Maybe you’ve recognized women’s basketball manager Jeff Laboe before. Short guy. Short black hair. He’s the guy who hands head coach Bill Fennelly his clipboard during a time-out.But during practice, when Laboe is not handing point guard Lindsey Wilson a cup of water, he’s picking her up on “D.”Laboe is a part of the five male, four female scout team (the women are, or were, on the actual team) that practice against the women’s varsity squad from seasons start to seasons end.And last Friday, I was a teammate of Laboe’s for a day.Becoming a teammate took work.First I signed my name on rounds of NCAA Clearinghouse forms in the Jacobson Athletic Building.Then I turned my head and coughed in the McFarland Clinic.After getting a signed approval from Fennelly and trainer Denise Harklau, I was set.I show up at 1:25. At 1:30, practice starts. The women run in to watch film. The five guys, including myself, shoot around for about ten more minutes.We then join the rest of the team in a room tucked away in a corner of Hilton Coliseum.I sit on a red-carpeted floor while the varsity players in the semi-circle around me sit on stools within their locker cubicles.We stare at a projection screen much like the one my seventh-grade biology teacher used to pull down before we watched a movie on frogs.Fennelly stands with a clicker in his hand and dissects every facet of Texas A & M for us. Being a scout-teamer is not easy.Everyday you try to simulate the play of one of the opposing team’s players. Brian “Ice” Eisbach, another scout-teamer, had to shoot with his weaker left hand during practices preparing for left-handed Alana Beard and Duke.I am relieved as we watch the Aggies.The black practice jersey that I was given had a taped on No. 55. The real-life 55, 6-3 Lynn Classen of Texas A & M, was not having a good year. She was averaging 5.6 points per game and 3.9 rebounds per game, with her right hand.”I can do WAY better than that,” I scoff. Assistant coach Latoja Harris tells me I would not be able to as we head back out to the court.”You’re not out here to prove your manhood,” says Harris, the coach in charge of the scout team. “You’re here to make the team better.”So instead of launching 40-footers, I would know my role and rebound 40-footers. It’s all right. My ego didn’t take that big of a hit.”Okay, let’s go over it,” Harris says. Going over it means discussing every offensive and defensive set the Aggies would be running. Thanks to Jaynetta Saunders, the Texas A & M forward who has shot the ball nearly 150 times more than any other Aggie, the offense consisted primarily of picking for her, passing to her, or rebounding (my job) for her.”Ice,” who gained the moniker by both the pronunciation of his last name (pronounced ICE-bach) and his clutch shooting in scrimmages, would play Saunders’ role.The Aggies offense is simple. Colorado’s was not.The Buffaloes run The Triangle. That’s right, the vaunted and confounding Triangle that the vaunted and confounding Phil Jackson, former Chicago Bulls head coach, used during the glory years. The one Jordan, Pippen and Rodman had six weeks to re-learn during the preseason.The scout-teamers had two days.”That was hard,” says Evan Taylor, another scout-teamer.So was stretching last Friday, I thought.After my hamstring pops for the fourth time, Fennelly yells, “All right, Texas A & M’s offense. Let’s go defense.”Ice hoists the first shot while three starters hover around him, trying to block it.He misses. I grab the rebound underneath the hoop. Everyone now rushes to contend my bunny of a shot. I miss. A starter grabs the rebound. I look to Harris, the indignant look in my eyes beg a foul. She stares back. Her steel gaze tells me none will be offered.We scrimmage half court for a while. After another shot, I grab for the put-back with my right hand, but my left arm is thrown down, and my left shoulder is nearly dislocated by forward Megan Taylor. I don’t get the board.Another time, I grab for a rebound but two butts fling into my hips and another flings into my stomach. When I was 14, I dreamed about college women doing that.Now, no. I’m mature. I don’t think like that anymore. I, once again, don’t get the board.I would atone, however. I finally get my hands on a rebound and get a baby hook to drop over Taylor’s outstretched arms.I free myself in the paint with a brilliant post move. I miss the shot, but not the put-back.I make a ten-footer from the baseline. Harris notices the inordinate amount of sweat that’s accumulated on my gray undershirt and yanks me. Still, she’s pleased. “You’re going to have a lot to write about,” she says.I go back in when the “Aggies” begin playing defense. I guard pre-season All-American Angie Welle. I don’t guard her for long.I like to think it was because I was tired and needed to lap up more water.In actuality, it was probably because I was replaced by former Cyclone Desiree Francis, who now plays for the WNBA’s New York Liberty in the summer and the scout team in the winter.”Okay, let’s go,” Fennelly yells.I am now scared. My legs feel more weighted down than a pick-pocket with baggy pants. Harris has yelled at me for taking a seat when I was not in action, and NOW we go full-court?!It gets worse. The Aggies are a quick, running team. We are instructed not to take the ball out after a starter makes a basket. Only pick it up, heave an outlet pass down the court and dead-sprint to the other end.The Hilton hardwood is never-ending.I dead-sprint down and back once before my legs tell me I’m not on a court – I’m on a par 5.Somehow, I am the first scout-teamer back when guard Lindsey Wilson churns down on a fast-break. She dishes to Welle. I block her layup off the glass and the ball caroms off. I look at the hoop on the opposing end and a padded seat (or was it an oasis?) just behind it.I brush away the 79th drop of sweat from my eye and begin the long journey to the other end. When I finally make it there, Harris yanks me.For the few remaining minutes of practice, I breath in and out.After I’ve changed back into my street gear, I ask Harris if I could be a scout-teamer. “Paul,” she says, “you need to get in shape.”Paul Kix is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Hubbard.