A slow grin spread over his face, wide and easy, like a man who’d just watched his opponent walk into a trap he’d spent five days digging.

He lifted the black portable PA microphone by its rubber neck and took three slow steps out onto the yellow center line of the court.

“Well, look who finally showed up at Shoreline Middle School,” Wyler said into the mic, his voice ringing off the concrete walls and the four gray speakers hanging high in the roof trusses.

Three hundred heads swung toward the side entrance at the very same moment.

I looked past the Navy booth, past the folding chairs, up to the third row of the home bleachers.