Free Goalkeeper in Charge by Matt Christopher

called out.
    Cindy swung around and stared at Tina in surprise. “Excuse me?”
    “I said, nice shot,” Tina repeated. “It was perfect, no way I could get to it.”
    Cindy’s mouth dropped open. She looked so astonished that Tina almost laughed. Finally, Cindy closed her mouth, nodded, mumbled
     something that might have been “Thanks,” and walked away.
    After a half hour of scrimmaging, both squads had allowed one goal. Tina thought she’d done a pretty good job and was happy
     that she seemed able to get players to move when she needed them to. Danielle ended play with a whistle. The players trotted
     toward her, and most of them sat down for a breather. They’d been playing hard and needed a break.
    “Great hustle today!” Danielle said, clapping her hands and looking as pleased as she sounded. “We’ll take a ten-minute rest
     and shuffle the squads around for a second session. Here are the new lineups.”
    For the second scrimmage, Tina would be on the same squad with Cindy and Meg, while Zoe was an opponent. After naming the
     squads, Danielle said, “When we begin, I’d like Tina and Andrea to be midfielders, for a while anyway. “She named two other
     girls who would start as goalkeepers.
    Once her breathing was normal, Meg turned to Tina and rolled her eyes. “Wow! I never ran so long in my whole life!”
    Tina grinned. “It was rough, huh?”
    Zoe, who had heard Meg’s comment, said, “Sure it’s rough, especially when you’re not used to playing that long at a stretch.”
    “Right!” Meg agreed. “You keepers have it easy, standing there with your hands in your pockets most of the time.”
    “Want to switch?” Tina offered.
    “No thanks,” said Meg. “No way. But it’s still rough, running around like that.”
    “First of all,” Tina replied, “you won’t be playing that long without breaks in real games. Second, you’ll get used to it.”
    Meg shook her head. “Maybe, but it won’t happen today.”
    When play started again, Tina was playing midfield. She quickly understood what Meg had been talking about. She hadn’t been
     doing as much running as most of the team had, and she soon found herself breathing hard and sweating. For the first time,
     she realized that being a goalkeeper had its good points. She was an okay midfielder, Tina thought, but she might turn out
     to be a better-than-okay keeper.
    A ball came her way from a squadmate. Tina dribbled and passed to Cindy, who pivoted to her right, screening the ball from
     the player marking her. Then she did something so fast that Tina wasn’t sure what happened, except that Cindy had passed the
     defender behind and was racing toward the goal with another forward. I could practice forever and never move the ball as well
     as Cindy, Tina thought.
    A few minutes later, Danielle called a time-out and moved Tina and Andrea back to their usual positions as keepers. Tina was
     relieved.
    Shortly afterward, Cindy raced to try to get to a ball that had rolled into the penalty box near Tina. Tina, who was closing
     in on it herself, called out, “Mine!” almost before she was aware of it. Cindy slowed down to let Tina have the ball. As Tina
     lookedover the field to see where she should release the ball, Cindy said, “Sorry.”
    Tina nodded, too busy to say anything, but she rolled the ball to Cindy so Cindy could move it out of danger.
    A few minutes later, Meg made a bad pass that the other squad intercepted. Zoe passed the ball down-field to a wing, who avoided
     a defender and dribbled to within fifteen feet of the goal. She faked a shot with her left foot and drew Tina to her own right,
     and then let fly with a hard shot toward the other side of the cage.
    Tina recognized the fake and shifted her weight back to her own left side. As the opposing forward fired the shot, Tina took
     two long steps to the left and flung herself toward the ball, stretching herself out in the air a foot off the ground. If
     the shooter had