“I like it,” said Kyle. “All right, in a few minutes we’re going to join the team for a dribbling drill. First, you and I will do agility.”

He led me to a course of orange cones and I rubbed my hands to stay warm. Even with long sleeves under my pinny, the end of fall was no picnic to be outside. I could see my breath as I panted and had to put extra energy into staying warm so my legs didn’t cramp. “We’ll do it first for a warm-up, then for time, then a practice go with the ball, then with the ball for time.

I nodded. Around us, the Clarkebridge team was running a similar drill, but their coach didn’t have a stopwatch out. On the other side of the field, Carter stood before an identical course.

“It’s high knees to the first cone, backpedal to the start, then full sprint to the second cone, turn and butt kicks to the first cone, side shuffles to the third cone, other side shuffles to the last cone, then full speed back to the start. It’s a different drill with the ball, don’t worry.”

“No problem,” I said. I did a drill like this with my dad every morning. Kyle did the practice with me, his strides so big he finished in a few steps. He then held back to evaluate me from the sideline.

“Ready, set, go.” Kyle clicked his stopwatch.

I sprinted through the cones, fast and agile on the college turf. I stayed light on my toes for the backpedal, and lowered my center of gravity for fast, form-perfect shuffles. When I hit the last cone, my legs pushed for the finish line like lightning flying through water. It had been, maybe twenty-five seconds?

“Eighteen, congrats,” said Kyle, jotting it on his clipboard

With my hands on my head, I already started to catch my breath. “What do people usually get?”

“Recruits? Generally between twenty and twenty-five. Guys on the team? Around seventeen to nineteen. One guy can do it in fifteen. We think he’s part android.” He clapped my shoulder. “Let’s do it with the ball.”

After the agility course came a dribbling and shooting drill with the team. We lined up to dribble through another set of cones, then shoot at the goal—pretty standard soccer drill. Except this one had cones tighter than I’d ever seen, we had to shoot twenty meters from each goal, double what I was used to, and we had to shoot at a random angle, determined by the coach, who stood next to the goal.

Carter went before me. The team clapped for him as he started, clapping harder as he made the dribbling look easy, when even some of the guys on the team struggled with it. He breezed through the cones, and in a fluid movement, shot a hard 30 degrees towards the goal. It swished easily into the net, and he jogged to the back of the line.