and the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team are down by two points, offense on the field, ball on their opponents’ ten-yard line, five seconds left in the game, and the high school girls are begging Coach Jonah to pay attention and call their final timeout before the clock runs out, a loss here meaning they won’t qualify for division playoffs, and Coach Jonah finally signals the ref, and the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team limps off the field, wiping their sweaty faces with their jerseys, picking at wedgies, chewing on mouthguards, tasting plastic and blood, and the defense, mud-splattered, exhausted, joins them, and the team circles up around Coach Jonah, who the entire season has been telling them winning doesn’t matter, flag football isn’t a real sport, shouting during practices to take it easy, don’t blow your knees out, don’t get hurt, yet the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team’s knees do hurt, along with pulled hamstrings, bruised arms, and sprained fingers, and despite Coach Jonah reminding them once again it’s just girls flag football, it doesn’t mean anything, to the girls of the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team this game means everything, and they watch Coach Jonah flip through their playbook, pretty apparent he hasn’t prepared for this situation at all, and the girls huddle impatiently, looking at one another for someone to take the lead, and for the first time they begin to doubt, not Coach Jonah, who they never believed in, but themselves, and Coach Jonah, playbook rolled up in his fist, tells them to run wide out flat, a play that typically only gets them a few yards, and they have never scored on this play, and each and every single girl of the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team knows they should run the center curl option, a pass to the center as they cross the goal line, a play that has worked almost every time, touchdown after touchdown, but they don’t speak up, don’t object to Coach Jonah, and instead what the girls of the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team do is put their hands in at the center of their huddle, a shaky Jenga of sweaty palms, and shout “SPRING HILL ON THREE, SPRING HILL ON THREE, ONE TWO THREE SPRING HILL!” and what comes next is the moment they will remember for the rest of their lives, inside of college classrooms questioning professors, board rooms challenging condescending CEOs, and divorce courts demanding what they are owed, any time another “Coach Jonah” stands in their way, but most important, while instilling in their daughters the confidence to take up their space in the world, because without saying a word, the girls of the Spring Hill Girls Flag Football team look into each other’s eyes, bite down on their mouthguards, and line up for the center curl option, and maybe they win, and maybe they lose, but God damn it, they call their fucking play.