Tony took the team to Texas.
By: Feline Van Doorn
Tags: Team, Short Story, Team Building, Soccer, Texas

Tony Campbell has been captain of the soccer team since his sophomore year in college, now that he is a senior, he wanted to do something special with his team. The team hasn’t been doing great the last couple of games and if they want to make it to the playoffs, he needs the team to start working together again. He decided it was time for his team to do some more teambuilding. Together with the coach he found something which he thought would be a good opportunity for his team to start working together again. But to do this Tony had to take the team to Texas.

The trip was planned out and booked and they were ready to go. He did not tell the guys where they were going yet. After they had put their stuff in the storage place under in the bus, and after everyone got their seats, Tony grabbed the microphone in the front of the bus.

“hey guys, as you all know, the season hasn’t been going as we hoped.” Said Tony. “and I think we all agree that we haven’t been the best teammates out there on and off the field, so me and coach arranged a little trip for you all.”

A couple of the guys start yelling enthusiastically.

“okay Tony, let’s go!!” screams one of the guys in the back.

“so, what are we doing?” asks one of the guys in the front.

“coach and I booked us a mystery room where we will try to escape the building by solving mysteries as a team. In order to get out in time without getting locked up we will have to communicate very well and have a good strategy” says Tony. “so, enjoy your bus ride for now and we will get there in 1,5 hour. Texas HERE WE COME” screams Tony through the microphone while everyone else is getting very excited.

After 1,5 hour the guys arrive at the mystery room. They get a short briefing from a girl about the rules.

After the briefing the girl walks them down to the basement where the room is located. As a last tip she tells them that not everything is what it seems. She then opens the door and lets the guys in, as soon as the last guy walks through the door she closes the door and turns the lights on and starts the timer. They have 3 hours to escape the building if they want to win otherwise, they will get locked up.

Tony calls the group together. “okay guys, we have to do this together if we wanna win this thing.”

They start looking around the room looking for clues, and soon they realize that they have multiple problems they have to find a solution for, as they divide the group and start working on the problems they notice that everything is going a lot better now that they communicate with each other for who does what. As the time passes by the guys seem to do a pretty good job but the time is slowly running out and they still haven’t escaped. After 2 hour and 30 minutes they start to feel the pressure, some are starting to panic a little bit.

Tony calls the group together again, “we have 30 more minutes to figure this out guys, it’s now or never”

One of the guys starts talking, “we have looked everywhere and have solved every problem, but we have these 6 letters and we have nowhere to put them, so what are we supposed to do?”

They all look over to Tony who also has no idea how to solve this.

There is an awkward silence in the room while the time is running out, several minutes go by until someone says something. “what if there is another room, the girl said that not everything is what it looks like.”

They start looking around the room and start moving stuff, until one of the guys tries to pull out a couple books from the book closet, and suddenly there is a panel in the ceiling opening. They move the chair and climb up. Once all the guys have climbed through the ceiling, they notice that there is a number lock on the door there is also a very large clock on the wall, it’s counting down from 54 seconds. For a second they are all very confused cause they only have the letters B ,E, H, J, F, A.

“what if the letters are actually numbers?” says Tony. “what if the B is a 2 and the E is a 5?”

The guys run to the door and fill in the numbers that are corresponding with the letters.

The clocks is on 5 seconds… and the door is not opening.

4 seconds…

3 seconds…

*beep* the red light on the lock turns green and the door pops open. The clock stopped at 2 seconds remaining. They barely made it out in time, but they don’t care because they made it out within the given time frame, and they did it as a team.

*a couple weeks later*

3….2…..1….. “yeaaahehhehhhahahaaah!!!!”

You hear the whistle blow in the background.

“You guys did it! You guys actually did it!” says coach. “you guys have officially made it to the playoffs!”