Orin's B.U. punting and Joelle (pp. 293–294)
Puberty Schmüberty, as the real reason for burning down the inside fire for tennis, Schtitt knew.
Context
Schtitt, the surviving father-substitute, reads Orin more accurately than either parent bothers to. Watching one cartridge of one B.U. game he sees that the punting is just the lob again — the same one shot Orin hid inside to avoid ever developing the courage to risk weakness — and he waves off the delayed-puberty story the whole family accepted as the reason the fire went out. What killed Orin's tennis wasn't the body's timetable but an unwillingness to fail temporarily, and only the coach clocks it. Schtitt "later told deLint he had several very bad feelings about Orin's future, inside" — the substitute who diagnoses the son the actual father never quite turns to look at.