However, the day prior, Finn’s parents fetched him from some hospital in Lake Charles, only to find him with a leg in a cast and needing crutches. His parents ask him what happened.
“Mom, dad, I broke my leg in a football game!” Finn explains to his parents. “We won the game, though”
“Poor you!” Finn’s dad weeps over his son’s broken leg. “It was due to happen to someone on this VA football team, but I would never have imagined it would be you!”
“How long until you recover?” Finn’s mom asks him, while bed ridden.
“Eight to twelve weeks”
“No more football for you, Finn!” Finn’s mom scolds him. “You received no offers to play in college, not even from some community college, and no one wants to sign an injury-prone player of your caliber! You should start thinking of careers after high school!”
Way to demoralize me after this injury in a game! Finn sighs, while his parents go out and buy crutches appropriate for his frame size.
After Finn returns home to recover from his broken leg, his parents ask the parish office to add their home to the disabled bus route. Which makes him arrive a little late, but with a doctor’s note from the people at the hospital that put his cast, he could be excused, especially since his injuries made football practices useless.
But after the AP US Government lecture ends, it seems like some people look at Finn wearing a cast on his broken leg. And uses crutches to move around campus. Obviously, Carrie rushes towards him, while remaining mindful of not touching his cast. Or even his body at all.
“Poor you!” Carrie tells him upon seeing him in crutches. “What happened?”
“This football game! We won, all right…” Finn tells his girlfriend in a raspy voice. “I got hit like a truck by the Yellow Jackets’ offensive tackle, pinning me to the ground!”
Oh boy. Even though injuries happen often in football, it makes me wonder whether trying to use football as a vehicle to move up the academic ladder is worth the risk… Pablo only realizes now the gravity of the situation that, in the heat of the game, he didn’t quite grasp.
“Such promise on the field cut short by an injury!” Ethan remarks on his injury, despite being on the field himself when it happened.
“I apologize for being such a jerk to you all in past seasons, when you were studying or doing homework on the bus to away games!” Finn laments to other football players nearby.
“Better late than never, I guess…” Pablo sighs, as Audrey closes in on her.
I remember vividly this nightmare last season when I kept hearing about how the longer you are playing youth sports without making it as a professional, the more devastating it can get if you have deficient backup plans. Which is why Heather kept obsessing over getting me to play in the Ivy League, or doing so herself, and the latter is now, well, probably the best option on her table. Unless, somehow, she could play for some other Ivy-equivalent on a full ride, and the most realistic would be Tulane or Georgetown; Berkeley and William and Mary expressed interest in her as well, but W&M isn’t an Ivy-equivalent. Who am I kidding? It seems like I’m jumping from pillar to post! Audrey spaces out while memories are being triggered, causing her thoughts to race against the clock.
“Finn, I understand that this injury has come to a shock to you. It’s ok for your life after high school to be in a trade, or to be involved in the sport in some other way, just don’t let this be the end of your world!” Audrey tells the ex-DE.
“Yeah, Finn, I received no offers to play in college either. However, I’d be happy if I became a long-haul truck driver or a mail carrier” Carrie confides in him. “Not sure I would want to walk on at a community college just to play more hoops!”
“You’re right. Just see the season through, stay strong, Carrie, and everything will be ok” Finn adds, before moving out of the way and going to his next class. “However, Carrie, I hope you understand that I gave my all for VA for years up to this point, as you did!” Finn starts crying before lamenting internally.
Several people in the hallway gasp upon hearing about how Carrie would be willing to call graduation the end of her basketball career, and what she plans to do after graduation.
Meanwhile, Finn is replaying this entire play in his mind. By doing so, his thoughts gnaw at him and makes the entire scene all the more painful. Is there anything I could have done differently on that play? I knew the game was dangerous to play, but why did it happen to me then, and not before? I tackled, and got tackled, all the time in games…
----------------------------------------
Before quiz bowl practice begins, however, Pablo has some questions for his teammates that he practiced with, while George learns the subtleties of playing DE and DT elsewhere on campus during football practice, and drills accordingly.
“Because of this stupid thunderstorm, I couldn’t make it to Tal Atkins, and I was forced to play football instead; how does it feel to play quiz bowl with my girlfriend, rather than me?” Pablo asks Lilina and Nadine.
“Honestly, Audrey isn’t that rash on the buzzer, she doesn’t seem to neg as much as you do, but she still negs some” Nadine answers him. “She’s able to cover some gaps in arts and literature that you don’t, on the other hand, you were stronger in social studies and science, but you know how Myriam is as a quiz bowler… However, Audrey threw me off my game more often than I would have liked”
“And yet, both Audrey and you knew some pop culture, there’s just not a whole lot of it being asked!” Lilina answers him.
But then Finn’s injury during the Iowa game seems to have made Pablo a little… off during the quiz bowl practice. And a little slower, too.
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At the end of the quiz bowl practice, Audrey reunites with Pablo once again. As they get back to Audrey’s place:
“I understand that Finn was close to you by virtue of being on the starting football lineup. It’s a very common experience to see a teammate get injured, surely you realized that. It’s already bad enough when you know a sporting career is over, or is about to end, when you’re healthy, perhaps it’s even more traumatizing when you’re forced out of the sport because of an injury!”
“Ah Audrey, what I need right now would be pelekie zirni and painkillers…”
“We don’t have any chickpeas left. As for painkillers, do you want the liquid or the tablet ones?” Audrey asks him, referring to coffee as the liquid painkiller.
“Friday Night Lights: while this book is a little dated, what remains relevant about it is about how all-consuming sports can get when you’re in a community like ours; the Odessa of the time is really not that different from this town, it’s mostly bigger” Pablo then sends Audrey an electronic copy of the book.
“Maybe it might have been a good idea for someone wanting to understand what it’s really like to live here, how fanatical we can get about a high school’s teams, but not quite about ex-athletes. By now you know about the ages-old cliché of former high school star athletes living unsatisfying lives as adults…”
“And more specifically those who either dropped out of college or couldn’t attend in the first place. Bottom line is: you shouldn’t let any one activity consume you!”
For all the financial woes of VA sports, we were able to mostly avoid injuries. Our opponents get injured more than we do, and that’s why this never seemed to happen to me. I accepted it was normal for players to come and go because of them graduating, however, Pablo reflects on his life as a VA athlete.
“Audrey, this makes me wonder what happened to past quiz bowl stars, for VA or for our opponents...” Pablo sighs.
“As far as I can make out, a lot of quiz bowlers will attend college. Not necessarily elite colleges like UPenn or UChicago, but still. Now, you know there’s a difference between going to college and post-graduation life, and you seem concerned about the latter. But better talk about these things now before it’s too late!”
While Audrey is brewing two cups of coffee, Pablo, on the other hand, prepares his homework in pre-calculus. They start covering exponentials and logarithms, first real and then complex. But, at the same time, the first question is about student loans.
“A student prepares to apply to college, and his parents inform him that they can only afford to pay nine thousand five hundred dollars per year, inclusive of work-study and TOPS. Suppose, first...” Pablo reads the problem statement of the first question.
The problem statement provides the first scenario: going to LSU for all four years, at a net yearly price of $14,000, which is expected to increase by 6.53% yearly over the next six years. First part of the question: knowing that any shortfall must be covered by borrowing, what would the principal of the student loan be at graduation?
“My brother felt like they covered student loans and composite interest too late back then. Now he is saddled with about thirty grand in debt!” Pablo sighs as he starts calculating the total debt burden.
Looks like the amount of money borrowed skyrockets if the expected family contribution doesn’t increase, Pablo comes to the grim truth behind the debt burden of going to college.
But just knowing the debt at graduation is far from the end of the story; they were given the annuity formula, where they would be using the principal and, from there, try to get the payment amount, assuming 10 years.
It seems like, after they get their coffee, the couple is testing against several scenarios: going to the same college for 4, then 5 and finally 6 years (with grant money drying up for the last 2 years, and private loans kicking in if loans exceed a certain limit), and starting out at a community college, and transferring to LSU, finishing the degree in 2, 3 or 4 years.
And then they start calculating loan payments for each scenario, starting with the federal loans and, if applicable, the private loans. Oof. I wonder for whom the conclusions of this assignment will fail to click, in terms of the consequences of student debt burdens, Pablo ruminates while Audrey’s parents look at them performing calculations of debt.
“Homework about student debt? Is it a good idea to talk about student debt disguised as pre-calculus homework?” Audrey’s father asks the couple.
“Better that than nothing at all! From what I heard about our opponents, football or quiz bowl, they often brush that aside!” Pablo adds.
Pablo then texts Finn: “If you’re taking pre-calculus, please pay attention to the latest assignment: it’s important for your financial future!”
And he then proceeds to asks Nadine, whom he knows is also taking pre-calculus, to write an article for the student newspaper about student loans and other forms of collegiate financial aid.
“Honey, I think it was a bad idea to tell Finn about financial aid for his future away from sports just yet! For someone like him, who gave his all, day in, day out, for the VAs, he probably needs some time away from football, some alone time, to recover and make sense of what happened to him!” Audrey scolds him.
“While his body is recovering, perhaps preparing him mentally for what comes after his recovery would help…” Pablo retorts.
“Remember this loss we incurred against Wossman in the quarterfinals last season! Charlotte and Taylor gave their all, day in, day out for VA for years, like Finn, but had little real basketball talent; they were crying for days after the defeat, and then left us alone”
“Friday Night Lights tells you about how there was no candle that burned out more quickly than that of the high school athlete. But perhaps Finn is lucky not to have lived under the kind of star system that glorified football players. In a sense, this town is an oddball in that quiz bowlers and mathletes are adulated much more readily. Now, if you may excuse me, I need to be alone for a bit”
Pablo steps out of the living room. I promised that I would give her a book about coming to terms with the end of a sporting career, right after VA lost to Wossman on the court. I didn’t hold my promise just yet. However, I think Finn should be given a copy of the same book, the same as Audrey. Because of his injuries, the book should steer closer to a career-ending injury. He then starts looking for books about just that. Or maybe just some articles about the transition out of sport, for that matter, with the proviso that they must be accessible to a high schooler with no real psychology background. I guess, when you’re known across town for your talent at a given sport, when your whole life revolves around it, as was the case for Finn or Charlotte, it starts to overtake one’s identity.
“One more thing: if you can’t play your sport in Division I, you need to compare debt burdens against possible academic interests, and whether the job market for these treats prestige as a job skill... If you know for certain that you need to get a graduate degree, you want to take out as little debt as possible” Audrey’s dad tells the two. “However, if you end up playing in Division I, you will often find that, while your education is paid for in full, certain majors might be effectively off-limits to you”
Last season, Heather acted as if we both had more or less the same level of talent, and we pretty much needed to get all-state honors to play in the Ivy League. Now I don’t see her much outside of the weight room and the classroom, and when I do, it’s to do some drills with her. She thinks she can pry playing time from Berkeley or Georgetown? She has gotten better, but I am a little shocked to see her go from someone for whom the Ivy League would have represented the ceiling to a Power-6 prospect in one AAU season, Audrey ruminates about hoops.