Sabrina
Copyright© 2026 by The Outsider
Chapter 17: Snake
04 January 2017 – The United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Sabrina tucked her military ID back in her pocket after the guard at the North Gate handed it back to her.
’I bet I’m going to have a headache after being at sea level for two weeks... ‘ she sighed while rubbing her forehead.
The cab dropped Sabrina off near Vandy, and she made the walk to her squadron.
“Cadet Knox, Sabrina M., checking in, Sir,” she reported to the CQ.
“Knox ... Knox ... ah, here you are. Wait, what’s this?” The C2C looked at his roster again. “Hey, stand by, Knox; I have something for you.” He rooted around in one of the desk’s drawers. “Here we go. Now you won’t be out of uniform.”
Sabrina’s blood froze when she heard that.
“Relax, I’m just messing with you a little.”
He held out something from AAFES Clothing Sales, the uniform supply store on campus.
“Put this on your blouse when you get to your room, and get yourself one or two more for your shirts to make things easier on yourself.”
He held out a Superintendent’s List pin.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Way to kick butt!” he said with a wink. “ABUs are uniform of the day when you get settled. Carry on, Cadet.”
Sabrina opened her door – which meant Linda wasn’t back yet – and put her things away. After changing into her ABUs and putting her new pin on her service dress, she cracked open the sliding window to let out the stale air. She then checked the room to see what was needed to return it to SAMI standards.
“Crap! I wanted to get here earlier so you wouldn’t have to clean this place by yourself!” Sabrina heard from behind her as she finished cleaning. Linda frowned from the doorway as she looked around.
“It’s no big deal,” Sabrina assured her. “There wasn’t much to do, anyway. Plus, it’s not like we won’t have to clean this place again.”
“Very true.”
“How was your break?” Since Linda moved in, the pair had built a cordial, if not friendly, relationship.
“Good, thanks. It was nice to see family again after so long. How’d you do last semester?” Sabrina simply waved at the uniform blouse hanging on the closet door, causing Linda to turn and look. “The Supe’s List? No kidding?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, you want a rated assignment, right? You keep that up, and it won’t be an issue.”
Despite her initial impression of Linda, Sabrina found herself glad to have her as a roommate.
“Hey, Sabrina, how are you?” Rich Ka’uhane greeted Sabrina when he sat down next to her for the first Japanese 222 class. “How was your break?”
“Good, Sir. Yours?”
“Not bad.”
Sabrina was glad the uniform of the day was ABUs again today, with the subdued Superintendent’s List device less immediately visible. She didn’t feel like answering questions or dealing with people fawning over her blouse’s highly visible Superintendent’s List pin.
She wasn’t sure why she felt weird about her achievement, especially here, where high performance would be critical to post-Academy assignments. Ka’uhane looked like he wanted to keep chatting up Sabrina, but Doctor Hasegawa strode into the room, and the conversation ceased. That didn’t stop the C3C from starting up the conversation again once class ended.
“How did you do last semester, grade-wise?” he asked as they walked out of the room.
“I did okay, Sir,” she responded, trying to remember how to get to her Chemistry class.
Her M-Day schedule was packed. It looked like she would barely have a spare second between classes on M-Days. On the alternating academic schedule, T-days interwoven with M-days, would be easier.
“‘Okay,’ ‘very well,’ or ‘could have been better?’ Around here, that’s an important distinction.”
She shrugged in reply, not wanting to get into it.
“Well enough.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
Ka’uhane stuck around far longer than Sabrina would have liked. She was still wary of über-friendly upperclassmen before Recognition. Most of the male upperclassmen wanted something, too, and she was pretty sure she knew what that was. As her father would have said, it ‘raised her index of suspicion.’
“Not really. Sorry, Sir, but I need to get to Chemistry...” and with that, she turned into the classroom.
’What the hell’s his game?’ she wondered to herself.
She shook off the thought and concentrated on her class.
’Why didn’t I have the folks send my skates earlier?’ Sabrina asked herself as she tightened her laces. The familiar feel of the padding inside the skates brought back a wave of childhood memories.
Once finished, she walked down the rubber runner in the Cadet Ice Arena and stepped onto the ice. Her friends were already on the ice. Their skates, borrowed from the arena, were the type that buckled rather than tied. Much quicker to put on. The whisper of steel on ice filled her ears. The crunch of ice under her blades drew out more memories. The aroma of the rink ice was familiar, too.
Sabrina skated easily until her legs warmed up. Then, she started taking hard, choppy strides to build speed. She flew around the boards. She slowed each time she came up to her friends, passed them, and sped up again. No one else was on the ice with them today. She did that five times before gliding along with the group.
“Tired?” Sarita asked.
“My sucking wind tipped you off, huh?” Sabrina asked with a smile as she tried to catch her breath.
“A little.”
“None of the PT we do is quite the same as a hockey workout, is it?” Phil asked.
“Not really. Hockey is a different kind of workout. Anyway, how does a kid from the desert skate so well?”
“You know Phoenix has a hockey team now, right? Youth hockey was a thing in Arizona when I was growing up. I didn’t play after I turned ten or eleven, but I remember how to skate okay.”
“Sabrina, you know they have stick time, right?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I can keep equipment here. A hockey stick won’t fit in our footlockers ... I’ll ask what four-degs usually do about that after we get off the ice.”
Sabrina pulled away from her friends again. She didn’t skate as hard as before but instead practiced her crossovers, changing which way she faced on the fly and swooping in to collect a pretend pass from someone behind the net before speeding away again.
She stuck with her friends after that, skating slowly beside them as they chatted. Two short blasts from the scoreboard horn announced the end of the free skate. The four-degs laughed at a pithy comment about USAFA life from Phil as they stepped off the ice.
“Cadet?” a tall blonde asked as the group passed her.
“Ma’am?” Phil answered as the four stopped, turned toward the upper-class cadet, and snapped to attention.
“Sorry, I meant this young lady here,” she said, indicating Sabrina.
Sabrina stepped forward as her friends drifted back a step or two and went back to attention.
“Yes, Ma’am?” Sabrina asked.
“You play?” the blonde asked, pointing back at the rink.
“Yes, Ma’am. Since I was five.”
“You skate very well.”
“Thank you. I’m a little out of shape, though.”
“Any interest in playing here?”
“If USAFA had a women’s team at any level, I might, Ma’am. Club or intramural level, yes. Intercollegiate, no. Too much of a time commitment for IC athletes for my taste, and too much like a job.”
“Admin has just approved a women’s competitive club team. Competitive club athletics will count toward our Phys Ed requirements, too. Our season will cover half the requirement for the fall semester and all of spring. We’re trying to get pre-season workouts recognized as the other half of the fall requirement.”
The itch to compete on the ice crept into Sabrina’s consciousness. The sound of a dozen pairs of skates on the ice surfaced again, along with the thud of rubber hitting goalie pads, the metallic ring of a puck hitting the post, and the thrill of dekeing someone right off their feet.
“Oh, yeah...” Sabrina whispered as she felt the competitive fire lit once again. “I wanna play...”
“Are you in good standing?”
“Other than being a four-deg before Recognition?” Sabrina laughed. “Yes, Ma’am. I made the Supe’s List last semester.”
“Are you a winger? Center?”
“Left wing, mostly. I’ve played center a time or two, but it’s not my best position.”
“Our first game’s in three weeks...”
“Not wasting any time, are you, Ma’am?”
“No. It’s not gonna be easy, you know? Adjusting to the practice schedule, the travel. As a brand-new team, we’ll probably get whooped a few times...”
“Been there, done that, Ma’am. Tough being a pathfinder, but someone’s gotta do it.”
“I’m Brit Englund, a three-deg from Squadron Fifteen – War Eagles.”
“Sabrina Knox, Ma’am. Mighty Mach One, and an unworthy doolie.”
“Boston? I can hear it in your voice.”
“Really? I didn’t think I had much of that accent, but I guess I have enough. Min-ah-SOH-ta, ya?”
“You got me,” Englund laughed. “Do you think you’ll be able to get your equipment together quickly? We need to start practicing soon.”
“My sponsors live nearby, and I can have my folks ship it there. Are we going to be able to store stuff here, though? I doubt my roommate would appreciate me having that stuff in our room. Or the stank that comes with it.”
“Yeah, they’re giving us some locker space here. We’ll have an equipment room, too.”
“Does it matter what color my stuff is?”
“Not this year. We’re just concentrating on putting a team on the ice. We’ve got some quick-and-dirty jerseys in the works, thanks to an athletic endowment, but we’ll standardize everything else – gloves, pants, helmets, etc. – later.”
“How many others do you have lined up to play so far?”
“Eleven.”
“Hoo, boy...” Sabrina breathed. “Those are gonna be some long shifts...”
“Or there’ll be lots of them.”
“Neither of which will be fun, but nothing worth having is ever easy, as my father would say.”
“Smart man. Here’s some info on the team and what we anticipate the time commitment will be.” Englund handed over a sheet of paper. “Look that over, talk to your advisor if you need to, and call me at the number at the top one way or another. If I don’t answer, just leave a voicemail. That’s my cell number.”
“I’ll look it over. Thanks, Ma’am.”
“Thanks for talking to me. I hope to see you on the ice with us soon.”
Sabrina’s advisor had no problem shuffling her schedule to accommodate her joining the new hockey club. The Academy had codes to help advisors block off time for team practices. This system, typically used for intercollegiate sports, also benefited competitive club-sports athletes. However, the other meeting she scheduled made Sabrina quite nervous.
“Ah, Sabrina!” Sensei Ueno said with a smile. “Come in, come in!” Seeing Sabrina’s posture when she sat on a chair in his office worried him. “Is something wrong, Sabrina?”
“Sensei, I fear I have to stop being your student.”
“Sabrina? Are you leaving the Academy?”
“NO! No, Sensei, not that...”
“Sabrina, just tell me.”
“Sensei, the Academy has approved the creation of a women’s club hockey team...”
“And you wish to join the club,” he finished for her.
“Hai, Sensei,” she answered, embarrassed.
“When does the season start?”
“The first game is scheduled for three weeks from tomorrow, Sensei.”
Chris Ueno’s brows rose.
“That is not very much time for the team to bond, or get in shape, for that matter ... You feared I would be angry about this? Sabrina, this is a marvelous opportunity! Not only for you but for other female cadet hockey players!
“With service academies being exempt from Title IX, trying to secure a spot on the men’s team would have been nearly impossible for any of you. This is a chance for you and your teammates to showcase both your talent and the Academy in a new way.”
Sensei’s look shifted from surprise to respect.
“Sabrina, it would not have been very much longer before I started treating you as my assistant instructor.”
Sabrina blinked at the older man.
“Sabrina, how easily did you pick up Aikido when we first started last fall? I dare say you have been my best student to date. Once you relaxed and accepted, Aikido is not about strength; your mastery of what I can teach in a semester was a foregone conclusion.” Ueno sat back in a more relaxed posture.
“I wish that you had more time to devote to your study of Aikido, Sabrina, for you would have progressed far. But – sadly – you do not. You must now devote your energies to this new pursuit. Embrace it! Seize the opportunity and do not let go! I have no doubt you will help bring success to this new venture.”
Chris Ueno sighed.
“I am sorry to lose you as a student,” he said, “but I wish you the very best of luck in all you do here, Sabrina. And do not forget to have some fun, too. Stop by and visit with this old man every once in a while.”
“Hey, Sabrina,” Rich Ka’uhane said in greeting. “I heard you haven’t been to squadron training in the last couple of days.”
“I’m playing competitive club hockey now, Sir. Our first game’s in less than three weeks, so they’ve excused me and my teammates from any squadron training so we can come together as a team.”
“The Academy doesn’t have a women’s hockey team.”
“We do as of last week, Sir.”
Sabrina wasn’t sure what to make of Ka’uhane’s frown. She also started to wonder how he knew she wasn’t at training, especially when he was assigned to a different cadet squadron.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Dad!”
“Hey, Princess. How are you? What’s new?”
“Still doing okay in the classroom. Sucking wind at practice, though. I’m not exactly in hockey-playing shape yet. I ache in places I forgot I had places!”
“Yeah, it’s hard to stay in hockey shape when you’re not playing the game regularly.”
“Right, Dad. Like you’ve ever been out of shape?”
“I was out of shape once!” Jeff protested. “I think I was twelve back then, though...”
“Not helping, Dad, not helping. Anyway, how’s Mom?”
“She’s okay. She’s sitting right next to me if you wanna talk to her?”
“Yes, please.”
“Hello, daughter,” her mother said after a brief pause.
“Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“I am well, thank you. How is your new venture treating you?”
“Challenging...”
“I would imagine so. I seem to remember you taking on a similar challenge in high school, Sabrina.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just a sucker for a good challenge. Kinda why I came here, ya know?”
“You are using such language deliberately, Sabrina...”
“C’mon, Mom. If I can’t tease my own family, who can I tease?” Sabrina laughed.
It was too easy to get her mother going by messing with the English language. Her mother grumbled in response.
“How’s Alex?” Sabrina asked. “Have you heard from him lately?”
“He is doing well. Now that he is in actual Astronautical Engineering classes, rather than the general intro to engineering ones, he seems happier.”
Keiko did not offer any information about Ryan because she knew Sabrina didn’t care. It was the one sore spot in their mother-daughter relationship.
“Your first game is soon, is it not?”
“Next week. At least our jerseys will match, even if nothing else does.”
“One could not expect the team to be perfectly outfitted in such a short timeframe, daughter.”
“No, I get that, Mom. I don’t know, I guess it’s too many years playing for already established or well-funded teams tickling some OCD gene of mine.”
“I’m sure you will adapt, Sabrina.”
’Well, I guess I need to adapt to not winning again, too... ‘ Sabrina thought as she watched the ToughPuckers, a team from Aspen, celebrate another goal.
The USAFA women’s team had the talent, that’s for sure; they just didn’t have the endurance yet. If the game had been only forty minutes long – two periods – they might have had enough stamina, but not for a game that lasted sixty minutes. Not with only a dozen players.
“Damn,” Monique Levesque, a two-deg from North Dakota, gasped, “I don’t think this stitch in my side is ever going to go away ... I hoped I would be in better shape than this!”
“We’re all in the same boat, Mon,” Sabrina replied.
Once at the rink or on road trips, there was no rank among the cadets, even for fourth-class cadets – they were all teammates, hence Sabrina’s use of Monique’s nickname. The ladies from USAFA were a somber bunch as they skated through the handshake line following the game. The women from the Aspen team encouraged their counterparts, but the cadets were too dejected at their performance to care.
“Shit...” moaned Krista Hoglund, the three-deg USAFA goalie, as she slumped onto the dressing room bench. “Did we stink out there as much as my equipment does right now?”
The nine-to-one score was going to do horrible things to her goals against average, especially since this had been their first game.
“We did okay until about a third of the way through the second period,” Brit Englund sighed as she also took a seat. “We’ll be hard-pressed to keep up with other teams until our conditioning improves and we add some more players to the team.”
“Any luck recruiting more players, Brit?”
“No, Joanie,” Brit replied to the sole firstie on the team. “Unfortunately, I think we’ll be the roster for this year.”
“Hell of a way to get in shape...” Sabrina said as she pulled off her skates.
“We keep doing our best,” Joanie Sondergaard sighed. “We do our best, and we build a foundation for future teams.” Her weary teammates nodded their heads in agreement.
The following week, after their practice, the Cadet Arena’s facilities manager handed Brit Englund an envelope addressed to ‘USAFA Women’s Hockey Club’ before the team stepped into their changing room. The return address typed in the corner revealed nothing about its origin.
“Who’s it from, Brit?”
“Dunno yet,” Brit replied as she pulled sheets of folded paper from the envelope. The cover letter bore the logo of a well-known hockey advancement and development charity. “Holy smokes!” she gasped after reading through the text.
“What does it say?” Sheena Moberly, the right winger, asked.
Brit read aloud.
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