The quiet knock — washout-adjudicator, and the object of student dread, contempt, and mimicry

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING — recurring role and reputation across the YDAU term
• What: To the players deLint personifies institutional judgment: he is the one who eventually comes to knock quietly at the door of any E.T.A. whose ranking has slipped, "here for a little chat about your progress" — the Academy's grim adjudicator of failing careers, one of "All Schtitt's henchmen and henchwomen." He enforces in person (yelling at Stice over the toilet-tissue face-freezing stunt; with Schtitt, keeping the cautionary lore alive — assuring mercy-minded players that Ross Reat was never quite exactly the same after Clipperton) and he coins the put-downs the kids never forget: watching Pemulis in practice versus a real match is like an e-mail romance gone wrong in person; Struck's serve resembles a debutante's curtsy; winter sports are practically begging on one knee for an injury. The contempt flows back: Pemulis does a stock obscene "deLint-jerking-off face" on request, unknown kids tie deLint's shoelaces together at the Interdependence Day gala (the Krazy-Glue that same night goes to Thode's buttock, not to him), and his motivational clichés — "Winners don't ever have to quit" — are quoted at E.T.A. only in mockery.