A fictional reconstruction of Tom Wills' life story. Tom learned to play Aussie Rules football with the Djabwurung tribe who lived near his parents' station, Lexington, in the Victorian Grampians.

Seventeen-year-old Avery Framer and her best friends have always loved soccer; in fact, that is what brought them all together. While attending high school, Avery and her soccer mates revel in the thrill of competition, crazy adventures off the field, and in the inseparable bond they share. But when tragedy strikes on an icy November night, Avery's world is suddenly turned upside down. Now left to struggle through shock, uncertainty, and the darkness of feelings she has never experienced before, Avery attempts to find her footing while trying to make sense of her team's new, attractive, young coach's flirting, the end of her high school career, and friendships that seem to grow more complicated with each passing day. But despite her best efforts to move forward with her life, it is not long before she ends up pushing away the one thing she has always known. Left embroiled in a battle between honoring her past and stepping into a new future, Avery must learn to trust her heart and rely on her inner-strength before she will ever be able to find her place in the world. In this poignant tale, a teenage girl is forced to deal with fate's unimaginable twists and turns. And she comes to realize that no matter what is thrown her way?it is how she deals with life's many bumps that matters in the end.

Nearing 40, standing five feet eight, weighing in at 160 pounds, Mark St. Amant was most definitely not a football player. He had never played a single down of real football in his life and even in the sports he did play, his greatest skill seemed to be choking when the game was on the line. So why on earth did he suddenly become, of all things, a semi-pro football kicker? Fantasy football writer and self-described poster child for suburban-raised white boy Mark St. Amant tells the unlikely story of how he ditched his television and laptop to join an inner-city football squad the mostly African-American Boston Panthers, one of more than 600 semi-pro teams around the country. With warmth, insight, and his trademark offbeat, self-deprecating humor, Mark recounts the strides he made on and off the field and reveals the powerful bonds that developed among teammates young and not-so-young, struggling and successful, black, white, and Hispanic, all clinging tightly to their dreams and playing the game they love. From couch potato to field goal kicker, Mark lived out a real-life football fantasy, discovering true teamwork, staring his lifelong fear of athletic failure in the face, witnessing testosterone-fueled hilarity both on and off the field, and achieving gridiron glory in ways he d never imagined.

Written in side-splitting and often cringe-inducing detail, Paul Feig takes you in a time machine to a world of bombardment by dodge balls, ill-fated prom dates, hellish school bus rides, and other aspects of public school life that will keep you laughing in recognition and occasionally sighing in relief that you aren’t him. Kick Me is a nostalgic trip for the inner geek in all of us.

This fourth title in the perenially popular, Geisel Award-winning Level 2 readers series features a sport that's a kid favorite: soccer! The soccer season is starting, and Mo has been working hard on his kicking skills so he can help his team, the Billy Goats, score a goal. But when he gets on the field on game day, it seems like all he gets to do is run back and forth. Will Mo ever get the chance to show his team what he can do?

The Game before the Money recounts the National Football League’s story and the evolution of America’s most popular sport in the vivid words of men who built the NFL. This unprecedented look at football history from the players’ perspective combines the stories of icons such as Frank Gifford and Bart Starr with those of journeymen who shared the huddle with Johnny Unitas and rallied to halftime speeches from legendary coaches Vince Lombardi and George Halas. Featuring players from the 1930s through the 1970s, these personal accounts trace professional football in its journey from post-barnstorming days through the first two decades of the Super Bowl. The Game before the Money offers backstories to classic games and the men who made history in them before multi-million dollar contracts. Insights into life in the NFL come from those most capable of providing it, NFL legends themselves. Forty former players open windows onto their own lives, their triumphs and tragedies, and the hardship and the glory that make them the people they are both on and off the field.

Kick and Run is a gripping, funny, sometimes heartbreaking account of a life well lived and a game played, if not always masterfully, then certainly with the utmost passion. 'Jonathan Wilson is an intellectual hooligan: Kick and Run is a book of brilliant anecdotes and fantastic wit, nostalgia and twisted love. This memoir is full of sharp insights, a sort of Speak Memory centered on the mysteries of soccer and fandom and revealing an amazing world of Jewish culture and history.' Josip Novakovich, Man Booker International Prize finalist Growing up Jewish in London with a difficult home life, Jonathan Wilson had plenty of reasons to feel he didn't belong, and one reason to feel certain he did: football. Wilson discovered his love for the game as a young boy; through his adolescence and adulthood and well into his later years it remained an important part of his life. Football became Wilson's international passport, helping him find friends and community and solace all over the globe, from England to Israel to the US. Whether working on a kibbutz or teaching literature to young Americans, traveling through Russia or raising children, the sport remained a constant in his life. Kick and Run is a gripping, funny, sometimes heartbreaking account of a life well lived and a game played, if not always masterfully, then certainly with the utmost passion.

The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music--and society as a whole--from the bottom up.

The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music--and society as a whole--from the bottom up.