Central Kansas Library System

Offers an inspiring portrait of the extraordinary high school football team whose quest for perfection sustains Smith Center, Kansas, its hometown in the heartland.

Overweight, somewhat timid Mitch reluctantly agrees to be the sports reporter for the Lincoln High newspaper because he is determined to be a writer, but he senses a real story in Angel, a talented football player who refuses to stand out on the field--or to discuss his past.

"Lauren is the new girl in town with a dark secret. Colby is the football hero with a dream of something more. In alternating chapters they come together, fall apart, and build something stronger than either of them thought possible--something to truly believe in"--

Best friends Cassie and Greg get caught in the middle of a decades-old football rivalry between their high school teams, the Spartans and the Trojans, in this novel loosely based on Homer's classic tale, The Iliad.

After budget cuts force the Southside Saints football team to disband, Jamal and his friends have to settle for playing pickup on the hardscrabble field behind their high school. Then the president of a sporting-goods company offers to donate $20,000 worth of equipment to the team. There's only one catch: he wants to be the coach. Thrilled to have a real team together, the players turn a blind eye to Coach Fort's racism, bullying and discrimination....

"With both good speed and good hands, wide receiver Brock Ripley should be a natural for the varsity team, but he shies from physical contact. When his issues get him cut from varsity, he also loses his friendship with star quarterback Hunter Gates. Now a target for bullying, Brock struggles to overcome his fears and discover that, in his own way, he is brave enough"--

Fledgling fourteen-year-old sports reporters Susan Carol and Stevie Thomas investigate suspicious activities at the Super Bowl after Stevie gets fired from his co-anchor job on a ground-breaking teen sports show.

Native American Jim Thorpe became a super athlete and Olympic gold medalist. Indomitable coach Pop Warner was a football mastermind. In 1907 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football," they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays,...

Future physician Kate Grable is horrified when her high school football coach gives team members steroids, but the drugs turn players into zombies and Kate must find an antidote before the flesh-eating monsters get to her or her friends.

Jomo Rogers, a naturally talented athlete, starts taking performance enhancing drugs in order to be an even better high school football player, but finds his life spinning out of control as his game improves.