“Get yourselves ready! Get yourselves ready when we go through that win bar!” Coach Kelly called from the front of the team as they followed him and the captains out of the locker room.
Royce was in the middle of them all, his heart thumping in his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He dapped up his teammates as others slapped his shoulder pads, all of them hyped to take the field at Tiger Stadium for the first time that season.
“They gotta see us, dawg!”
“We coming! We coming!”
“I came to the club with a nine on me!” The team shouted in unison. “And you know my dawgs gonna follow me! And if something pop off they gonna ride with me! And we gonna tear this motherfucker down!”
The lyrics hyped the team up more, hooping and hollering followed. Royce bounced on his feet, pounding his hands against his chest. The doors to the field opened and the team ran out, fireworks and the band accompanying them.
Royce jogged toward the sideline, the energy of the crowd propelling him like nothing he’d ever experienced. Standing on the field with 100,000-plus people all around him seemed like something out of a movie set in Roman times.
And he knew he belonged.
…
