The defection: Orin sees Joelle twirling and leaves tennis for football

pivotal · B.S. 2001, freshman fall

• When: B.S. 2001, third week of freshman year at B.U. (autumn); the blocked-punt accident follows within days
• What: Watching the dawn sprinklers at Nickerson Field, Orin developed a decapitating crush on a sophomore baton-twirler — Joelle van Dyne, the P.G.O.A.T., universally shunned for a beauty that induced the "Actaeon Complex." He quit tennis (a real burnout, a fictional football rationale), tried out disastrously, and was walking off the field when a freakish blocked punt snapped the varsity punter's leg; Orin picked up the caromed ball and, on unengineered impulse, kicked it — discovering the coffin-corner punting gift that made him a Show-caliber athlete. Schtitt's diagnosis: Orin had merely found a way to "legitimate the same dependency on the one shot of lob" that had capped his tennis. It took Orin three hearings to learn her name wasn't "Joel."