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One Great Game: Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game By Don Wallace ( Atria )
Release Date: 2005-09-13
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List Price: $14.00
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Product Description
For more than a century, no Number 1 and Number 2 high schoolfootball team had ever met -- until October 6, 2001One Great Game This is the story of two teams -- Concord De La Salle, a private Catholic school in an upscale Northern California suburb, and Long Beach Poly, a proud public institution from a blue-collar SoCal seaport -- striving to achieve the same goal: the all-American dream. In this supercharged account of the first-ever national high-school championship game, acclaimed sports journalist -- and former Poly varsity football player -- Don Wallace goes out onto the field and straight into the heart of each team. One Great Game offers a rare look at the world of young-adult sportsmanship, featuring up-close and personal interviews with the team players and their families, coaches and cheerleaders, rabid fans and sworn enemies. The result is a powerful piece of sports literature in the tradition of the classic Friday Night Lights. More than a book about football, One Great Game is an engaging cultural history about twenty-first-century American life.
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 Great research, wonderful detail
The extensive background presented for the cities and the schools may get tedious to the casual reader, but for anyone involved with the schools and their football programs, it is a wonderful read. I was delighted to find a complete replay of the game. Wallace's description of De La Salle and its program is very accurate, and shows the effort he put into understanding everything about it. I enjoyed the insight into Poly and its program; since Wallace is a Poly grad, I'm sure his description there is even more accurate. It is also enlightening to see the bigger picture, the way competition with St. Louis of Hawaii and with Mater Dei helped to shape the events. I was there for most of it, and he's right on. Bravo.
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 California dreaming, on and off the field ( jimazon74 )
One Great Game is an interesting chronicle for those who like high school football. The analysis of the longest winning streak in history in any sport would be enough in itself. Indeed the game account seems less important than discourse on social and economic differences between the featured schools and their students. Though the writing is ponderous at times, I learned a lot about the nature of high schools in other states - for instance most of the perennial powerhouse football teams are from private schools. The character sketches of players and coaches is good, but I still would like to know how to pronounce Bob Ladouceur's name. Cover notes on the book say it is "an engaging cultural history about twenty-first-century American life." I submit it is, instead, a cultural narrative about life in California. Where else would you find players, when gunshots erupt in the neighborhood, react by citing the type weapon being fired, then resume practice as if nothing unusual happened. Going in, I expected the story would convince me that California high school football is the best played anywhere in the U.S. Despite the author's conviction that California has not just the best but probably the second- and maybe third-best teams anywhere any given year, I came away figuring teams from my state and others would fare well playing the Golden State schools. Had there been more interstate games, I doubt The Streak would have happened. I give the book 3 stars because I consider it about midway between the most and least enjoyable books I've read. Oh yes, if you're buying it, suggest you get the September 2005 edition that includes epilogue and afterword rounding out the story.
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One Great Book
Don Wallace's account of the first ever high school football championship game is frequently riveting, and always insightful. In the chapters leading up to the Game (An October 2001 matchup between #2 Long Beach Poly and #1 Concord De La Salle)Wallace proves himself more than able to juggle two disparate narratives, managing to track the players and football programs at these two perennial powerhouses while capturing the social dynamics of the towns in which they reside.
At first, the towns seem diametrically opposed: Concord is a predominantly white, upper middle class suburb; Long Beach is an ethnically diverse community replete with gang warfare and violence, as well as Wallace's alma mater.
But Wallace, it's clear, does not buy in to the American Dream vs American Nightmare pitch. Poly, it turns out, is an academic as well as a football powerhouse, a diamond circumscribed within the rough streets of Long Beach. And while the students at De La Salle may be economically priviliged in comparison to Poly's, they are also burdened by heavy expectations (A 116 game winning streak on the line)and must dedicate themselves completely to football.
One Great Game concludes with a vivid account of The Game itself, often digressing into a play by play account. It's during these moments that Wallace's intimate familiarity with the two teams, as well as the game of football, comes across best.
I highly recommend this book, not just to football fans, but to anybody with an interest in contemporary American society. You won't mistake One Great Game for a PHD thesis--its far too interesting and well worded--but you may find yourself admiring the poignancy Wallace discovers, or creates, from our best, quintessentially American sport.
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A study of contrasts - very well written ( brian911743 )
This book chronicles the first-ever meeting between the #1 and #2-ranked high school football teams in America. In October of 2001, #1 Long Beach Poly, a Southern California powerhouse with a long, storied tradition, alma mater to a record 50 past and present NFL players, played host to #2 De La Salle, a Catholic all-boys school from the upper-class suburban town of Concord, CA, home of the nation's longest football (and perhaps all team sports) winning streak, which, before the Game, stands at an astounding 116 games.
Prior to this game, no #1 and #2 teams had ever met in head-to-head competition, which always beggared the question, "Who's REALLY #1?," since most, if not all of the USAToday's Top 25 high school teams would end up the season undefeated.
Long Beach is the "most diverse city in America," a sprawling city of 425,000 sandwiched between monstrous L.A. to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. It has a long and rich history, much of it less-than-sparkling, where waves of immigration, first of blacks, Hispanics, and Japanese in the early part of the 20th century, then of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Central Americans following upheavals in their respective homelands, made for a boiling brew of racial tension. Despite all this, Polytechnic High School, located in the decaying heart of downtown Long Beach, is a shining beacon for the whole community, not only as an athletic powerhouse, but as an academic springboard to prestigious colleges. in the 2001 season, the Poly Jackrabbits have perhaps their most talented team ever, with 5 players ranked among the 100 best high school players in the country.
Concord, California, is a wealthy, mostly white, upper-middle-class suburb in the East Bay Area, populated by the professional, educated types who toil in nearby San Francisco. De La Salle is an exclusive all-boys school where tuition is $7,200 per year. The De La Salle Spartans are coached by a living legend, Bob Ladouceur, who since 1979, has lost only 14 games in his entire career, and none since December of 1991.
The book takes two parallel stories, one of Poly, the other of De La Salle, focusing on the players, coaches, families, and overall atmosphere of each school and community, before intersecting them at the Game, which is described in bone-jarring play-by-play detail. You can almost imagine listening to the game on the radio, the play-by-play is so well-written.
The Game was billed as a sort of David vs. Goliath, with De La Salle playing the part of David, traditionally undersized but winning on the basis of suberb coaching and relentless conditioning, and Long Beach Poly playing Goliath, with massive offensive and defensive lines and Division I college talent populating every skill position. However, when reading about each program, the reader gets the impression that instead of David vs. Goliath, it's more like Godzilla vs. Mothra, two unstoppable juggernauts heading toward a climactic Battle Royale. And ultimately, that is exactly what it is - simply one of the finest battles between two programs of the highest caliber in the biggest game of their lives, and possibly the lives of many others.
I was very satisfied with this book. If you like football, sports in general, or just like a thrilling and consuming read, this book delivers.
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This book delivers ( joliet-jake )
Don Wallace did an excellent job profiling the stark differences between De La Salle and Long Beach Poly, creating much more interest in the game and it's outcome. Whether you are a fan of DLS or Poly, you couldn't help but come away with a greater appreciation of the other school. Yes, it was One Great Game, and it was One Great Book.
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Addiction
