Book Recommendations: Sports Stories

Contains an in-depth examination of the head and brain injuries that are on the rise among football players.

The twin brothers and NFL players share their inspiring story, and attribute their success to faith and family support.

When his best friend is unfairly arrested and kicked off the team, Russell Boudreaux kneels during the national anthem in an effort to fight for justice and, in an instant, falls from local stardom to become a target of hatred.

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.

After moving to a new town his freshman year in high school, Alex Myers is happy to win a spot on the varsity team as a quarterback but must deal with the idea of not playing for two years since the first-string quarterback is not onlya local hero, he is also son of the corrupt head coach.

Isaiah loves football. In fact, football saved Isaiah's life, giving him structure and discipline after his sister's death tore his family apart. But when Isaiah gets knocked out cold on the field, he learns there's a lot more to lose than football.

After three other girls follow Mara's lead and join the football team, she's forced to confront her misconceptions about gender and her arch-nemesis.

The autobiography of Michaela DePrince, who lived the first few years of her life in war-torn Sierra Leone until being adopted by an American family. Now seventeen, she is one of the premiere ballerinas in the United States.

Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who's under pressure to join cheerleading to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend Bebe is a people-pleaser, a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life in order to maintain support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped-up social pressures, the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they'd lost.

Four years after Theo's best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

At cheerleading camp, Hermione is drugged and raped, but she is not sure whether it was one of her teammates or a boy on another team--and in the aftermath she has to deal with the rumors in her small Ontario town, the often awkward reaction of her classmates, the rejection of her boyfriend, the discovery that her best friend, Polly, is gay, and above all the need to remember what happened so that the guilty boy can be brought to justice.

Told from alternating points of view, Chanel and Eleanor's rocky start to senior year gets more complex when the cheerleading team kneels for the national anthem and each girl grapples with the consequences.

Luca Mason knows exactly who he is and what he wants: In six months, he's going to be accepted into the Australian Ballet School, leave his fancy private high school, and live his life as a star of the stage--at least that's the plan until he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his foot in a way he can never recover from.

After sacrificing their childhoods, Grace, Leigh, Camille, Wilhelmina, and Monica are competing in the two days of the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials, after which their lives will change forever.

A year after being nearly paralyzed, Audrey Lee is going to the Olympics but the United States' gymnastics team is on the verge of collapse and Leo, her new coach's cute son, is another distraction.

When soldiers attack a small village in Zimbabwe, Deo goes on the run with Innocent, his older, mentally disabled brother, carrying little but a leather soccer ball filled with money, and after facing prejudice, poverty, and tragedy, it is in soccer that Deo finds renewed hope.

A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl's life and changed women's history forever.

When a Regents United elite prep school scout offers Adrian a full scholarship, the news seems too good to be true. Adrian's celebration is short lived thanks to his meeting with team star, Titan Evans. Titan is everything Adrian is not; rich, powerful, and connected. Despite that, Titan sees the Colombian Cannon as a threat to his domination on the pitch.

After a disastrous defeat at the 2018 World Cup, Japan's team struggles to regroup. But what's missing? An absolute ace striker. The Football Union is hell-bent on creating a striker who hungers for goals and thirsts for victory, so Blue Lock--a rigorous training ground for 300 of Japan's best and brightest youth players--is created.

From the hosts of the popular NBC Sports show Men in Blazers and one of the biggest soccer podcasts in the world, Roger Bennett and Michael Davies profile the greatest soccer players of all time with their signature humor.

American-educated Jordanian Luma Mufleh founds a youth soccer team comprised of children from Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkan states, and elsewhere in the refugee settlement town of Clarkston, Georgia, bringing the children together to discover their common bonds as they adjust to life in a new homeland.

In this book Pulisic talks candidly about his journey so far, revealing the extraordinary excitement of fulfilling some of his goals and the great challenges involved. He also shares experiences from behind the scenes playing for club and country, his most memorable career moments, moving to a new country without knowing the language, training drills he’s used over the years to hone his skills, and his daily life as a soccer player.

Nick loves soccer and hates books, but soon learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams.

Seventeen-year-old Camila Hassan, a rising soccer star in Rosario, Argentina, dreams of playing professionally, in defiance of her fathers' wishes and at the risk of her budding romance with Diego.

Told in their separate voices, thirteen-year-old soccer star Kevin and police sergeant Brown, who knew his father, try to keep Kevin out of juvenile hall after he is arrested on very serious charges.

In graphic novel format looks at the life and career of basketball player Michael Jordan.

Picked on at home, criticized for talking trash while beating boys at basketball, and always seen as less than her best friend, a girl struggles to like and accept herself.

Two decades before the formation of the WNBA, the '76 US women's basketball team laid the foundation for the incredible rise of women's sports in America at the youth, collegiate, Olympic, and professional levels. Though they were unknowns from small schools, the American team included a roster of players who would go on to become some of the most legendary figures in the history of basketball. These women took on the world and proved everyone wrong.

Basketball player Kobe Bryant looks back at his career with the Los Angeles Lakers.

An autobiography of basketball player Derrick Rose, discussing his childhood and career.

High school senior point guard Jonas Dolan is on the fast track to a basketball career until an unthinkable choice puts his future on the line.

For Adam Reed, basketball is a passport. Adam's basketball skills have taken him from an orphanage in Poland to a loving adoptive mother in Minnesota. When he's tapped to play on a select AAU team along with some of the best players in the state, it just confirms that basketball is his ticket to the good life: to new friendships, to the girl of his dreams, to a better future. But life is more complicated off the court. When an incident with the police threatens to break apart the bonds Adam's finally formed after a lifetime of struggle, he must make an impossible choice between his new family and the sport that's given him everything.

All eyes are on seventeen-year-old Lonnie Jackson while he practices with his team for a city-wide basketball Tournament of Champions. His coach, Cal, knows Lonnie has what it takes to be a pro-basketball player, but warns him about giving in to the pressure. Cal knows because he, too, once had the chance--but sold out. As the Tournament nears, Lonnie learns that some heavy betters want Cal to keep him on the bench so that the team will lose the championship.

Seventeen-year-old Sticky lives for basketball and plays at school and at the Lincoln Rec Center in Los Angeles but he is unaware of the many dangers--including his own past--that threaten his dream of playing professionally.

Told from alternating perspectives, Bunny takes a basketball scholarship to an elite private school to help his family, leaving behind Nasir, his best friend, in their tough Philadelphia neighborhood.

Indiana basketball prodigy Derrick Bowen--D-Bow to his friends--is impatient to start his freshman year, but his coach favors a senior for a guard spot; meanwhile, pressure at home builds for D-Bow to transfer from his neighborhood school to an exclusive prep school.

At the end of the school year in 1998, senior Carl Carter is leading his rural Vermont baseball team, the Elizabeth Monarchs, to the state championship. With a full scholarship waiting for him at the University of Maine and everyone telling him he could go pro, Carl feels like he can do anything he wants, until one arrogant mistake jeopardizes everything.

A graphic novel depiction of the life of Roberto Clemente that discusses his childhood, success in baseball, mission off the field, death, and other related topics.

Tells the underdog story of a small-town baseball team from Illinois in 1971.

Lazarus Weathers, a high school senior from the wrong side of the tracks, seeks to protect his half-brother while pitching his way out of poverty, one strike at a time.

Alex has always identified herself as a baseball player, the daughter of a winning coach, but when she realizes that is not enough she begins to come to terms with her adoption and her race.

Danny, who is tall and skinny but has a talent for pitching a fastball, cannot seem to fit in at school in San Diego, where his Mexican and white heritage causes people to judge him before he even speaks.

Making history as the first woman to be signed by a major league baseball team, eighteen-year-old Jill is confronted by coaches, players, and fans who want to keep baseball an all-male sport while dealing with her own doubts about her choices.

The story of Jordan Romero, who at the age of 13 became the youngest person ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. At age 15, he reached the summits of the world's 7 highest mountains

As seventeen-year-old Carr 'the Raptor' Luka rises to fame in the weightless combat sport of zeroboxing, he learns a devastating secret that jeopardizes not only his future in the sport, but interplanetary relations.

From age three, McCutcheon Daniels, now sixteen, has been trained in Mixed Martial Arts and must keep winning to feed his five-year-old sister and father, but chance presents an opportunity to get out of the Detroit slums using his brain instead of his fighting skills.

When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she finds herself increasingly reliant on prescription painkillers.But as the pressure heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, something that could send her spiraling out of control.

A memoir of defying the odds from Kareem Rosser, captain of the first all-black squad to win the National Interscholastic Polo championship.

One of the most dominant college wrestlers in history, Ben Askren became a folk hero during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, before going on to become a multiple time MMA champion and one of the sport's biggest stars. Through it all, he emerged as a cult figure in combat sports.

In a world where tennis can unlock ancient magic, Legacy enters a tennis tournament organized by Queen Silla in order to raise enough money to save her father's orphanage

A swimmer whose early talent made her a world champion, Susannah was poised for greatness in a sport that demands so much of its young. But an inexplicable slowdown has put her dream in jeopardy, and Susannah is fighting to keep her career afloat when two important people enter her life: a new coach with a revolutionary training strategy, and a charming fellow swimmer named Harry Matthews.

When seventeen-year-old Kareena Thakkar finally admits she is a top-level Muay Thai fighter, knowing that might further alienate her from her Indian community, her classmates, especially handsome Amit, enthusiastically support her.

"A toxic coach finds himself outplayed by the high school girls on his team in this deeply suspenseful novel, which unspools over twenty-four hours through six diverse perspectives.