The drill yard: "walk around him," the whistle, and the lob pain-fest

texture · 9 Nov YDAU + standing drills

• When: 9 Nov YDAU dawn drills (through 0720h); the filming-vest and lob-drill roles are standing.
• What: The drill floor is where Nwangi's register is purest. When the hairy sixteen-year-old Petropolis Kahn finishes his Star Drills, "pitches forward onto the hard surface and lies very still," the scene gives Nwangi one complete sentence of characterization: "Tony Nwangi tells people to walk around him." At 0720h, "Nwangi, at the edge of the hillside, is whistling the next shift over for opening sprints," and "Nwangi's reedy voice carries; he's telling the B's he wishes to see nothing but assholes and elbows on these sprints. It's unclear to Hal what this might connote." He is also one of the two beefy staff who anchor Mario's filming rig — from the courts "you can never see Dunkel or Nwangi behind Mario and it always looks like he's leaning way out to dive Bolex-first down onto Court 7's net." And in the standing drill catalogue he is half of the torment in the non-overhead lob drill — run back after an offensive lob, sprint up and tap the netcord "just-as-Nwangi-or-Thode-hits-another-offensive-lob-over-your-head," a "pure pain-fest."