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headed for the goal area as fast as possible. Since Attack probably wasn’t going to be a very important part of this game for her team, she suspected most of the work would be done by her as Defense—and not necessarily well.
    She galloped Starlight down to the goal she was to defend, placed herself within the eleven-yard semicircle that surrounded the goal, and prepared for Phil’s attack.
    Preparation didn’t do her much good. Carole admired the way Phil handled his horse with one hand and his racquet with the other, easily dribbling the ball down the field, dodging the ineffectual efforts of her teammates to stop his progress. Just before he reached the penalty line, he picked up the ball, bounced it over the line, picked it up again, and tossed it right between the goalposts.
    “Score!” Max called out.
    Carole was stunned at the speed with which the goal was made. Phil was really good.
    “Did you see that?” she asked Stevie before she had a chance to explode. “He’s really good—and smooth! Ican’t wait to have a chance to try to do what he was doing. I like that technique!”
    Stevie glared at her. “If we don’t ever get the ball away from them, none of us will ever have a chance to try their techniques, much less hope to score!”
    “Begin play!” Max called out to his riders. The Saddle Club returned to the middle of the field to try again.
    This time, Phil got the ball on the toss-in. Carole attacked him immediately, head-on, swiped her stick upward, and the ball went careening out of his racquet. Carole was really pleased with herself. That was
good
technique.
    “Way to go!” Lisa called over to her. With that, the ball landed on the ground near Lisa. She leaned down to pick it up, but not before the other team’s Defense swooped across the field, scooped up the ball, and tossed it to Phil, who caught it in his racquet.
    Things went downhill from there. By the end of the six-minute chukka, The Saddle Club girls had committed four more fouls (three of which resulted in goals for Phil’s team), three tactical errors (like throwing it through the wrong goal), and innumerable misses, near-misses, and just plain dumb mistakes.
    “End of the chukka. Score: Cross County 9, Horse Wise 0.”
    Stevie groaned.
    “Think of it this way, Stevie,” Carole said, trying toconsole her. “Because it’s our first game, we’re just playing four chukkas. We’ve finished one and it’s nine to nothing. So, probably the worst it can be when we’re done is thirty-six-zip. If we were going to play six chukkas—why, they could run the score up to fifty-four!”
    “Shut up,” Stevie said. There was murder in her eyes.
    Carole took her advice.
    The second chukka, played by the B teams, wasn’t quite as bad. Horse Wise actually scored a goal, though it was because the ball bounced off the Cross County Center’s racquet and traveled between the goal posts. The score at the end of the second chukka was 16–1.
    “Let’s go for it!” Lisa said eagerly, trying to inspire her A teammates as they returned to the field.
    Stevie glared at her.
    Carole would have given Lisa support, but someone caught her eye. Marie Dana and her mother were standing by the fence at the edge of the field. Could it be possible that she’d decided to try riding? Or were they just curious as they passed by? Perhaps Marie had been enticed by the showy riding Carole had done in her backyard.
    Carole didn’t know which it was and it didn’t matter. The fact was that Marie was there. That was enough to inspire Carole.
    “Stand back, world!” Carole announced, bounding onto the playing field.
    “Begin play!” Max called out, tossing the ball to the players.
    The third chukka wasn’t as bad as the first two, but it wasn’t good enough for Horse Wise to make any progress in scoring. They did make a little bit of progress in defense. Carole actually stopped two almost-certain goal shots and she was able to toss the ball more or less in