athletic director.

"Matthew, I have your uniforms. Seven, right? What sizes do you need?"

"Oh. Hey J.T. Yep. Seven. Not sure on sizes. Let's wait until the guys finish changing and we can let them choose."

J.T. grumbled a little at the delay.

"I only have one XL, so only one boy can choose that."

"Fair enough." Matthew replied, not anxious for any sort of conflict as he'd been meaning to talk to J.T. about a more important issue than uniforms for the cross-country team.

"Say J.T. When do you want to talk about the varsity basketball schedule? I'd like to get some early season games against tougher competition to challenge our squad. Might be good to play in a holiday tournament down in the Tri-Cities. Get a few games against top competition and see what we have ..."

J.T. cut him off in mid-sentence, "No. We don't go that far. I'll get you the schedule by the end of September. It'll look a lot like last year. Look I gotta go. Take the sizes you need out of this box and put it front of my office door when you're done." 10 seconds later and J.T. was already out of sight around a corner.

Matt exhaled with a sigh-groan mixture ... "I got a find a way to deal with that guy."