Disclaimer: The original Titans and their families belong to themselves while the fictitious characters from the film Remember the Titans belong to Disney. Everyone else belongs to me. If you haven't read them yet, most of my original characters appear in my other RtT fics, You Ought to Be With Me and Good Night, Sweet Prince, also here on this site.

Author's Notes: Thank you to darkdestiney2000, Sister Golden Hair, torian princess and Rae Kelly for reviewing!

Chapter Four — You Want Us to WHAT?

At the first-ever meeting of Betsy and Emma's girls' football club, which was held in the Hoyts' back yard, the first thing Emma did was frown. "Our list says we got eleven girls to join," she said, checking the list she had made in the diary that was going to serve as their club notebook, "but there are fifteen of us here."

"Some of them said they were gonna bring their friends," Betsy reminded her. "And it's a good thing, too — this means we can have a second string!"

"Second string of what?"

Betsy opened her mouth to exclaim that she couldn't believe the other girl didn't know what a second string was, but stopped herself from speaking at the last moment. "I'll explain later," she said finally.

As she spoke, Betsy surveyed their lineup with satisfaction. She thought they had a pretty good team. Sharon and Cat were kind of thin, but they were tall and Betsy was sure they were fast runners. There were a couple of big girls, too: there was Jenny Griffin, a chubby girl who lived two blocks over from the Hoyts, and a black girl named Pearl who looked like she was used to pushing people around. And they had Lizzie Lindros who, like Betsy, had wanted to join Gerry's football club and was mad when she found out that it was only for boys.

Besides Betsy and Lizzie, it didn't seem that any of the other girls knew anything about football, but Betsy thought it would be easy enough to teach them. This was going to be fun. Watch out, Gerry! she thought smugly.

Just then, Tamsin walked over to her, a small frown on her face. "Hey, Betsy, the other girls are getting bored. What are we supposed to do?"

"I was just about to tell you," Betsy told her. She blew a shrill blast from the toy whistle hanging around her neck to get everyone's attention and, when they were quiet, began to speak. "First off," she said, "welcome to the All-Girls' Football Club. Emma n' me are awful glad y'all could join."

"It's about time we girls had a club of our own!" Lizzie hollered, clapping her hands.

Betsy smiled at her. "It sure is, and our club is going to be even better than the boys'. But to do that, we got a lot of work to do, and we have to start right now."

Sharon raised her hand, just like in school, and waited for Betsy to call upon her before speaking. "What are we going to do?"

"We're goin' to work on our skills." Betsy gestured toward the obstacle course she and Emma had set up using part of Emma's jungle gym, some string, tent pegs and a bunch of old bicycle tires Betsy had wheedled from Old Man Witherspoon's Junkyard Christmas Tree Farm. "Let's see how fast y'all can go through this. Who wants to go first?"

Silence fell over the group. Betsy looked at the other girls expectantly, but no one made a move. Instead, they all shuffled from foot to foot, eyeing the obstacle course dubiously. "C'mon," she entreated them, "we ain't got all day."

Finally, one of the girls, a redheaded one named Miranda, spoke up.

"I don't think I want to do that," she said. "I might ruin my dress."

It took two club meetings before Betsy finally managed to get everyone in her club to go through the obstacle course. Even worse, the results were dismal. "Everyone's so darned slow!" she fumed to Emma one afternoon after the others had gone home.

"What do you mean, everyone?" the blonde girl asked.

"Sorry, almost everyone," Betsy amended quickly, and then tapped the club notebook lying open in front of her. "Will you look at these times?" Emma was right, some of the girls weren't too bad; but most of them were still terrible. They had plodded through the obstacle course like turtles, and those who had tried to go fast had tripped or made lots of mistakes.

"Don't worry, Betsy, this is just the beginning. They'll get better and faster the more we practice, you'll see."

"I hope so. Gerry's club is already practicin' real moves! They're so far ahead of us, we'll never catch up!"

Betsy was right; the boys' football club was indeed ahead of the girls' — but not by much. "You can throw it three miles, Ronnie," Gerry said after the blond boy made an incomplete pass to Petey Jones, "but you can't pitch it three feet! What's wrong?"

Ronnie shrugged. "Nothing's wrong," he answered. "I just can't do it."

Gerry sighed. At least Ronnie hadn't sounded hurt or embarrassed, which meant that Gerry wasn't being too tough on him. "Sure you can," he told the other boy, hoping he sounded encouraging. "Let's try it again. Concentrate this time, OK?"

"Good thing he's just our second-string quarterback," Little Julius whispered to Gerry as they their places in the defensive line.

Ronnie called the play again and the offense began to run their patterns. He managed to bobble the ball over to Petey this time, but the game stopped again shortly after that, when two players got tangled up together and fell.

"That hurt!" Ray whined as he picked himself up. His freckled face was crumpled, as if he were going to cry.

"That hurt?" Ryan Hunter retorted as his brother Corey helped him up and dusted him off. "You fell on me and I hit the ground! Now, that hurt!"

"Hold on, now, you two," Gerry said, stepping in before Ray started sniveling and Mrs. Budds flew out of the house with milk, cookies and a first-aid kit. "No one got really hurt, did they?"

Ryan glared at Ray. "No, but I almost got squashed flat as a pancake."

"I can't help it if I'm like this," Ray sniffled. "My momma says I have big bones."

"At least it wasn't Blue who fell on you," Petey told Ryan.

This made almost everyone laugh and Gerry grinned gratefully at Petey. The black boy was a big-mouth, but he was a good big-mouth and a great football player, too. "All right, everyone, let's take a break."

"Brauuuugggghhhh!"

THUMP.

Betsy squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them again she saw Emma and Sharon looking anxiously down at her. "Betsy, are you all right?" Emma asked.

"I'm OK," she answered. "I think I'll just lie here for a while."

"I'm sorry the ball hit you. It slipped out of my hands."

Betsy turned her head and saw their one and only football — the only one Lizzie could sneak out of her brother's room without being caught — lying on the grass not far away from her. "Nothing hit me. I just fell by myself."

"Well, get up," Sharon said. "How will we know if we're doing things right if you don't watch us?"

I don't want to watch you, Betsy thought as the girls' heads moved out of sight. She thought she would rather lie on the ground and stare at the sky instead of watching the club practice because they were terrible.

Some of the girls could run fast, but most were still slow. Everyone knew how to catch a ball, but only Lizzie and Betsy knew anything about passing. And forget about tackling…!

"Ow!" Tamsin shouted presently, and Betsy stifled a groan. Their tackling dummy, which was nothing more than a rolled-up old mattress, had probably taken Tamsin off her feet instead of the other way around.

"Are you all right?" Betsy heard Cat ask.

"I'm fine," Tamsin answered. "My behind hurts a little is all."

"You're lucky it's just your behind," Miranda said. "I'm black and blue all over."

Betsy made a face. Black and blue! she thought indignantly. All Miranda did was stand around and show off her dresses! It was a good thing there were more than enough girls in the club so they didn't really need her!

But they might need Miranda if you don't get up, she told herself.

Betsy groaned. Even if she didn't want to, she had to get up and get back to practice. The others weren't going to get any better with just Emma and, to some extent, Lizzie telling them what to do. And Gerry would probably laugh his pants off if he found out how badly they were doing…

"I'm home," Gerry announced listlessly as he trudged into the Bertiers' house. Behind him, the front door shut with a gentle click, as if it were too tired to slam closed. He sort of knew how the door felt.

At the sound of his voice, his momma looked up from her reading and smiled. "Hello, Gerry. You're home early today."

"Practice ended early," he answered, hanging up his cap on the hat-rack by the door, between his momma's going-to-church hat and Betsy's Easter bonnet. As he did so, he glanced at the empty peg at the end of the hat-rack and said a quick prayer for his daddy who was in heaven.

"I'm afraid I haven't started dinner yet," his momma was saying, "but if you're hungry, there are chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen."

"Thanks, Momma."

"Wash your hands before you eat any!"

Gerry found Betsy sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and the plate of cookies. "Don't eat 'em all," he told his sister as he washed his hands in the sink.

"I'm not gonna eat 'em all," she answered back, scowling at him.

There were plenty of cookies left when Gerry sat down at the table with his own glass of milk. His stomach growled hungrily and he took one, finding it still warm from the oven.

The cookie was delicious — his momma's cookies always were — but it did little to improve his bad mood. Things had not been going well in his football club. Ever since that day he fell in practice, Ray was saying he was on the "injured list" and refusing to play. Having him out of the team was just what Gerry and Little Julius had wanted, of course, but the others didn't know that. They were complaining about how Petey had to fill in for Ray on the offensive line when Ray obviously wasn't injured. Playing both ways was making Petey tired and he had almost twisted his ankle that afternoon.

Just then, Gerry noticed that Betsy looked just about as dirty as he was. She didn't really look and dress as nice as, say, Emma Hoyt, but that day his sister's hair was all fuzzy and messy, there were a lot of dirt and grass stains on her T-shirt and overalls. "Did you wash your hands?" he asked her brusquely.

"Of course."

"They still look dirty."

"It's the chocolate."

Gerry looked at his hands and saw the smears of melted chocolate on them. "Thought it was dirt like what you've got all over you," he said. "Why do you look so messy, anyway?"

Betsy lifted her chin. "Football practice," she answered proudly. When she had come home, her momma had made a fuss about her messy appearance and ordered her to take a bath, but Betsy hadn't done it yet. She wanted her brother to see her like this.

But instead of being impressed, Gerry made the "know-it-all" face that he knew she hated. "Your club actually practices?" he scoffed.

She frowned. "Sure. What did you think we do? Sit around and play with dolls? Well, you're wrong, Gerry Bertier," she told him. "We have real practices, with drills and plays and everything." Actually, they hadn't quite moved on to running plays yet, but he didn't have to know that.

"I didn't know there were enough girls in this town who knew how to play football."

"Well, there are, and they're better than you think." By now, most of the girls in Betsy's football club had at least some idea of how the game worked and they were practicing passing and tackling and all that stuff. They weren't any good, but it still meant that they kind of knew how to play, didn't it?

"Are they?" her brother snickered.

"Yes, they are. They're great." The lie flew out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. "I bet we're just as good as you boys are," Betsy said, hoping she sounded convincing.

Gerry laughed. He was about to tell her that that wasn't saying much, but pride kept him from telling the truth. "You'll never be as good as us," he answered, hoping he sounded convincing. "Not in a million billion years."