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Contemporary YA Fiction Featuring Sports Book List

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Looking for a good contemporary book featuring sports and athletics in some capacity? Here’s a nice, solid list of titles to check out. As has been the theme all week, these books are all published between 2010 and today, and all descriptions come from WorldCat. If you’ve got a title you’d like to add, drop it in the comments. 

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach: Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of “Squirrel Nut” to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family’s past and current problems.

Boy21 by Matthew Quick: Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player on his high school’s varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their apparent differences.

Stealing Parker by Miranda Kenneally: Parker Shelton pretty much has the perfect life. She’s on her way to becoming valedictorian at Hundred Oaks High, she’s made the all-star softball team, and she has plenty of friends. Then her mother’s scandal rocks their small town and suddenly no one will talk to her. Now Parker wants a new life.

The Final Four by Paul Volponi: Four players at the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament struggle with the pressures of tournament play and the expectations of society at large.

Anything But Ordinary by Lara Avery: A slight error left Olympic diving-hopeful Bryce Graham in a five-year coma and now, at at twenty-two, she must adjust to a world that went on without her and to visions that may or may not be real.

Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe: When sixteen-year-old Sara, from a small Vermont town, wins a scholarship to study ballet in New Jersey, her ambivalence about her future increases even as her dancing improves.

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip by Jordan Sonnenblick: After an injury ends former star pitcher Peter Friedman’s athletic dreams, he concentrates on photography which leads him to a girlfriend, new fame as a high school sports photographer, and a deeper relationship with the beloved grandfather who, when he realizes he is becoming senile, gives Pete all of his professional camera gear.

Leverage by Joshua Cohen: High school sophomore Danny excels at gymnastics but is bullied, like the rest of the gymnasts, by members of the football team, until an emotionally and physically scarred new student joins the football team and forms an unlikely friendship with Danny.

Playing Hurt by Holly Schindler: Chelsea Keyes, a high school basketball star whose promising career has been cut short by a terrible accident on the court, and Clint Morgan, a nineteen-year-old ex-hockey player who gave up his sport following a game-related tragedy, meet at a Minnesota lake resort and find themselves drawn together by the losses they have suffered.

Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally: What girl doesn’t want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn’t just surrounded by hot guys, though. She leads them as the captain and quarterback of her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys, and that’s just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university. But now there’s a new guy in town who threatens her starting position…suddenly she’s hoping he’ll see her as more than just a teammate.

Head Games by Keri Mikulski: Basketball star Taylor, who doubts that she is attractive due to her height, reluctantly agrees to participate in a fashion show, an event complicated by her divided feelings about two boys and about her team’s preparations for the playoffs.

The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen: When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

Bunheads by Sophie Flack: Hannah Ward, nineteen, revels in the competition, intense rehearsals, and dazzling performances that come with being a member of Manhattan Ballet Company’s corps de ballet, but after meeting handsome musician Jacob she begins to realize there could be more to her life.

Compulsion by Heidi Ayarbe: Poised to lead his high school soccer team to its third straight state championship, seventeen-year-old star player Jake Martin struggles to keep hidden his nearly debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

Crossing Lines by Paul Volponi: High school senior Adonis struggles to do the right thing when his fellow football players escalate their bullying of a new classmate, Alan, who is transgendered.

Jersey Tomatoes are the Best by Maria Padian: When fifteen-year-old best friends Henry and Eve leave New Jersey, one for tennis camp in Florida and one for ballet camp in New York, each faces challenges that put her long-cherished dreams of the future to the test.
Queen of Secrets by Jenny Meyerhoff: Fifteen-year-old Essie Green, an orphan who has been raised by her secular Jewish grandparents in Michigan, experiences conflicting loyalties and confusing emotions when her aunt, uncle, and cousin move back from New York, and her very religious cousin tries to fit in with the other football players at Essie’s high school, one of whom is Essie’s popular new boyfriend.
Shutout by Brendan Halpin: Fourteen-year-old Amanda and her best friend Lena start high school looking forward to playing on the varsity soccer team, but when Lena makes varsity and Amanda only makes junior varsity, their long friendship rapidly changes.

Center Field by Robert Lipsyte: Mike lives for baseball and hopes to follow his idol into the major leagues one day, but he is distracted by a new player who might take his place in center field, an ankle injury, problems at home, and a growing awareness that something sinister is happening at school.

Perfected by Girls by Alfred Martino: Melinda Radford has difficulty everyday because she is on the boys wrestling team.

Guest Post: Geoff Herbach On Writing Sports in Contemporary YA Fiction

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Why I Write About Sports by Geoff Herbach



When I was fifteen, I ate two peanut butter sandwiches every night before bed.  Yes, I was often hungry.  I was fifteen and dudes of that age are often very, very hungry.  But that’s not why I’d eat those sandwiches.  They actually made me want to throw up, because I’d already had a giant dinner and then I’d lie down with that peanut butter brick in my gut and I’d think “gain weight, gain weight, gain weight” and then I slept fitfully and had nightmares about terrible car accidents and girlfriends leaving me and school hall thuggery.  I was 5’9” and I desperately wanted to weigh 170 pounds by sophomore year.  

In the mornings, I’d take all that peanut butter protein and I’d lift weights like a wild monkey, screaming and throwing things around.  I couldn’t gain weight.

Around that time, my mom, an English teacher, handed me Vision Quest by Terry Davis.  It’s about a wrestler, Louden Swain, who is dropping weight so that he can wrestle the other best wrestler in Washington State.  Louden (yes, there’s a reason my Stupid Fast character is named Felton – dorky version of Louden) works out like a wild monkey.  He puts his health in danger to achieve his goal.  I loved this book so much, I would have glued it to my body (I did carry it everywhere).  

Here’s the thing, though: I entered that book through sports, but I didn’t want to live in it just because there’s a dude in there working out like a wild monkey.  Louden had a complicated home life (I had a complicated home life).  Louden had to go to work after school (I had already delivered newspapers at 5 a.m. for three years), Louden had to make decisions about the importance of his own desires when his desires might harm the community (was I debating individualism with him?).  A really beautiful girl moved into his house (was he adult enough to attract her?).  A host of side characters told him what they knew about life (I listened, too).  The wrestling aspect of the book acted as a candy coating.  The revelation of friendship and true character and real love was the medicine I needed as that dorky fifteen-year-old.  

I was at a Wisconsin High School a few weeks back.  I talked books in front of a group of maybe 100 kids.  It was a Friday afternoon, last hour.  Probably thirty percent of the attendees wore some form of football jersey or t-shirt (the school had a game later that evening).  While a couple of the jersey wearers were obviously larger and tougher-looking than the general audience, most looked like regular kids who might just as easily have been mathletes or band geeks or whatever, except they wore a jersey.  This picture confirmed something I already knew: at most schools there isn’t a stereotypical jock monolith filled with steroidal bruisers hell-bent on crushing the spirits of nerds.  Most athletes are just your average kid.

Whatever average means.  The starting quarterback at the school I visited was also the lead in the musical.

Clearly sports are important in our culture.  Sure, probably too important.  Because they are important, they provide a common language, a doorway.  Wallflowers have their books.  Music freaks have their books.  Lovers of the supernatural have more books than they can possibly read.  Often, these books aren’t about music or geekery or ghosts in the end, but they’re about love and tragedy and friendship and hard decisions.  When I read John Coy, Chris Crutcher, Bill Konigsberg or Matt de la Pena, I enjoy the sports, but mostly, I identify with great characters who are dealing with the complexity of real life.

Thirty percent of the kids in that auditorium wore football stuff.

When I was fifteen, I carried around Vision Quest, not because it taught me about what it takes to be a better jock.  The book taught me about a wider world and a way of being and a way of negotiating complexity.  It both reminded me of me and stretched my understanding and empathy.

I do love athletics.  But, I don’t write about football for the sake of football.  The football player on the cover of Stupid Fast is a point of entry.  And, I’d love to see a copy of Vision Quest in every locker in the locker room.



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Geoff Herbach is the author of a trio of award-winning YA books about Felton Reinstein, dork turned jock: Stupid Fast, Nothing Special, and I’m With Stupid, which hits shelves in the spring. You can find more info at geoffherbach.com or follow him on Twitter @geoffherbach. Meanwhile he teaches creative writing at Minnesota State, Mankato. 

Double Take, Part V, Sports Style!

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One of my favorite books this year so far has been Bill Konigsberg’s Out of the Pocket, and you can read my whole review here. It was an accident to find and read this one since it’s a sports story, but I loved it.


The cover is pretty memorable: the football player looking into the dusty distance. The sepia clouds and black ground just look unique and different to me, as does the orange title font. The reason I even found the book was it was faced out and the cover caught my attention (see – it is important!). Out of the Pocket was published September 2008 by Dutton.

Then while browsing books online recently, I found this one:


Tim Tharp’s Knights of the Hill Country (and, yes, this is the same Thrap of 2008’s The Spectacular Now) was published in 2006 by Laurel Leaf and explores similar themes to Konigsberg”s book, minus the issues surrounding the acceptance of one’s sexuality.

Sure the covers aren’t identical, but it’s remarkable how many similar elements they use, particularly because there are many overlapping themes. There’s the football player looking out in the dusty distance, the sepia tones, and the dark ground. Though they aren’t the same, the fonts are very similar, right down to the use of orange.

Regardless of how alike they look, I have to say that these covers really strike a chord with me as a revolution in the traditional sports novel. Working in my town’s public library in high school, I loathed reshelving the sports novels because they all looked the same (and uninteresting — sorry Matt Christopher!). These, however, are much more intriguing to me, and I think they would definitely draw readers who may otherwise believe they have no interest in a story revolving around sports.

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Though it’s probably obvious, the three of us at stacked have been a bit swamped the last couple of weeks. But that doesn’t mean we’re not reading and preparing some fabulous reviews. Personally, I’ve got three or so books on the docket for this week, and by the end of next week, we’ll have up our first round robin review of a very different book (I’d say *awesome* book, but I’ll wait to see what the others say first).