The girls finish their stretches and nervously size up their purple-clad foes on the other side of the field. Camille is nervously bouncing around the sidelines, reminding her team of the plays and her signals. I want to laugh, but I can see how seriously she’s taking her job as team captain.

Bucky, Nate, Darien, and a couple of the other seniors are acting as the referees, and the crowd roars when they run out onto the field in their black-and-white-striped shirts. Nate grabs a microphone from the tech kid who has run out onto the field.

“You look nice, Camille.” Bucky pauses on his way past the sideline to smile at our Pirouette Queen. “Good luck out there. I know you’ll be awesome.”

“Thanks, Bucky,” she says, returning his smile.

“Hey, hey, no fraternizing with the refs.” Julian blows his whistle near Camille’s face and laughs.

Camille whacks him with her flag belt, and her cheeks glow so bright they almost match her neon socks.

“Welcome to the Crenshaw Annual Powder Puff Battle!” Nate is in charge of announcing the game. “The Guardettes, in pink, and the cheer squad, in purple, have been practicing for weeks to bring you this epic matchup tonight. Who are you rooting for, Crenshaw?” He holds the microphone out to the crowd and cups a hand around his ear. The crowd erupts into chants and cheers.

A huge smile spreads across my face. “This is wild,” I say to Julian.

“It’s a spectacle, all right,” he says, but he’s smiling, too.

Nate explains the rules to the waiting teams and the crowd, and then there is a coin toss. Camille, her PIROUETTE QUEEN jersey proudly tucked into her pink tutu, calls heads and wins the toss. The Guardettes will have the ball first.

When the dance team huddles, Julian reminds the girls to have fun, and they do a quick cheer before hitting the field with Camille at quarterback.

“I’ve spent weeks trying to show her how to throw a good spiral that is catchable,” Julian says to me, bending at the waist and putting his hands on his knees. He rubs a hand over his ribs, and I see the hint of a wince cross his face. “She still prefers her method of heaving the ball as high in the air as she can and hoping it comes down into a receiver’s hands.”

I laugh, but this is exactly what Camille does. As unconventional as it looks, her method is actually working quite well, and the dance team takes an early lead.

Julian lets me take over the defensive coaching, and I gather the players around me and give them a few tips about reading the plays and anticipating the movement of the offense before the ball is even in the opposing quarterback’s hands. The girls stare at me, unblinking, most of them with pink sparkly stripes or hearts under their eyes.