Shootout
Shootout
(Courtney Chapter)
“McIntyre, are you ready to run your first Gauntlet?” Clint asks when they’re done.
Her legs turn to water. “Sure.”
“Remember to keep your weight equally distributed,” he says.
She lines up on the boards between Shane and Toby and tries to throw her shoulder into Josh as he skates past. He’s solid, and she’s the one who falls. Michael alone knocks Josh down, and the others cheer. Austin, Justin, and Shane are next.
All too soon, it’s her turn. Legs shaking, she lines up. Will the boys lay off because she’s a girl? Does she want them to?
She bends at the waist and pushes off, trying to keep her weight over her feet, like Clint said. Toby hits her first, and she goes down. She quickens or slows her strides so the other boys miss her. Michael hits her, but she doesn’t fall. The Gauntlet isn’t as scary as she thought it would be.
Shane gives her a little nudge when she rejoins him. “Kind of fun, huh?”
“Kind of,” she says.
She runs the Gauntlet three more times. Success has a lot to do with timing, and timing is something she understands. On her last turn, she sidesteps Michael before he drills her. When he tumbles hard into the boards, the boys laugh. She’s too busy relishing the moment to avoid Josh’s hit. She groans and picks herself off the ice.
(Jessie Chapter)
It’s 7:50 when I park Sunny, my green Sunfire, in front of Affinity Place. When I’m inside the foyer, I run into one of my former high school teachers. He wants to hear about the Huskies and maybe score some inside information on what happened at the U15 rookie party. I manage to escape just as the Moose finish their warm-up. I find my parents in the stands near centre ice.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“So far, so good,” Dad says. “I’m worried about your sister though. Besides all this other crap going on, she’s about to play four games in three days.”
“She’s tough, Dad. She can do it,” I say.
Mom scrolls on her phone. “Have you seen what people are saying about us on social media?”
“Mom, put your phone away. And promise me you’ll stay off your accounts for a few days.”
“I’ll try,” she says, adding, “I hope Michael and his family don’t show up.”
“They just walked in,” Dad says. “I’d love to tell them what’s on my mind.”
Shootout is Book 4 in the “Jessie Mac Hockey” series, this time following Jessie, 19, as she plays hockey for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies. The book is equally shared with her younger sister Courtney, 14, who is playing U15 boys’ hockey for the first time. Shootout alternates between the two girls’ perspectives, switching back and forth between hockey games and other pivotal points in their respective seasons.
Jessie, in her second year playing for the Huskies, is reaching a breaking point. She feels like things aren’t quite going right in any aspect of her life - she’s struggling on her defense line at practice, she’s struggling with success in her psychology class with the notoriously tough Dr. Kerr, and her relationship with Liam, her high school boyfriend, is clearly nearing the breaking point. Early in the season, she experiences a slew of shakeups - her coaches move her to a forward line, she fails an important psychology assignment due to an uploading issue (every student’s worst nightmare), and Liam breaks up with her. Instead of allowing these issues to keep her down, Jessie pushes forward with new determination. This portrayal of a strong female character taking such setbacks not only in stride but actually using them as inspiration to try harder rings very true. Jessie is clearly stubborn, but level-headed, and she understands what she has to do to be successful.
Courtney, on the other hand, is expecting the challenges she faces this season. Estevan, where she lives, doesn’t have a girls’ hockey team, and her parents no longer want to ferry her to a nearby town to play. After a chance conversation with a classmate, she ends up playing on the U15 boys’ house league in Estevan with her classmates. Her main problem is Michael, the team bully who clearly has no interest in having a girl on the team. His fixation on Courtney has serious consequences; at a team party, he and some other players try to spike Courtney’s drink with cannabis oil, and, when the drinks are accidentally switched, the player who ends up with the spiked drink has to be taken to hospital. This is part of a culture of drinking, bullying, and complacency on the Estevan Moose that Courtney must navigate as a newcomer and an outsider. As the season progresses, Courtney also navigates integrating as part of the team, encouraging her friends to speak up in the face of bullying and closed-mindedness, and navigating the wider social climate of high school with confidence and conviction.
The alternating perspectives are used to great effect as readers jump back and forth between the girls’ stories at important points in their hockey seasons - practices, games, team parties - showing how their stories parallel each other. This also highlights the difference in the obstacles the girls face; Jessie is concerned with balancing hockey, academics, and her boyfriend, Liam, while Courtney is navigating playing on a boys’ team, contending with bullying, and the shifting social dynamics of high school. Each section is written in an authentic voice, giving clear and distinct personality to each girl. The transitions are sometimes rocky (a result of Jessie’s chapters being written in the first person while Courtney’s are in the third), but, overall, this interweaving of stories is used to great effect.
There is a lot of plot to cover in this book, and it’s a testament to Ulrich’s writing that these complex, intertwining stories are easy to follow. With Courtney’s arc, a number of issues at the forefront of teen sports are covered thoughtfully without running into didactic territory, issues including hazing, drinking, aggressive hockey parents, and trans athletes. Jessie deals with more adult problems - heartbreak followed by some aggressive and unwanted romantic attention (courtesy of her teammate’s older brother), the stress of balancing academics and elite athletics, the pressure of deciding which path in life to take after university - in a way that is appropriate and understandable to the target audience.
Shootout is an incredibly engaging novel that will appeal to a variety of reader, especially those who enjoy the combination of hockey and romance. Ulrich ensures that this book has enough to appeal to readers of the first three Jessie Mac books, the most recent of which was published a decade ago, who might want to indulge the nostalgia of continuing an old favourite series from their younger years while also engaging a new generation of readers. You don’t need to have read the previous books (this reviewer didn’t have the chance) to be drawn right into the plot.
Susie Wilson is the Data Services Librarian at the University of Northern British Columbia, where she supports all aspects of data use in the academic setting. She currently resides in Prince George, British Columbia.