A/N:

Greetings! This is, and I can't believe I'm saying it, the FOURTH installment of my Game Changers rewrite saga. I decided that I wanted to try and go through it, but it's going to take a long time of experimenting and seeing what ultimately works and doesn't work. I have an idea of how I want it to go, I just don't know how I want it to end, but I've got a list of events in my head that are going to happen:

- Teddi going for the leading role in the school's winter musical production

- Teddi turning sweet sixteen

- Connie finding her footing as the girls' hockey coach

- New team dynamics

- Homecoming games and dances

- Meeting newer Ducks team members, like Russ Tyler's son, Jesse Hall's sons, and Dwayne Robertson's daughters

But there will also be explorations of some emotional trauma that Teddi has endured; the kid is turning sixteen, which means she needs to cope with the fact that her mother is gone and won't be there, and it's been a year since Gordon was in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism, which nearly killed him and took him away from his family; needless to say, she's got a lot she needs to work through, and Evan needs to adjust to earning a captain's position under the training of the Varsity coach, as well as the splitting up of the flock with several Ducks being forced to stay on J.V. rather than getting bumped up to Varsity with the rest of their friends, so there's that. There's also Evan fighting against the upperclassmen on the Varsity team, who are determined to prove that he's not good enough to be there.

I think I have enough to build up the fourth installment, but I'm going to be taking A LOT of time to really develop it and make it perfect.

Speaking of which, I am going to be going back and editing and rewriting portions of A New Pond, because I realized something with that story: the hockey lines were extremely inconsistent; in fact, I didn't know about a fourth line position until I recently researched it, so, what's going to happen is I'm going to go in and tweak a lot of stuff and change information about the positions the J.V. boys play in A New Pond, and that's going to happen sporadically; so, keep your eyes out for updated versions of the chapters in A New Pond. What I did differently this time was I created the fully visualized roster sheet of every character, and I made sure to list them by position they play and which line they're on; hopefully, that will help with the development of this installment even more, because I'm always willing to change things around and make sure the story is even better.

Be sure to leave reviews and follow the story. I'm not sure when I'll post the next chapter, but this is the beginning. So, enjoy Mighty Hens of Minnetonka!


Chapter 1 – A New Season

The Minnetonka Bugle, September 9th, 2024

HOCKEY SEASON UNDERWAY (FOR GIRLS AND BOYS)

Teddi Conway Promoted to Captain of Minnetonka Prep Girls' Hockey Team (While the Boys' Varsity and Junior Varsity Teams Are Left High and Dry)

By: Milton Ryerson, Sports Reporter

Hockey season is kicking off with Minnetonka Prep's first game of the season against the Eden Hall Warriors, but there's no shortage of tension among the boys and girls who now don the orange-and-black and the new logo of the Ducks, with Evan Morrow, Jace Cole, Logan LaRue, Spencer Vargas, Billy Banks, Nick Ganz, Justin Maywood, Peter Petronski, Travis Bowman, Oliver Underwood, Andrew Mizrahi, Brandon Davis, and Hector Morales being bumped up to Varsity and joining Tommy Phillips, Abraham Izzah, Harry Hart, Colton Walters, Ian Sheen, Arod Goldstein, Devon Derrington, Quinn Jordan, Alex Nolan, and Joshua Finnegan, bringing in some new blood to the undefeated Varsity team, who have a title to defend this season. The other Ducks from last year's Junior Varsity team remain with the other hopeful freshmen eager to prove their medal and have already recruited an impressive roster of new Ducks, some of who are children of the original flock from 1994's Team USA: Russ Tyler's son Johnny Tyler, Jesse Hall's twins Percy and Jimmy Hall, and Luis Mendoza's daredevil son Lorenzo Mendoza.

An inside source has confirmed that neither Coach Hal Vargas nor Coach Austin Chase has chosen captains for this year's boys' teams, but Connie Germaine, former Minnesota senator and freshly recruited girls' hockey team coach, has already made a bold statement by selecting her goddaughter, Teddi Conway, to be captain of the Mighty Hens, and entrusted Conway to choose her alternates, who are reported to be Sofi Hanson-Bhatt and Katie Vargas.

Whether this is a good decision on Coach Germaine's part remains to be seen. While Conway has proven capable of leading a team, Coach Germaine being her godmother could very well lead to potential preferential treatment, which won't look the best as the team nears their very first girls vs. girls game against Eden Hall on Saturday night. And with alternate captain Katie Vargas being a recently crowned prefect along with her twin brother Spencer, the pressure is on as colleges prepare to watch her, but hockey fans will also be watching her closely. Most of the student body remembers Vargas' blunder when she collided with the goalpost, severely injuring not only her but the board members' confidence that a girls-led hockey team could succeed at Minnetonka Preparatory Academy.

Fans will be watching closely; will Teddi Conway be the effective leader the Mighty Hens need to lead our ladies to victory? Or will she exhibit her old habits from last year? Most know of her public spat with J.V. Coach Vargas due to Coach Vargas's refusal to allow girls onto the boys' team.

However, Conway also has a lot of public support from the female student body, as well as a certain percentage of the male population. It's important to note that Conway comes from a very respective hockey pedigree, as her father, Charlie Conway, was one of the original Minnesota Miracle Kids who turned a scrappy, sloppy, hungry group of Peewee hockey players known as District Five into the District Five Mighty Ducks. He eventually turned the tides when he and the USA Ducks went to high school at Minnetonka's long-standing rival Eden Hall Academy, where they briefly changed the name of the school's mascot from the Warriors to the Ducks, but given how that track record went with the Eden Hall board members retiring the Ducks title in favor of reversing it back to the Warriors after the subsequent retirement of former Minnesota Wild defenseman and Eden Hall coach, Ted Orion, students wonder how long the title of the Ducks will last long after these current Ducks graduate and go on to college. It's also important to note that Ted Orion was Coach Vargas's partner when they played together in the NHL.

Either way, Minnetonka Preparatory Academy hockey fans will be in for quite a treat this season as our boys and girls spangled in the new Ducks logo. Whether Coach Vargas will regret this choice to fight for girls to have an equal playing field as boys in hockey remains to be seen.

"Why that conniving little worm!" snarled fifteen-year-old Evan Morrow as he seethed at the school newspaper. "Seriously! Has he not learned anything from last year?"

"Apparently not, Ev," said newly-appointed Mighty Hens captain Teddi Conway dryly as she dug into her breakfast burrito. "I see he's going to use Connie being my godmother as a way to try and indicate that she's not fit to coach the team."

"'Not fit' bullshit," cussed Maya Kasper as she snuggled into her boyfriend, Tommy Phillips. "Connie is an amazing coach. Already, she's found some of the most incredible talent we've ever had. Between Valentina, Grace, and Bessie, we've got three more Ducks kids on our roster, and we meet the criteria of twenty-three players; we've got a goalie and a backup goalie, too, between Ginger and Jaimie."

"But Milton is and will continue using this as an opportunity to spread gossip," sighed Lauren Gibby.

"As the captain, I can't keep dealing with this," Teddi said. "Between hockey, homework, and Mrs. Ryan trying to convince me to try out for the winter musical, my plate is going to be full."

"But the production alone is going to get people talking," commented Finley Vargas, Teddi's left winger, as Katie Vargas and Sofi Hanson-Bhatt approached them. Teddi rounded on her alternates, jabbing her finger at the newspaper.

"Did you guys see this?" she demanded.

"Yeah," sighed Katie. "Maggie Halstead has been grilling me all morning about it."

"Do you wanna sit with us?" Sofi asked her best friend.

Teddi nodded. She kissed Logan goodbye and gathered up her breakfast tray before she, along with Finley, Lauren, and Maya, walked off to the newly established girls' hockey team table. The Robertson sisters, Bessie and Grace, Valentina Mendoza, and a bunch of the other newer girls had already claimed their seats but saved room at the head of the table for Teddi, who sat down and placed the paper in front of them.

"Look at this. I could've told you it would've been this way from the very beginning," she said.

"Well, we need you to lead," said Bessie, the backwoods Barbie, all the way down from her curly, dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes, and thick, Texan accent, the third of the three things listed something she inherited from her father, Dwayne "The Cowboy" Robertson; if she weren't wearing the school uniform, she'd been in her usual attire of blue jeans, cowboy boots, flannels, lace blouses, eyelet tops, and a cowboy hat, the same could be said for her twin sister Grace, who looked almost identical to her except for the double-Ds and brighter blonde hair. "If you're not the leader, who's gonna do it?"

"Bessie's right, Teddi. Katie and I are here to back you up, but you're the heart of the whole time. We cannot do this without you," said Sofi.

Teddi sighed. She knew her friends were right in what they were saying, but seeing their names getting bashed in the paper so boldly suddenly made her stomach feel like a brick had settled inside it. Nonetheless, she kept eating, knowing she needed to keep her strength up for her day of classes, as well as hockey practice later and school play tryouts. The one thing that comforted her about the production audition was that Grace Robertson and Sofi would be auditioning with her for Doralee and Violette, respectively, while she was going for the leading role of Judy.

But she knew that any girl hockey player trying out for the musical was going to cause quite a shake-up with the status quo, especially since the musical was a very female-forward, feminism-celebrated production about sexual harassment in the workplace. She shuddered as she remembered how the upperclassmen didn't take well to her upsetting the status quo by pushing for a girls' hockey program last year, how they faced harassment for trying to get the board members to approve their petition for gender equality on campus. She could still remember the comments, the sneers, and the jeers and could only imagine what the seniors would say if she got the role of Judy as she hoped. Granted, not every guy at school was a sexist pig. But the initial reaction to the formation of the Mighty Hens team wasn't encouraging.

In fact, she hadn't had any initial thoughts about auditioning for the play. But she'd been convinced by the chorus teacher and Logan, who told her she had a beautiful voice and that she should try it. Still, the nerves settled in just thinking about it. She found it ironic how, on the ice, she was so confident, but if you put her onstage and made her sing in a non-casual setting, she froze up like a deer in the headlights. Still, she could picture her dad, her grandmother, her step-grandfather, her friends, and the rest of her chosen extended family watching her up on that stage singing, and she knew that if she made it, they would be so proud that she got a leading role.

Still, she couldn't help voicing her concerns to her teammates. "Do you think I'm completely out of my mind auditioning for the musical?"

"No, you're not," said Maya, shaking her head. "You've got the voice. You can do it. And you know everyone on both hockey teams will come to see every performance. And your dad will buy every single ticket if you get this part, Teddi."

"Maya's right," said Valentina "The Jet" Mendoza, the third-line right wing and Luis Mendoza's daughter, who was just as speedy on the ice as her father, only a lot more graceful than he'd been and far better at pumping the brakes, though the same couldn't be said for her older brother, Lorenzo, who was now on the Junior Varsity Ducks team with the Hall brothers and Johnny Tyler.

"Don't second-guess yourself, Tee," Valentina continued. "You're going to be amazing."

"I hope so," Teddi said apprehensively.

"No, do not talk like that," said Lauren, reaching over and grabbing Teddi's hand. "You will be. You are a star. This is your time."

"And you know we'll be there with you," said Grace, flashing Teddi one of her dazzling smiles, and Teddi suddenly felt braver, going back to her breakfast.


"Come on, ladies! Keep it up! Defense, girls!" Connie Germaine yelled as she watched the scrimmage match between the two separate teams she'd divided up.

She watched critically as Teddi, Sofi, Finley, Lauren, and Maya backed up in front of Ginger Jackson, the girls' hockey team's new first-line goalie. Lauren cleared the puck out of the zone, sending it ricocheting back across the ice.

"Okay, Kayla, Ellie, Valentina, change it up, ladies!" she announced after blowing her whistle, signaling for Teddi, Sofi, and Finley to come take their seats on the bench.

The girls nodded, trading places. Teddi watched intently as Kayla, Ellie, and Valentina went out onto the ice, Kayla in the center and Ellie and Valentina flanking her. Connie smiled as she skated over, dropping the puck and watching as Kayla and the fourth-line center, Audrey Lewis, fought for the puck.

"You were right, Teddi," Connie told her goddaughter as Valentina received the pass from Kayla, though the speedster was hogging the puck to herself a little bit, determined to be the one to score. "It was a good call choosing Valentina; she's a natural, but she does need to learn a little more about teamwork."

Teddi nodded back as Connie patted her on the shoulder. But the whole time, Connie kept a close eye on her watch; they practiced before the Varsity team and shared a locker room with the figure-skating team, as it was the only place the girls could go. Of course, the figure skaters never failed to complain about how the hockey girls made their locker room stink like sweat, but nothing could deter her girls from wanting to play their best game against Eden Hall on Saturday night.

After the formation of the girls' hockey program, rink time became something everyone was fighting for. The deal was the J.V. hockey team would practice after the figure skaters did Tuesdays and Thursdays, while the Varsity and girls' hockey teams got the rink on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the girls', J.V. and Varsity teams alternated mornings, which they got the rink for practices at dawn.

They were nearing the end of their practice time; Connie could see the Varsity boys already exiting their locker room so they could prepare for their practice with Coach Chase, who was far harder on all of them than Coach Vargas had ever been. But Connie also knew Vargas wouldn't have put Evan, Jace, Logan, Billy, and Nick on Varsity if he didn't think they were good enough to play, whereas the others needed another year of improvement before they proved their medal for Varsity, especially Koobler, who was still on the fourth-line.

When the clock struck five o'clock, the girls filed off the ice and headed toward their locker room to get showered and changed. As Connie skated off so she could head to the office space she shared with Coach Chase and Coach Vargas, she caught the dirty looks Coach Chase shot at her. If there was one person most upset about forming the girls' hockey program, it was Coach Chase, who felt that this was taking away rink time from the boys. But Connie was determined to hold her head up high. It wasn't her first time needing to deal with adversity. When she was in college, majoring in political science and government, she was one of the few females in classrooms filled with boys who weren't used to a woman being so assertive and commanding. But after she began running for senator and made positive, impactful changes in the state of Minnesota, she earned everyone's respect, especially as a working mother with three kids. And she knew that once they earned some wins, she'd earn Coach Chase's respect as a coach.

She made sure to remove her skates and put her sneakers back on before she went to the office, where Coach Vargas sat reading a hockey magazine. She took her seat at her desk, which contained photographs of her husband and three children.

"How are the girls' practices going?" asked Coach Vargas.

"Amazing," Connie said to Hal, grinning. "Teddi's got good instincts. Sofi and Katie really back her up in every decision. I've got no regrets about making her the captain."

"She earned it last year," said Hal, smiling fondly. "I knew she was meant to be the captain at that J.V. versus Varsity game."

"Are you ready for it to happen again?"

"I think the boys are more than ready. But many of them still need a lot of improvement; some of them are greener than Jaden, Henry, and Gordy – no offense; I would've put Gordy on Varsity, but I wanted to see if he's got the heart of a leader; if he does, I'm going to make him the J.V. captain. I think he could do really well in that until he builds himself up to the higher level of playing."

"And I respect your decision. I know Gordy's upset that the team got split up, but nothing is going to keep him and his friends apart, especially since we've got lots of important things coming."

"Like what?"

"Charlie and I are tormenting ourselves over planning out Teddi's sweet sixteen party," Connie explained. "It's also Gordon's seventeenth sober date, and this year is even more important than last year because this month marks a year since Gordon got out of the hospital."

Hal winced at the memory. Of course, he knew Connie was referring to the time Gordon got admitted to the hospital for a pulmonary embolism, which led to him falling into a coma. Gordon was just lucky to be alive. But it was a reminder that every single day counted and that you needed to appreciate every precious moment. Still, part of Connie would always feel haunted by the fact that she'd nearly lost her former coach a year ago, and given that it had happened seven months after the anniversary of Cheryl Conway's death, it never failed to make her shudder. If she was having difficulty processing that fact, she could only imagine what was going on inside Teddi's mind as they neared the start of the new hockey season and her sixteenth birthday.

"So, what are you guys gonna do?"

"I already told Teddi that I wanted to pay for her sweet sixteen dress; I felt it was appropriate because I bought her christening gown. And because her mom passed away when she was ten, I felt I needed to take over that responsibility." Connie felt her throat constrict around those words, and she coughed. She remembered Cheryl Conway, how the woman entrusted her to be the mother figure to her eldest and only daughter if God forbid anything ever happened to her. Ever since Cheryl died, Connie took it upon herself to absolutely spoil her goddaughter rotten and make up for the fact that Cheryl wasn't there to do all the things with her that she needed, like bra and underwear shopping, the talks about puberty, dating advice, the things that Charlie would otherwise feel extremely discomforted talking about with his daughter.

Hal nodded, her expression softening; he probably knew what she was thinking, as he was a father of two girls and was fortunate that his wife, Claire, was still around to have those talks with his girls, as those woman-to-woman talks were not ones a father should have with a teenage girl. "I know I was tough on her in the beginning," he said. "But I know she's making such a huge difference. You should be so proud of her."

"She's everything I could've ever hoped for in a godchild," Connie said wistfully, her eyes turning to the photograph that she had on her desk of her holding Teddi the day she baptized her, the little bundle wearing an all-white dress and matching bonnet as she lay in Connie's arms. Just looking at that photograph of the day of Teddi's christening, Connie's smile widened even more, knowing that this new season would be the girls' time to prove to the school that they deserved to play hockey. It was the perfect example of "girl power" that Connie could ever think of.

But she also knew that it wouldn't be without its challenges, because, if she recalled correctly, sophomore year was even harder than freshman year; it was your sixteenth year, the year that was the ultimate turning point in your life as you realized you were becoming a man or a woman, and when one didn't have her mother around like Teddi Conway did, it was going to be even harder.