The air horn blared throughout the arena, signalling the end of practice. Cole Cross let the puck spin off his stick and drift a few inches away as he spun on his edges and glided towards the bench. It was his first day skating with the ULA Raiders, after missing the opening practice due to a visa issue that caused him to miss his entire first week at school. The wiry 5'7, 165lb left winger looked comically tiny skating alongside his teammates, who all mostly surpassed 6 feet and at least 190 pounds. As he stepped into the bench area and started to walk down the tunnel to the locker room, the coach reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Cross, get over here"
He stepped out of the line, balancing carefully on the edge of the skate blade, he quickly stuffed one glove under his arm and reached up with his bare hand to tug out his mouth guard, his hand brushing against the sweat-soaked, close-shaven beard he was sporting.
"Yes sir coach Bombay?"
"Ya did good out there today kid, managed to keep pace despite missing last week" The older man said. He had a kind smile peeking out under the ball cap he wore sporting the team logo.
"Thank you sir, sorry again about that."
"Don't worry about it, I heard about the issue. You did, however, miss the evaluations session. I got a little look at your skills today, but I like to know exactly how my players tick before I make any decisions on the lineup, so I'm gonna schedule you in here with my assistants for Saturday morning, 7am, they'll see where you're at and report back to me. You'll know where you stand by next week, that acceptable?"
"Yes sir, thank you" Cole said, still panting slightly as he caught his breath, he nodded and turned to leave when the coach called him again.
"Hey, before you go, what number you wanna wear?"
"I used to wear 5 back home, 55 otherwise."
"Ahh, both are taken I'm pretty sure, how about 50?"
"That's perfectly fine coach."
"Alright, the boys'll have that ready for you, go on now, see you next week."
Cole smiled, nodded, and headed off down the hallway. In the locker room, most of te guys were still sitting at their stalls, or had already gone to shower. He was still learning most of their names, the only ones he really knew were the captain, Greg McCullough, a heavyweight center who was the team's top scorer two years running, and the lead goaltender, Tyler Julian, who had introduced himself and shown Cole around the practice facility when he had arrived the day before. Some of the boys teased him as he got undressed and packed away his gear, calling him coaches pet and all of that. He just laughed along and rolled with it as he cleaned up. By the time he had showered, and dried off his dark hair (which he kept kind of long up top, but close cut along the sides) most of the others had filed out. Not long after, he was headed out himself, he picked up his bag, heaved it over his shoulder and headed out.
Someone called after him as he was going through the door, he turned his head to look back, shifted the bag's weight more to his front, and collided right with someone waiting just outside the door. A mortified look filled his face as he whipped his head around, dropped his bag and scrambled to help the girl to her feet.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry!"
Simple Unicycle