Sports Stories
YA MYS ABR Abrahams, Peter Reality Check
QB of the varsity football team. Passing grades in all his classes. Dating the hottest—and smartest—girl at school. Summer job paying more than minimum wage. Things in Cody's world seem to be going pretty well. Until, that is, his girlfriend, Clea, is sent off to boarding school across the country, and a torn ACL ends his high school football career. But bad things come in threes—or in Cody's case, sixes and twelves—and the worst is yet to come. While limping through town one day, Cody sees a newspaper heading: "Local Girl Missing." Clea, now his ex, has disappeared from her boarding school in Vermont, and the only clue is a letter she sent to Cody the morning of her disappearance. With that as his guide, Cody sets out to find out what happened. Once in Vermont, he unearths the town's secrets—and finds out that football isn't the only thing he's good at.
YA FIC ALP Alpine, Rachele Canary
Kate Franklin’s life changes for the better when her dad lands a job at Beacon Prep, an elite private school with one of the best basketball teams in the state. She begins to date a player on the team and quickly gets caught up in a world of idolatry and entitlement, learning that there are perks to being an athlete. But those perks also come with a price. Another player takes his power too far and Kate is assaulted at a party. Although she knows she should speak out, her dad’s vehemently against it and so, like a canary sent into a mine to test toxicity levels and protect miners, Kate alone breathes the poisonous secrets to protect her dad and the team. The world that Kate was once welcomed into is now her worst enemy, and she must decide whether to stay silent or expose the corruption, destroying her father’s career and bringing down a town’s heroes.
YA FIC BAN Bantle, Lee David Inside Out
David Dahlgren, a high-school senior, finds solace in running with the track team; he’s a fast runner, and he enjoys the camaraderie. But team events become a source of tension when he develops a crush on one of his teammates, Sean. Scared to admit his feelings, David does everything he can to suppress them: he dates a girl, keeps his distance from his best friend who has become openly gay, and snaps a rubber band on his wrist every time he has “inappropriate” urges. Before long, Sean expresses the thoughts David has been trying to hide, and everything changes for the better. Or so it seems.
Tween& YA MYS BLO Bloor, Edward Tangerine
Is Tangerine, Florida, like the Bermuda Triangle? A sinkhole swallows the middle school, lightning strikes repeatedly, underground fires burn endlessly - and all newcomer Paul Fisher wants to do is play soccer, despite his thick glasses, his parents’ indifference, and his evil brother.
YA FICCAL Calame, Don Swim the Fly
Fifteen-year-old Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Coop and Sean, always set themselves a summertime goal. This year's? To see a real-live naked girl for the first time — quite a challenge, given that none of the guys has the nerve to even ask a girl out on a date. But catching a girl in the buff starts to look easy compared to Matt's other summertime aspiration: to swim the 100-yard butterfly (the hardest stroke known to God or man) as a way to impress Kelly West, the sizzling new star of the swim team.
YA FIC CAS Cassidy, Sara Double Play
Allie loves baseball. It's the one thing that has been consistent in her lately complicated life. Allie's father left recently, and now Allie has a new family—her mother's new girlfriend, Phyllis, and Phyllis's son, Miles, have moved in. It's taking some adjustment, mostly because Miles seems determined to get under her skin. Things start looking up when Allie gets invited to join the boys' baseball team as their new pitcher. But then Miles announces that he's quitting the boys' team and trying out for Allie's old team—a girls' team! Allie is sure he's doing it just to annoy her, but Miles insists that he just likes the girls' style of play better. As Allie struggles to find her place on the boys' team, she starts to see that Miles is just trying to fit in as well, and that it may be even harder for him than it has been for her.
YA FICCOC Cochrane, Thomas Roughnecks
Travis Cody prepares for the final game of his high school football career, a rematch with his school's chief rival.
YA FICCOC Cochrane, Mick Sport
Growing up in St. Paul, Minn., in the 1960s, 12-year-old Harlan Hawkins ("Sport" to his father) is having a bad summer. His mother has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, his alcoholic lawyer father has erupted in physical abuse and his obese, older brother, Gerard, is numbing his depression with cigarettes and alcohol. Harlan's only respite from his dismal home life is on the baseball diamond, "where miraculous comebacks were always possible, where I still knew the rules."
YA FIC COH Cohen, Joshua Leverage
The football field is a battlefield
There's an extraordinary price for victory at Oregrove High. It is paid on–and off–the football field. And it claims its victims without mercy–including the most innocent bystanders.
When a violent, steroid-infused, ever-escalating prank war has devastating consequences, an unlikely friendship between a talented but emotionally damaged fullback and a promising gymnast might hold the key to a school’s salvation.Told in alternating voices and with unapologetic truth, Leverage illuminates the fierce loyalty, flawed justice, and hard-won optimism of two young athletes.
YA FIC COY Coy, John Crackback
When Miles Manning, a successful high school football player, discovers his teammates are using steroids--and one of them is his best friend--he's faced with a tough decision: Is he willing to do what it takes to win? Football is his life, and his family, especially his dad, is pinning its hopes on him. It's a lot of pressure for a high school junior to bear. This gripping look into the world of high school boys and athletes--and their struggle to be the best--is provocative and searingly honest.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Stotan!
The story is built around the lives of Walker, Nortie, Jeff, and Lion, members of the FrostHigh School swimming team who are on the brink of life-changing experiences. Stotan Week, a grueling task taken on by the young men, causes them to rethink their own perceptions of themselves and each other, dramatically exposing their deepest and darkest sides.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
An obese boy and a disfigured girl suffer the emotional scars of years of mockery at the hands of their peers. They share a hard-boiled view of the world until events in their senior year hurl them in very different directions. A story about a friendship with staying power, written with pathos and pointed humor.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Ironman
Bo Brewster has been at war with his father for as long as he can remember. Following angry outbursts at his football coach and English teacher that have cost him his spot on the football team and moved him dangerously close to expulsion from school, he turns to the only adult he believes will listen: Larry King. In his letters to Larry, Bo describes his quest for excellence on his own terms. No more coaches for me, he tells the talk show icon, no more dads. I'm going to be a triathlete, an Ironman. Relegated to Mr. Nak's before-school Anger Management group (which he initially believes to be populated with future serial killers and freeway snipers), Bo meets a hard-edged, down-on-their-luck pack of survivors with stainless steel shields against the world that Bo comes to see are not so different from his own. It is here he meets and falls in love with Shelly, a future American Gladiator, whose passion for physical challenge more than matches his. Ironman is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking story about growing up in the heart of struggle. It is about standing up, getting knocked down, and standing up again. It is about being heard - and learning to listen.
SR Section & YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Whale Talk
There’s bad news and good news about the CutterHigh School swim team. The bad news is that they don’t have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant), the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to find their places in a school that has no place for them. T.J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket - exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T.J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High - will also be an effective tool. He’s right. He’s also wrong. Still, it’s always the quest that counts. And the bus on which the Mermen travel to swim meets soon becomes the space where they gradually allow themselves to talk, to fit, to grow. Together they’ll fight for dignity in a world where tragedy and comedy dance side by side, where a moment’s inattention can bring lifelong heartache, and where true acceptance is the only prescription for what ails us.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Athletic Shorts: 6 Short Stories
Tales of love, death, bigotry and heroism are of real people with the courage to stand up to a world that often puts them down.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Chinese Handcuffs
A winning triathlete’s need to understand his older brother’s suicide is complicated by memories and daring challenges.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Running Loose
Louie takes a stand against his coach and playing dirty football, falls in love and loses his girlfriend in a fatal accident - all in his senior year.
YA FIC CRU Crutcher, Chris Crazy Horse Electric Game
Willie Weaver used to be a hero. Now he's nothing. Willie is a top athlete, the star of the legendary game against Crazy Horse Electric. Then a freak accident robs him of his once-amazing physical talents. Betrayed by his family, his girlfriend, and his own body, Willie's on the run, penniless and terrified on the streets, where he must fight to rebuild both his body and his life.
YA FICCUM Cumyn, Alan Tilt
Stan is an intense sixteen-year-old loner who desperately wants to make the junior varsity basketball team. And it seems that he may be about to do so, until he’s blindsided by the unexpected attentions of Janine Igwash. Suddenly Stan is no longer thinking about jump shots. Instead he is obsessed with Janine’s spiky hair, her milky white shoulders and the mysterious little tattoo at the base of her neck, not to mention the heat of her breath, her dark eyes, wide hips and . . . Sometimes Stan’s imagination runs so wild he wonders whether he might be going crazy. That would be par for the course given his home life. His mother is dating the feckless Gary, and his little sister, designated gifted but a holy terror, is acting out. Then Stan’s father arrives on the scene with Stan’s four-year-old half brother, and things become truly insane.
YA FIC DEU Deuker, Carl Heart of a Champion
Seth faces a strain on his friendship with Jimmy, who is both a baseball champion and something of an irresponsible fool, when Jimmy is kicked off the team.
YA FIC DEU Deuker, Carl High Heat
When sophomore Shane Hunter's father is arrested for money laundering at his Lexus dealership, the star pitcher's life of affluence and private school begins to fall apart.
YA FIC DEU Deuker, Carl Gym Candy
Runningback Mick Johnson has dreams: dreams of cutting back, finding the hole, breaking into the open, and running free with nothing but green grass ahead. He has dreams of winning and of being the best. But football is a cruel sport. It requires power, grace, speed, quickness, and knowledge of the game. It takes luck, too. One crazy bounce can turn a likely victory into sudden defeat. What elite athlete wouldn't look for an edge? A way to make him bigger, stronger, faster?
This novel explores the dark corners of the heart of a young football player as he struggles for success under the always glaring—and often unforgiving—stadium lights.
YA MYS DEU Deuker, Carl Payback Time
Through the eyes of a distinctly non-athletic protagonist—a fat high school journalist named Mitch—veteran sports novelist Deuker reveals the surprising truth behind a mysterious football player named Angel. When Angel shows up Lincoln High, he seems to have no past—or at least not one he is willing to discuss. Though Mitch gets a glimpse of Angel's incredible talent off the field, Angel rarely allows himself to shine on the field. Is he an undercover cop, wonders Mitch? Or an ineligible player? In pursuit of a killer story, Mitch decides to find out just who this player is and what he's done. In the end, the truth—and what Mitch does with it—surprises everyone.
YA FIC DEU Deuker, Carl Swagger
Levi was simple, like a child. It was the best thing about him, and it was the worst, too.When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.
YA FICELK Elkeles, Simone Wild Cards
After getting kicked out of boarding school, bad boy Derek Fitzpatrick has no choice but to live with his ditzy stepmother while his military dad is deployed. Things quickly go from bad to worse when he finds out she plans to move them back to her childhood home in Illinois. Derek’s counting the days before he can be on his own, and the last thing he needs is to get involved with someone else’s family drama. Ashtyn Parker knows one thing for certain--people you care about leave without a backward glance. A football scholarship would finally give her the chance to leave. So she pours everything into winning a state championship, until her boyfriend and star quarterback betrays them all by joining their rival team. Ashtyn needs a new game plan, but it requires trusting Derek—someone she barely knows, someone born to break the rules. Is she willing to put her heart on the line to try and win it all?
YA FIC FEH Fehler, Gene Beanball
It's the last inning of a high school baseball game between arch-rivals Oak Grove and Compton. Center fielder Luke "Wizard" Wallace steps up to the plate--and is hit by a beanball, a wild pitch that shatters his skull, destroys the vision in his left eye, and changes his life forever. In this riveting novel, the events surrounding this pivotal moment are recounted through free-verse monologues by 28 different voices, including those of Luke and his Oak Grove teammates; the pitcher, Kyle Dawkins, and other Compton players; the two coaches; Luke's family members and teachers; and Sarah Edgerton, a new classmate who seems more affected by Luke's injury than his girlfriend is.
Tween & YA MYSFEI Feinstein, John Last Shot
Eighth-grade winners of a national writing contest, Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson, become all-access teen reporters to the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament held in New Orleans. After mingling with sportswriters, television personality Dick Vitale (awesome, baby!), and legendary Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, the wide-eyed teens wander about the massive Superdome. Outside the MinnesotaState team locker room, they overhear a grey-haired man tell star Chip Graber to make sure he chokes against Duke or else. Horrified that the future NBA player is being forced to throw the championship game, the intrepid teens spring to action. Using their wits and circumventing NCAA rules (refreshingly, Susan Carol knows her hoops and is an assertive leader), the cub reporters bypass security and confront Chip, offering to help him escape the blackmail plot. As a web of betrayal is unraveled, the trio realizes no one can be trusted, and even Chip is unsure who is actually pulling the strings about his illegal transcripts and who will cash in after the fix.
YA MYSFEI Feinstein, John Vanishing Act: Mystery at the U.S. Open
Middle school sports hounds Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson are back in another suspenseful romp. This time their reporters' beat is the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament. Our young reporters are just settling into the excitement when something inconceivable happens: Just minutes before her second-round match, young Russian tennis phenom Natalia Makarova simply vanishes. Her unexplained disappearance generates a full-court press of media speculation: Did the star player flip out -- or has she been kidnapped? Needless to say, with a keen nose for news, our fledgling journalists are on the story.