First published 2016
The 2014 football season at New Rochelle High School arrives amid growing fears about player safety. Coach Lou DiRienzo runs his program like a workshop for building character, teaching discipline and perseverance to boys from different backgrounds. Parents watch from the stands as NFL scandals dominate headlines. Ray Rice's domestic violence case spreads across news feeds. Head injury revelations shake professional football. Young players die on fields nearby. The team becomes a proving ground where civic pride meets parental anxiety. Players push forward while adults wrestle with an impossible choice. The sport offers life lessons that can shape young men forever. It also delivers brain trauma that medical science barely understands. Each Friday night game forces the question deeper. The community must decide if football's rewards justify its dangers. The season unfolds as both celebration and reckoning.
Genres: american-fiction, contemporary, non-fiction, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: ripped-from-the-headlines, social-commentary
Setting: New Rochelle High School, NFL
Period: 2014
256 pages · Hardcover · Sports Illustrated
Content warnings: medical-trauma, violence