Chapter 3: Arrival At Jesse Owens Stadium
Chapter 3: Arrival At Jesse Owens Stadium
After having a bath and freshening up, Jason made his way back to his room, and the first thing he did after getting to his room was to check the time.
‘8:33 am’
The football trials were to begin at 11 o’clock sharp and taking into consideration that he would have to get ready and still reach the stadium before eleven, he was pretty much already late.
“Hopefully, there isn’t much traffic today,” he murmured hopefully, but he doubted it, the traffic in LA was always a bitch.
‘All the more reason I have to hurry up,’ he thought to himself and hurried up his dressing.
He didn’t put much thought into dressing up as he would change to a jersey at the stadium anyway, so he simply threw on a white t-shirt and paired it with a pair of baggy denim jeans before topping it off with white New Balance sports shoes.
Immediately he finished dressing up, he took up a sports bag that lay beside his bed and opened it to check if his kit was complete.
“Jersey, Check,”
“Soccer boots, check,”“Shin guards, check”
“Socks, check,”
“Ankle tapes and wrist tapes, check,”
“Bandage, check”
“Water bottle, check” he counted to himself to make sure that he wasn’t missing anything that he would need, but it was obvious after checking that he was completely prepared.
He quickly zipped up the sports bag and threw it onto his shoulder and charged out of the room, not forgetting to grab his phone and keys as he ran down the stairs and back into the garage.
Parked at the right side of the garage was a blue 2016 BMW i8 and Jason walked up to it before opening it with the remote key in his hand and throwing his sports bag into the passenger seat before running across to the driver’s side of the car and jumping in and pushing the button to start the hybrid vehicle.
The car came to life with a low hum and Jason quickly took up his phone and unlocked it to open the remote garage app to open the door of the garage remotely from inside the car.
The garage door responded and slowly slid open to reveal the driveway.
As soon as the garage door opened fully, Jason put the car into gear and drove out of the garage slowly.
When the car fully came out of the garage, he shut the door of the garage remotely before connecting his phone to his car’s sound system via Bluetooth and opening the music app to play music before throwing the phone onto the passenger seat.
As the rhythmic beat of Afropop began to play softly from the car’s speakers, Jason stepped on the accelerator and drove down the driveway before turning into the road and increasing the pace of the car even more as soon as he reached the road.
He maintained a speed of less than 40 mph while he was still in the residential area, but as soon as he got out onto more wider roads, the car picked up the pace, its humming growing louder the harder Jason pressed on the accelerator.
It wasn’t until 10:23 am that the Jesse Owens Stadium into view and Jason quickly increased his speed a bit more and drove into the stadium’s car park by 10:30 am on the dot.
He quickly turned off the engine and threw his chair back to make space for himself to change inside the car. Luckily paying almost a hundred grand for a car always guaranteed that the car came with tinted glass windshields, so nobody could see what he was doing inside the car.
Ten minutes later, he came down from the car in a hurry with his sports bag that now contained the clothes he had worn previously and quickly began to walk towards the entrance of the stadium, almost forgetting to lock the doors of the car in a rush.
Dressed in a white number 7 Real Madrid jersey that matched well with his light brown skin, Jason walked briskly into the stadium, his huge amount of hair bobbing on his head due to his hurried movement and his 6ft frame made for a slightly imposing but hurried look.
As he walked into the stadium his blue eyes darted around looking for the direction to the football pitch and soon enough, he was on his way to the pitch as it wasn’t his first time here.
Soon he was on the pitch with a crowd of teenagers, some of whom seemed to be familiar with each other and were discussing among themselves and others not talking with anyone.
Jason was of course part of the latter group, and he simply went to stand at the edge of the crowd to wait for the coaches and scouts to arrive.
His eyes swept across the imposing interior of the stadium that was surrounded by a track and he could see various training equipment already set up and waiting for use, as well as a group of people who were sitting on the spectators’ seats with cameras and binoculars and looking slightly interested as they seemed to survey the crowd of teenagers teeming with excitement.
“So, some of the scouts have already arrived,” he murmured to himself as he saw more people arrive and join the group of spectators.
“Yeah, mate, I reckon some of them are from European teams,” a lanky blonde-haired boy with an Aussie accent seemed to have heard his murmur and responded.
“Oh,” Jason replied with a little smile, but inwardly he already suspected that, so he didn’t care what this dude had to say unless he had confirmed facts.
He was merely being polite by smiling and responding as if he was surprised and enlightened, while in reality, he couldn’t give a flying fuck about anybody’s suspicions.
He was here for the football trials to prove himself to the scouts and get signed to a good European team and kickstart his football career and nothing else mattered to him.