Chapter 18: Uprising

23 June 2017 – Above the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Sabrina watched the Air Force Twin Otter accelerating away from her upside-down view, receding into the bright, blue sky above.

A video camera clipped to her parachute helmet recorded her descent, and the footage was projected onto the heads-up display built into her jump goggles. Sabrina flipped herself over, rolling her body to face Earth as it rushed up at her, and settled into a proper free-fall position.

She had a great view of the Academy, even better than the view from the summit of Eagle’s Peak. She craned her head around, panning several times to film as much as she could before her ‘chute opened. An altimeter alert indicated she was one thousand five hundred feet above ground level. Sabrina glanced down at her target. It had already grown into a bull’s eye from a speck of yellow on the green turf.

Pulling on her T-11 parachute’s risers, she spilled air from the canopy and slipped – steered herself – toward the target. Sabrina grimaced. She’d miss it by the barest fraction of a stride. She wanted to reach forward with her leg to touch the ring, but that was a good way to jam her knee or blow it out completely.

She rolled through her landing fall, coming to rest within the target. She gathered up her ‘chute and stuffed it into its bag. She trudged to the edge of the landing zone, where cadets from Wings of Blue, the cadet parachute instructors who ran cadet jump training, stood. Waiting at the edge of the LZ with their arms crossed, they wore dark blue flight suits and wore their garrison caps with rakish, World War II-era cants.

“Cadet Knox, you missed the target by a cat’s whisker,” an instructor said as Sabrina walked up.

“Yeah, I thought I had it, Sir.”

“Still, good form on your PLF. You said you had wings you wanted to use for the ceremony?”

“Yes, Sir. They’re my dad’s wings, or they were,” Sabrina said as she pulled two envelopes from her flight suit. Her father had mailed two pairs of wings he’d worn on his uniforms. “Do you want the highly polished ones for the ceremony or the standard issue?”

“So, your dad went to jump school?”

“Yes, Sir. He was in the Army’s 82nd Airborne. He joined after high school and wore these until after Panama.”

“That’s cool, having something like that handed down to you. Write your name on the envelope with the standard-issue ones. I’ll make sure it stays sealed until just before we pin the wings on you. Hold on to the other one.”

After the pinning ceremony, the cadet commander for Wings of Blue stepped up to Sabrina.

“Are you gonna try out at all?” he asked, wondering if Sabrina would try out for the WOGs – Wings of Green, the apprentice parachute instructors.

“No, Sir. I’m taking Airmanship 461 in the fall to become a glider instructor pilot. I’m also playing competitive club hockey, so I won’t have the time.”

“Your plate does sound a little full. What’s your major going to be?”

“Astro, Sir.”

“Give me circuits any day...” the incoming firstie muttered, shaking his head. “Well, you have fun with that,” he grinned.

Sabrina dressed in the Cadet Ice Arena locker room before the first day of hockey camp.

“This feels weird,” Monique Levesque said as she looked herself over. The coach’s light tracksuit looked and felt very different from the heavier equipment her players wore. “I feel like I’ve forgotten something.”

“Yeah,” Brit Englund replied in agreement. “I feel like I’m getting ready for a free skate.”

“Uncle Chris could have asked us to show up in our flight suits instead,” Sabrina joked.

“That would have been really weird, Sabrina,” Monique said. “I’m surprised Mr. Micklicz didn’t ask us to wear our USAFA hockey club jerseys, though.”

“Probably wanted all the staff to be dressed the same to make it easier for the campers to recognize us.”

“Sabrina,” Monique laughed, “we’re like two or three feet taller than the campers! The oldest ones are ten! It’s not like we’re not going to stand out among them...”

The three cadets wandered out to the ice.

“Good morning, ladies,” Chris Micklicz said from the other side of the boards. “The outfits fit okay?”

“I keep feeling like I’ve forgotten something, Mr. Micklicz,” Monique said again.

“Yeah, I felt the same way the first time I did one of these camps, too. Since we’ve all played for years, we’ve spent hours strapping and taping our equipment on. To suddenly stop when we’re used to that routine is a shock.” He waved them onto the ice. “Come on out and warm up. The campers won’t be here for another half-hour.”

Chris introduced them to the rest of the camp staff. They were a mix of retired NHL players like himself or college players from nearby schools. When the campers did arrive, they were in obvious awe at meeting real professional players. Even at nine and ten years old, the age where they might have already attended a hockey camp or two, the awe was still there.

“Do you think they’ll even remember our names later?” Al Sinclair asked in a whisper.

The tall defenseman from Colorado College towered over the rest of the staff, but he’d already earned a reputation as a giant softy. Not twenty minutes ago, he was tying the smallest camper’s skates for her. Using goofy faces and voices, he made the six-year-old giggle the whole time.

“I know one camper who’ll never forget your name, Sully,” Sabrina snickered, comparing Al to an animated movie character they all remembered from childhood. The rest of the college-age staff laughed. “You need to grow your blue fur out again, though. In case they make another sequel.”

“That’s why I don’t,” Al replied. “I need to move on with my life.”

This drew more laughter.

“Right,” his teammate from school, Ben Joubert, snorted. “He’s moved on from scaring kids to scaring opposing forwards!”

Dean Fraser, a former Calgary teammate of Chris Micklicz’s, skated over at this point.

“You guys all set?”

The replies were a mix of “Yes, coach,” “Yes, Mr. Fraser,” and “Yes, Sir.”

“Look, folks, relax,” he said with a smile. “I’m Dean, or Mister Dean at the most, okay? You’re not campers any longer, nor are you players we’re coaching. We work together. Okay, the kids are waiting. Let’s break out as we discussed earlier, with one exception.” He turned to Al. “You okay with switching groups?”

“Did Chelsea ask if I was going to be one of her coaches?” Al asked with a smile.

“She did. Don’t go buying her flowers yet, because you might freak out her parents.”

“I’m good with it if whoever was going to work with that group is good with working with the older group.”

“It’s fine with me,” Brit said.

“Okay, let’s go, then.”

“God, that was FUN!” Brit gushed at dinner that night. The staff who had worked camps before smiled at her enthusiasm.

“When they honestly try hard, it is a lot of fun,” Chris Micklicz answered with a smile. “It’s when they don’t that can make it a long day. But that usually doesn’t happen with the younger kids. They always seem to want to try their best.”

“It’s hard when someone realizes they’re not improving, no matter how hard they try,” Jean Renoit added. The retired NHL Hall of Fame defenseman was now in his early sixties. He enjoyed teaching at hockey camps so much that he was still at it twenty-five years after retiring. “You have to try and turn their disappointment around, or they may never want to hear about hockey again.”

“That’s gotta be hard,” Monique said. “Brit, Sabrina, and I know that we’re not going on to the NHL after graduation, especially since we’re at the Air Force Academy. We know what’s next better than most. How does anyone who enjoys this game but doesn’t go as far as they want handle that?”

“Same as anyone who realizes their dreams aren’t always obtainable,” Ben Joubert replied. “Look, I’m playing Division I NCAA hockey, which is to say I’m on the team, and I get to dress for most of the games. While half of my high school classmates are playing college hockey at some level, I’m the only of us playing Division I. I’d be surprised if more than one or two from my current team are drafted. I’d be even more surprised if I’m one of the ones who are.

“Al’s got a much more realistic shot. A six-foot-five bodybuilder who plays first-line defense? I’ll be surprised if he’s not drafted before the third round next summer. My high school coach sat me down before I signed my letter of intent to play for the Tigers. He explained what my chances of making the pros were. I talked with my parents after I talked with Coach, and I committed myself to make the best grades possible here in Colorado Springs.”

“I have to say, Monique,” Dean Fraser added, “that Ben’s one of the rare ones who really understood what he was up against before he left high school. He already knew that college hockey would be the farthest he would go. There are some players, however, who enjoy playing so much, they’re content with playing at whatever level just so they can keep playing.”

“How much of that talk at dinner applies to us?” Brit asked while she and her fellow cadets relaxed at Arnold Hall later that evening.

“Most, if not all of it, is my feeling...” Sabrina replied. She speared more of her salad. “I know Dad’s mentioned to me more than once that it’s the same in EMS. People are frequently forced out before they want to leave, usually because of injuries or PTSD.”

“Sabrina’s right,” Monique agreed. “It’s probably the same in every career field. Will any of us accept that it’s time to go if the end of our career arrives before we want it to? And how angry are we likely to get if that happens, especially after how hard we will have worked to get to wherever we are?”

Sabrina gulped lungful after lungful of air after reaching the summit of Mount Wachusett, a half-hour from where she grew up. While not particularly technical or long, she had run the most difficult trail on the mountain as fast as she could to give herself a good workout. She’d take a short break, then make a fast descent.

She sat on a stump and gulped water. Her parents were working today, and Alex was off by himself somewhere. She would meet Shawn and Naomi for dinner after her run. She’d only just gotten her breathing back under control when someone called out to her.

“Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

She looked to her left and saw a man in his mid-twenties grinning at her.

’I can’t go anywhere alone without SOMEONE trying to pick me up, can I?’ Sabrina sighed to herself.

Yesterday’s trip to the shopping mall near her parents’ house had been frustrating, thanks to young and not-so-young men trying to strike up conversations in every store she visited. The man was right, however. A constant, gentle breeze and puffy clouds blocking the worst of the bright sun kept temps in the low eighties.

“Hmm,” she hummed in the affirmative while drinking from the hydration pack on her back.

“Is your brother in the Air Force, or something?” the man asked, motioning to her t-shirt.

Sabrina frowned. Her dark blue t-shirt bore the US Air Force roundel and the words ‘USAFA Women’s Hockey Club.’ She wasn’t sure how that meant her brother was in the Air Force. She stared at the man and slowly shook her head in the negative.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ’oh,’” she parroted back. “I’m wearing this shirt because it’s my shirt, Genius. I’m on the women’s hockey club at the Air Force Academy.”

The man held up his hands in apology and backed away. He glanced nervously over his shoulder as he walked off, unsure if the rude girl was gonna go postal on him now that his back was turned. Sabrina rubbed at her forehead, trying to will the blossoming headache away before she turned back to the hiking trail for her run down the hill. Her legs still felt rubbery when she stepped out of the shower at home two hours later, a sign that she’d worked her legs harder than usual. She looked herself over in the bathroom mirror while she toweled her hair dry.