Moves swiftly, but lacks gravity and neglects uncomfortable questions.
A former writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution witnesses the resurrection of the football fortunes of the Valdosta High School Wildcats during their 2010 season.
In this narrowly focused treatment, Jubera is most interested in the lives of the players and others directly associated with the team, including boosters, parents, coaches and the occasional cheerleader. The author avoids discussion of the school’s teachers or fellow students with other talents and interests. This is understandable given the fact that, in this area of the country, football is king (one booster compares the new head coach, Rance Gillespie, to Jesus). Jubera became a great admirer of Gillespie, whom Valdosta hired to restore its once-stellar football program. Indeed, much of the story is a paean to the coach’s work ethic. The author also follows some of the key players—a laidback white quarterback and some enormously talented black athletes—many of whom come from very troubled backgrounds. These are kids with attitude, who only do schoolwork to stay eligible and who have lost friends to gunfire. But Gillespie whipped them into shape with ferocious practices, and they went 11-1 during the regular season (losing only to a hated crosstown rival) and won a couple playoff games. Unfortunately, Jubera hurls around the clichés as frequently as forward passes (one juggled ball “just hung there, in mid-air, almost still, like a low-hanging peach”), and some readers may ask: What if all that energy, money and community support went into, well, education?
Moves swiftly, but lacks gravity and neglects uncomfortable questions.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-64220-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
An engaging journey through, as poet Merrill puts it, ``the enchanted lands of soccer.'' When, in 1990, the US team qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 40 years, Merrill (an avid amateur soccer player) followed the team through preliminary games stateside and then to Italy for the month-long tournament. The Americans were 500-1 underdogs, given little chance to do more than make a brave showing, especially with Bob Gansler at the helm, a coach so conservative and defense-oriented that his own players had sworn to scrap his game plan. In the opening game, Merrill says, Czechoslovakia ``outclassed'' the US in ``skill, speed, strength, tactics, and creativity,'' but in the second game—largely through the play of New Jersey goalie Tony Meola—the Americans scored a moral victory against heavily favored Italy, to whom they lost by only one goal. The third game, though, against Austria, was an ugly loss marred by ineptness and fighting. As Merrill progresses through the World Cup play (finally won by West Germany in a brutal match against defending champion Argentina, signaling the imminent downfall of superstar player Diego Maradona, whose drug and prostitution connections would bring him to disgrace and banishment), he offers lovely and knowing passages on the art, architecture, and ambience of Italy's cities and provides deep historical background and understanding of the game of soccer itself. Of particular interest are his insights into why ``the world's most popular game'' has never caught on in sports-mad America. The rarity of goals, Merrill contends, has ``doomed'' soccer in a country ``hooked on instant gratification'': Americans want to see lots of scoring but, ``like poetry and jazz, soccer is a subtle art, a game of nuance.'' An intelligent and literate work that could broaden American interest in soccer in time for our 1994 hosting—for the first time ever—of the World Cup.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1993
ISBN: 0-8050-2771-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More than just a game book of college football, The Sweet Season at the innocent appeal of sports in everyday life.
Sports and human interest intertwine as a man rediscovers the pureness of amateur sports as well as the joys of family life.
Journalist Murphy spends a much-needed sabbatical from his stint at Sports Illustrated by taking his family to rural Collegeville, Minnesota, in order to interact with the coach and players at St. John’s, a small Benedictine college, which happens to have the best record in college football history. Through 2000, the Johnnies have won the conference title 23 times, advanced to the national playoffs 16 times, advanced to the title game 4 times, and have won it 3 times—thanks mainly to its head coach, John Gagliardi, the NCAA’s winningest active coach (second on the all-time list to the retired Eddie Robinson) and a regional celebrity. Gagliardi is a friendly and sometimes elusive, Yoda-like coach who insists that his quarterbacks call their own plays and who hides a strategist’s mind behind an unassuming style. But besides Gagliardi, and talented players such as Tom Linnemann, it is the atmosphere of the school itself that Murphy credits with the success of the Johnnies. At first experiencing some culture shock, Murphy and his family settle into life at this place where the Benedictine monks set the reflective tone and unhurried pace. And while Murphy gets involved with the team, he also reconnects with his wife, Laura, and his two young children. With appealing humor, Murphy recounts how he acquires newfound respect for what his wife goes through on a daily basis and how, in turn, Laura sees in her husband “more of the guy she fell in love with.” The epilogue gives a brief synopsis of the 2000–01 year, when the Johnnies lost to Mount Union in the Stagg Bowl.
More than just a game book of college football, The Sweet Season at the innocent appeal of sports in everyday life.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019547-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
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