The good thing about retrospective is how clear it is. The bad thing is you can't do things again that you could have done differently. Now that I'm a college graduate, I've had time to think about things from my first year and one particular thing I could have done differently. I wasn't your typical first-year …

It shouldn't have happened, usually there was no way it would have happened, but I'm just blaming it and what I could do to my life. It was my 25th birthday and for some reason this hit me hard. I was happily married, my husband was great with me and we both had very good jobs. I guess it all went so well that I didn't …

Everything was too obvious, too timely. But I stopped. I haven't picked up a killer since I was in college. I always thought a pretty girl standing next to the road with her thumb in the breeze had to have a 250-pound boyfriend in the bushes, ready to send my car to knife tip. I can see from a distance that you are …

Barb told the team it would be her last year. They had been an inspiration, given their trust in themselves. Some of them would still play, expected, but what I really knew was that everyone would do positive things. Some could move and some would find new options to check it out. "Hello, girls. I went to …

Coming home, Carl was torn between shock and confusion. Kathy? I didn't mean Barb had inferred anything else. Barb would have kept the thoughts not quite nailed. I wouldn't have blown up teenage fantasies. I would have talked to Andrea and Kathy wouldn't lie to her best friend. Barb had spoken to the knowledge that …

As Barb's job was, the girls called her "Coach." Carl was his assistant and the girls called him Carl. Barb knew football, knew how to get the kids to work their butts and they love it. Barb knew how to drop a corner kick five feet from the net. Carl wasn't especially athletic, but he was happy to trot, the …