**FYI, this is the second of two teaser chapters.

CHAPTER TWO

The 16 Gold team practices four days a week — every weekday except Wednesdays. That gives the girls an opportunity to still expand their personal horizons and try other clubs and activities in the evenings, in addition to homework. It’s a healthy, important thing for anyone at any age to do.

My own free time was often spent exercising, reading, or playing video games. Not that I was completely without friends, but having practices in the evenings and tournaments on the weekends, it wasn’t ideal for a social schedule. So I mostly kept to myself.

The first week of practice was going…fine. Sure, I was mostly ignored and sometimes felt like a pack mule doing all the physical parts of running drills, hitting down-balls, and anything else Dottie needed for the team. The money, fortunately, was good. And with the low cost of living way outside of the Chicago area, I didn’t need to get a second job (just sometimes picking up extra shifts for training camps, working the concessions at our tournaments, and whatnot).

Socially, I’d somewhat befriended a handful of coaches, but now that I was coaching the girls instead of the boys, my sphere of familiarity was different. Sure, some coaches had teams of both genders, but most picked one and stuck there.

A full week of running girls' practices was starting to remind me how outnumbered I was as a man in this gym. 8 to 10 girls per team, each with a female head coach (and sometimes an assistant for the top teams, but also always female). Outside of the maintenance staff that came in, I was the only guy in the entire facility.

The one person I’d known a little bit from coaching boys was the 15 Bronze coach, Maddie Russell. She was a few years older than me with a sharp wit, fun personality, and incredibly beautiful. Maddie was one of those people who was so bubbly it was impossible not to like her. I was extremely thankful that her team practiced the same night and time slot as mine.

“Having fun so far?” Maddie ran up to me before Friday’s practice.

“It’s okay. Super different. It’s just been a hell of a week.”

“Yeah, the girls' practices are a lot more intense than the boys’, huh?” Maddie chuckled. “I always feel like a babysitter for the boys – even the high school ones.”

“Totally. But they both have perks. I’m just having some trouble getting these girls to like me.”

Maddie waved her hand, dismissively. “Ohhh they’ll come around. And as their coach, you don’t need them to like you. It’s not like you have to be friends with them. They just need to respect you as a mentor. Like a kind of big sister. Or for you, big brother.”

Maddie had a good point. It’s not like I was trying to enter a 16 year-old girl friend group. I didn’t need to be up to date on their slang and interests. After all, I’m nine years older and at a completely different stage of my life.

Dottie blew her whistle and called the girls in for the pre-practice meeting. They went through the school recap routine, had a few laughs, and practice began.

Soraya (the best of two setters on the team, just barely beating out her twin sister, Eshal) kept asking Dottie if we’d be scrimmaging after practice. “But it’s Friday! Can we please?”

“Depends on what 16 Silver wants. They’re their own team, so if they feel ready to scrimmage, we’ll be ready.”

Dottie’s response was good enough to keep the girls focused on a Friday evening. We wouldn’t start doing weekend tournaments for a few more weeks anyway, so it’s not like we needed Friday to chill.

But unfortunately for Gold, Silver was not ready to scrimmage. Their coach, a woman named Rebecca, was not pleased with the practice they had and therefore were not prepared to scrimmage.

“Noooo! So we’re just running drills for the last half hour?” Meghan whined.

Dottie sighed. I could tell she wanted to scrimmage Silver, and wasn’t in the mood to run drills for another half hour either. “We can play Fours,” she declared.

The girls cheered, celebrating that they got to do a 4v4 self-scrimmage instead of getting further critiqued on their hitting form.

Eve looked side to side and quickly realized an issue. “Coach Dottie, Kelsey’s not here though. So we can’t do Fours. We only have seven.”

“Well, maybe Coach Caleb can join in. Caleb?” Dottie looked over at me. Frankly, I was shocked to be addressed at all, much less by name.

“Oh, uh, well, I would. But…” I gestured to what I had on. Usually what I wore to practice was some sort of light athletic jacket and athletic pants. But today for some reason, I wore these inflexible jeans. I regretted it the second I got to the facility and though it didn’t affect my ability to coach, it’d severely hinder my ability to play.

The girls knew this, and immediately got bummed knowing it’d be uneven teams for the remainder of practice.

“Yeah, I’m sorry guys. Really.” I tried to apologize, but there was no quickness to forgive. I turned to Dottie. “Wait, let me just borrow some shorts from the supply closet.”

“They wouldn’t be in there. The boys are out of season, so they’ve boxed up all the extra uniforms and are packed away at South Facility.”

I was losing the girls. And I was clearly annoying Dottie. Everybody wanted a fun, 4v4 scrimmage to close out the week and I was letting them down.

“Unless…” I began. “Do we have any extra spandex shorts?”

Dottie did a double take, then whispered as if I accidentally said that out loud. “Spandex shorts? As in the women’s ones? You totally don’t need to do that.”

I couldn’t believe I was actually offering to wear tight, form-fitting women’s volleyball shorts, just to participate in a half hour scrimmage game. But here I was.

“Ha! No way! Coach Caleb’s gonna wear girls shorts?” Macy exclaimed.

“Ah! You totally should Coach Caleb!” Meghan joined in. Though the girls thought it was silly, they seemed to agree it was the best way to go.

“Hey, I’ve got nothing to lose. I want you girls to scrimmage, so spandex it is for me!”

I ran off to the storage closet to find my size and change into the tight, women’s spandex shorts. The closet itself was quite organized (I’d know, I helped organize it last year), so I knew exactly where to find the shorts in my size. You’d think that it’d be impossible for a 5’10” man to find a pair of women’s shorts in his size, but you’d be wrong. Remember, even the female volleyball players are tall — many taller than me!

Fortunately, I exclusively wear tighter-fitting briefs underwear, so the spandex shorts actually fit quite comfortably. I took off my jacket and kept my athletic t-shirt on. I’d never worn spandex before, so it was unreal how much of a difference these made on my legs. I already had slender, hairless legs, of which I was suddenly revealing a lot more of. If someone took a picture of only my legs, there’s a strong possibility you’d never know they belonged to a man.

Where the illusion definitely broke was with my bulge in the front. My t-shirt was on the longer side, so it mostly hid it, but that would be jarring to anyone watching a slow pan bottom-to-top of my body.

I ran back to practice to ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the girls. They couldn’t get enough of my new look. We were all laughing together, and it wasn’t in ridicule. We all just recognized the silliness of the situation: a male coach willingly changed into girls’ practice spandex.

“Gotta say, Coach Caleb, your butt looks pretty good too,” Dottie even chimed in. The girls giggled at that comment and when I whipped around to take a look, she was absolutely right. I had a serious dump truck going on.

I turned bright red with embarrassment, and Dottie quickly apologized for saying that in front of the girls. She whispered to me “next time, I’ll keep those thoughts to myself, Blondie.” Next time?

“Coach Caleb should also wear his hair in a ponytail to match us!” Macy suggested.

I had no issue with that, so I let my long hair down from the bun and retied it into a high ponytail to match the girls. They got a big kick out of it.

Finally, we split into teams and scrimmaged for the remainder of practice. Dottie kept score and made adjustments to both teams’ form, technique, and strategy. I did the same for the girls on my own team. But despite being a 25-year old man, I wasn’t that much better a player than these girls. Remember, they’re the best of the best in the country for their age group. By the time they’re 18, I’m sure they’ll be kicking my butt.

We had a productive, fun match, and notably the team of myself, Eshal, Harley, and the new girl, Remi, took the win! Running, jumping, and diving all over the floor felt so different in my spandex shorts. There’s a much greater chance for floor burn when your shorts only go as low as your butt.

Practice wrapped and Eshal, our team captain, led the outgoing cheer. As the girls packed up their things and disassembled the nets, Dottie wanted to speak with me.

“You made nice strides today with the girls,” she said, practicing her classic no-eye-contact conversation. Nevertheless, I appreciate the compliment.

“Thank you. That means a lot.” I replied, thinking that’d be the end of it.

“You’ll come to know this year… but these girls are already stellar. Sure, there’s room to improve, new techniques to learn, yada yada. And that’s one reason why we’re here.”

I nodded along as she looked off at the sea of eager players across the giant, converted warehouse.

“But coaching teenagers, especially at this high level, is a lot less about the actual instruction, and more about the trust and motivation you can inspire in them. Keep that in mind, Caleb.”

And with that, she walked away, leaving me alone in my spandex shorts, t-shirt, and high ponytail. I released the high ponytail and retied my bun.

Despite this peculiar, feminine episode, today seemed like a step in the right direction.

========

The entire 23 chapter story is live on Kindle! Thank you for all the support so far, and I'm hard at work on both my next novel and my serialized A Feminine Look story! :)

Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTMNTTGK