Defence In Depth

[Frozen Smoke]

((Luca Thomas continued from Sweat More In Practice...))

Tennesee's Twin Triarii
GHHS' Twin Titans
Two To Watch
The Cornerstone Carters?

Luca sighed and leaned her head back on the chair as she waited for her subject to arrive. Titles had never been her strong suit, but she liked to start strong, to have a place to work from. One big idea to tie it all together, so her questions would be leading towards a story, but she couldn't find a way to put it that didn't sound utterly dumb to her 10 seconds after writing it. Hopefully it would come to her as she did the interview, they had a way of taking on a life of their own anyway, so maybe she shouldn't worry too much about constraining the story.

After all, she was here to help shine a spotlight on Bret and Wyatt today, it wasn't like she could do a better job telling the story than they would on their own. She just needed to get it out of Bret in his own words, not put her own words in her mouth. After all, the defence of GHHS was woefully underappreciated, even by other schools. A lot was - as always - made of the star Quarterback and a few of the other offensive players who scored the points that put GHHS on the map, but their actual points scored and yard ran were only a few over the average in the league. Where they picked up points were in the clutch, the last 2 quarters, where they conceded the least points of any team in the league. Somehow, the Carter twins were able to make sure that they didn't just keep up their performance in the second half, they improved.

Or, perhaps they made their opponents worse! That was also a possibility, and one she was looking forwards to finding out his thoughts on. She smiled, tapping her pen against her notepad, waiting for the knock on the recording booth that would be coming shortly. She liked to keep an audio copy, as well as her notes, just so she could check back and make sure everything was exactly how she remembered it. Misquoting someone was not something she wanted to earn a reputation for.

[Deamon]

((Bret Carter continued from: Gifts))

Bret never really went into the music rooms. He didn't have anything to do with music beyond his love of classic rock. He certainly wasn't going to study it as a subject. But he had been invited to do an interview for the school paper. It wasn't the first interview he had done. Being a skilled and successful member of the football meant he had been interviewed a few times before. Never as much as Connor but sometimes people wanted to hear from the leader of the defense. So yeah, it wasn't his first interview but there was a good chance it was going to be his last one.

He had plans in place for college, because you would have been an idiot not to have a plan. He had been dedicating a lot of time to studying in an effort to ensure his GPA stayed solid and any problem areas were fixed. So far this effort had been rewarded with grades he was happy with and more importantly, sat nicely in the scholarship bracket. It wasn't like he gave much of a shit about Geography outside of school but until he graduated George Hunter he needed to give a shit.

Bret had been running through some possible questions and answers as he made his way to where the interview was going to be conducted. He checked the time on his phone as he got to the door. Seven minutes early. Bret used his phone camera to make sure his hair was in place and facial hair was as neat as possible, ensuring no possible strand was left out of place. He checked his phone again once he had finished. Five minutes early.

Perfection.

Bret opened the door and stepped inside with a smile.

"Afternoon Luca." He said holding out a hand.

[Frozen Smoke]

Luca tried to act as if she wasn't surprised as she stood up a little too fast to greet him, taking the offered firm handshake and squeezing back awkwardly, trying to copy his grip and offering a pale imitation. She retracted her hand from that mess the second it passed, trying not to think too hard about it as she spoke.

"Hey, uh, thank you for coming Bret!" she began "I know interviews can be kind of awkward, so thank you for agreeing to come on down, I've been really looking forwards to it."

Was she rambling?

"Especially because the defence is such a key strength of the team - Did you know you guys have the least points conceded in the last half of any team?"

Watching Bret's face confirmed she was indeed rambling, and she scrambled to find a point to make this whole thing less painfully awkward.

"Anyway, um, take a seat! Shouldn't take more than half an hour." she said, trying to regain something of an air of professionalism as she sat down herself.

[Deamon]

"No problem," Bret said with a smile as he took the offered seat. "Oh, interesting, I wasn't aware it was that good."

He knew the stat. He was just being polite. He knew it was impressive, they worked hard as a unit to keep it that way. They watched the tape and they made sure that people realized who they were playing. After taking enough hits from them people tended to slow down and slowing down was death. Bret found that he and his brother thrived off their opponents showing weakness. It seemed to drive them harder, push them further. There was a certain enjoyment in knowing you were beating someone.

"Oh don't worry. I don't think I have anything important later."

Bret settled himself into the chair and retrieved a bottle of water from his bag which he put onto the tabletop.

He looked over Luca, taking a moment to analyze her. He had met her before of course. They were both athletically inclined and with her being a member of the girls' basketball team she had a certain social cache within the school. They were the pride and joy of George Hunter's sports program after all. He could respect that, even if Luca mainly warmed the bench for them. She was decent looking as well, although he wasn't a fan of her overly formal dress sense. It was dull, unexciting and stiff. Professional sure, but not interesting.

He took a sip of his water before setting it down again.

"So, what do you want to ask me?"

[Frozen Smoke]

Luca took a moment to adjust the skirt she was wearing today as she sat down, smoothing out the creases so they wouldn't wrinkle, before looking up and smiling at Bret as he replied. She was glad he didn't seem too offput by her little ramble, interested in it even, which was a good sign. He even seemed talkative, which was a better sign on top of that, as it would hopefully make her life even easier.

She had to look up a little more as they sat down, paradoxically. Most of her height was in her legs, whereas Bret seemed to just be an upscaled human, being as tall and well built as he was. He was handsome too, not cute, handsome. It wasn't something she found attractive personally - she really hadn't found that person for her yet - but she could see what Ivy saw in him. Compared to Wyatt, he was refined, like the other half to the southern stereotypes that always pervaded fiction. The southern gentleman to the bigoted hick. Ivy was lucky to have someone like that as her boyfriend.

His question was a great jumping off point too. She suspected this might not be the first interview he'd ever given.

"Well, I like to see interviews as less me trying to ask you questions, and more me trying to help you tell your story. So, I'd like to ask you;"

She paused for a moment, both for dramatic effect, and also to take in a little bit of breath. She'd been talking a little too fast, too excitedly, and she tried to calm it down for the second part. This whole little spiel felt like routine, but it kept getting interesting answers from people, so she kept asking it.

"What are you hoping I ask you about? What's some part of how you or you and your brother work to carry the team that you think's been overlooked?"

[Deamon]

Bret's eyebrows went up slightly as Luca began talking. Her first question was, frankly, terrible. Luckily she managed to save it with the follow-up which actually had some substance as a question. He played along though, looking intrigued and thinking about his response.

There were a few things he thought got overlooked by some others who only saw the physicality on the field. They didn't take into account everything they had to do off the field as well. All the workouts, training, dieting and tape study that made up their entire season. On top of managing all their studying, at least in his case. Wyatt didn't do much studying beyond getting a pass grade and that was his choice. Bret didn't stick his nose in his brothers business with regards to that. The fact was that like any high school football team a lot of the focus went onto the offense. It made sense, they got to make the flashy plays, they tended to put all the points up on the board and that side of the ball had an overwhelming majority of the skill positions. Still, anyone who knew about football was aware that the defense was just as important even if their plays weren't as glamorous.

Bret leaned back in his chair a little as he mulled over his answer, trying to find the correct way to phrase his response.

"I'd say one thing people don't notice as much is our ability to read the plays we're presented with." Not a bad response, diplomatic. It wouldn't ruffle the feathers of any of the other players or at least it shouldn't have unless they were very insecure.

"It's an underrated skill to be able to look out at your opponent, realise what they're about to do and take steps to counter it."

[Frozen Smoke]

Luca kept eye contact and jotted down a few keywords after he spoke. She liked to pick specific things out so she could bring them up in turn, to help expand on what all those words really meant, because everyone had their own little idiosyncrasies of how they thought of different aspects of their sport. Digging into all those things was the fun of doing interviews like this, really.

She chewed on the end of the pen for a moment as she thought about how to phrase her question, looking at the first word she'd picked out and annotated.

Our?

After another scant second of thought, she looked back at him, glad to see he still looked relaxed as he leaned back on the chair and kept eye contact with her. She hoped he didn't think the little breaks to note things down were too rude.

"Would you say that's something the two of you work together on, or do you see yourself as more of the guiding force in the defence?"

[Deamon]

Of course he saw himself as a guiding force. It wasn’t exactly wrong either. His position gave him one of the best views of what the offence was doing. One of his jobs was to make those reads. It needed a certain level of game IQ and awareness. It helped that Bret had previously played as a quarterback.

He had been decidedly average at it. He also grew tired of not being able to do anything to protect himself beyond relying on others and evasive moves. So one day he had decided to change.

Wyatt, well, Wyatt was who he was. He’d watch tape but self-assured as he was he hardly saw the need. It was also hard to get Wyatt to focus because he was so used to being able to just get by on his size. He didn’t consider many of the players they played against on the same level as he was, because physically there were only a couple who were.

“We both do our preparation but I’d say I’m the one pushing more for that sort of thing.”

He thought for a moment.

“On the field if any changes need to be made once we’ve lined up I normally make those calls.”

[Frozen Smoke]

"Kind of like a quarterback of the defence?" she surmised verbally, as she tapped her book, thinking about that some more. She had to say she hadn't thought of either of the Carter's as the sort to see the game on that cerebral a level, but she kept that to herself. After all, looks could be deceiving, and she didn't doubt for a second that Bret had the motivation to do what he could to make sure he won - That was kind of a universal trait of winners, after all. But where the Carter's were concerned she'd pictured hours in the gym, not hours studying X's and O's. She couldn't help but feel a little kinship to that.

She knew just how to follow up that question too.

"Any calls you've made this season that you think exemplifies that?"

[Deamon]

"You said it, not me," Bret responded with a smile.

Despite his playful response to the question, Bret felt a small amount of pride in someone else saying it, even if he was certain Luca was only saying as an attempt to get him onside. Still, she had said not him. Sure, some of the other players may have ruffled at that designation even being given out. But there had to be a leader on the field and if not him, who else? It was a simple numbers game really. There were only so many players at a level good enough to read the game and of those players, only a few had the ability to do it while playing. Bret was one of those few.

He thought for a moment as Luca asked him about any calls he made. One instantly jumped to mind. Not to his memory—the event itself was a haze—but he was aware of what had happened. It had been the game against Knoxville, when he had read the play. It had turned the game around, the blow to Knoxville's morale and the improvement to their own. The reason for those changes in morale were that Bret had tackled the Knoxville halfback hard and knocked him out. It sometimes happened when he played.

"Knoxville at the beginning of the year. I saw their run coming after remembering it from last year. I shifted our own line in response and it led to me getting that big hit on the halfback."

He took a quick sip of his water.

"I'm sure you remember it."

[Frozen Smoke]

Quarterback of the defence

She underlined that one. It was a good line, the kind of thing you wanted to pick out in big text to draw in the viewer to the meat of the discussion. An understandable lead-in. She couldn't help but smile at the self-assured way he noted that she'd seen what he did first hand. It would have come across as cocky if it wasn't entirely true, which she supposed was the point, he knew other people knew he was good. If she didn't think that, she wouldn't be here talking to him in the first place.

She knew the play well though, it had been an excellent little shift, leaving just the hint of a gap for their star halfback to exploit, before Bret had come in like a bulldozer and taken the two of them down to the ground hard. She always felt a little unwell when people didn't get up after things like that, despite knowing that it was mostly safe, she couldn't help but worry about people who took hits like that.

"Yeah, I remember that play! Really decisive action from yourself there." she agreed, sounding suitably impressed as she recalled the play. Her questioning paused for a moment, wondering about how to proceed on the topic, before finding a thread to pull on.

"Whenever I see a contact play that's as heavy as that one I can't help but worry a little for the guy on the receiving end - How do you cope with being the person who has to be the tip of the spear, as it were?"

[Deamon]

She sounded impressed as she spoke about it. Bret didn't know if it was genuine or put on but he didn't focus on it. There was a pause in the discussion as Luca considered things. There was no doubt that she was looking for some other topic to ask questions on. There was a myriad of questions she could choose from. Bret expected her to ask him about how it felt to make those sorts of decisions and about being a team leader but instead, she pivoted onto the physicality of the game. It was a logical but unexpected route to take the questioning.

The truthful answer to the question she had asked was that he didn't really care. The feelings of the people he hit didn't really matter to him. Everyone on the field knew what the game involved and taking a hard hit was a part of that. If you weren't comfortable with that then you had no business being on the field. That was more of a fact than an opinion. The chances were that at some point you would get hurt. The studies showed that physicality of the game caused problems in later life. If you chose to play, you were accepting those terms. Bret wasn't being callous, he was just being a realist.

He knew better than to say that though.

"It's always a shame when it happens. No one intends to go out there and hurt people. But everyone is aware of the risks involved in playing, it's a physical game." He took another sip of water to add a more natural pause to his speech. "The offense has their job to do and I have mine. On the field, I just focus on what I have to do."

[Frozen Smoke]

Luca nodded in understanding there. It matched the attitudes of most people in contact sports, really. Even the people who were in wrestling or MMA didn’t go out there looking to specifically hurt people, they just wanted to win their match, and sometimes that involved hurting people. It was a means to an end sort of thing. Probably not something worth putting into the final edit though, might leave a bad impression of Bret.

“Picking up on the physical side of the game there, Football is a game that really does put a lot of emphasis on physical form as well as the tactical side, so I have to ask - Which of you two do you think are in better shape overall?”

Her smile faltered just a little as she realised just how sensitive a question that was.

“Uh, you don’t have to like, put that on the record if you don’t want to - Football just doesn’t have a good analogue to the 1 on 1’s we can do in Basketball, you know?” she added hastily.

[Deamon]

Bret resisted the urge to grin when Luca mentioned physical form. It was an interesting way of phrasing her question. It came down to word choice really but Bret found in endearing how she immediately seemed to realise just what she had said. It was also funny, that couldn't be denied.

He leaned back in his chair and thought over his sensible, serious answer.

"It's not really a true comparison because we fulfill different roles on the team and those roles require different body types. Wyatt needs to be able to get past the offensive lineman and I need to be able to go wherever I'm needed during the play. I'd say I'm probably faster and he possesses more brute strength but there's a lot of small nuances involved in both positions that make it hard to judge with any degree of certainty. But that's part of the joy of football, everyone has their role and contributes to the entire teams performance. You succeed or fail as a unit."

After taking another quick sip of water Bret leaned forward so his elbows rested on the table. His hands were clasped and his chin rested on the tips of his thumbs. He smiled at Luca.

"Why, which one of us do you think is in better shape overall?"

[Frozen Smoke]

Luca mirrored his smile at that perfect non-answer, as courteous and polite as ever, before turning the question back on her. She supposed she owed him her opinion now, right? That was only fair. She looked away a little, trying to recall what she knew of the two, tapping the end of her pen against her lip gently a few times to help herself concentrate.

"I think the two of you are fairly evenly matched - You probably have the edge in endurance by my mark, but you also pace yourself fairly well."

She paused, and tried to piece together a contrast for him, trying to figure out what scenarios the two of them might be able to properly test a good combination of characteristics.

Wait, did he mean it in like, a flirty way? As in, who looked better? He was kind of leaning in, right, that was a body language thing wasn't it?

No. Of course not. He had a girlfriend she was fairly sure. That or Ivy had purchased his soul as a fashion accessory.

"um... I think you're right on the different strengths being necessary angle too. Does make this sort of question a bit awkward I suppose." she reached back and scratched the back of her head as she held eye contact with him. "I just like to see where people are at there. You'd be surprised how many people want an opportunity to be less than um... Pro-team, when they can talk off the record, you know. Not everyone can be a star, but a lot of people think they could be."

She paused for a moment, before realising she'd awkwardly stumbled into an amazing question.

"Do you consider yourself a star, or the star player of the team?"