Outside Shot
Big Dreams, Hard Times, and One County's Quest for Basketball Greatness
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Outside Shot is the acclaimed true story of a small-town team and an American community struggling for redemption, called "a reporting tour de force" and "utterly gripping" by The New York Times
The Cardinals of Scott County High School were beloved once--and with good reason. For years, the boys and their legendary coach gave fans in central Kentucky, deep in the heart of basketball country, just what they wanted: state titles, national rankings, and countless trips to Kentucky's one-of-a-kind state tournament, where winning and losing can change a young man's life.
But in 2009, with the economy sputtering, anger rising, and Scott County mired in a two-year drought, fans had begun to lose faith in the boys. They weren't the heroes of Scott County anymore; they were "mini-athlete gods," haunted by dreams, burdened by expectations, and desperate to escape through the only means they knew: basketball.
In Outside Shot, Keith O'Brien takes us on an epic journey, from the bluegrass hills and broken homes of rural America, to inner-city Lexington, to Kentucky's most hallowed hall: Rupp Arena, where high school tournament games are known to draw twenty-thousand people, and where, for the players and their fans, it feels like anything is possible.
The narrative follows four of the team's top seniors and their coach as they struggle to redeem themselves in the face of impossible odds: once-loyal fans now turned against them, parents who demand athletic greatness, and scouts who weigh their every move. It delves deep inside the lives of the boys, their families, and their community--divided along lines of race, politics, religion, and sports. And it chronicles not only the high-stakes world of Kentucky basketball, but the battle for the soul of small-town America.
A story of inspiration and poignancy, filled with moments of drama on and off the court, Outside Shot shows that if it's hard to win basketball games, it can be even harder to win at life itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rural Scott County, like most of Kentucky, has endured its fair share of woe in recent years: massive unemployment, an educational system ruled by indifference, and a general sense of hopelessness. One happy constant is high school basketball. The Cardinals of Scott County High School, led by longtime coach Billy Hicks, are a perennial powerhouse in a state devoid of pro sports teams, where "the folk heroes here have to be boys." O'Brien, a former Boston Globe reporter, tracks the team's tumultuous 2009 2010 championship drive and its players. Star Ge'Lawn Guyn struggles with injury at the worst time: he needs an athletic scholarship to get out of the county and, possibly, into the NBA. Big man Dakotah Euton, the levelheaded leader, feels the weight of expectations after receiving a basketball scholarship to the University of Kentucky at age 16. Chad Jackson battles the comparisons to his father, a basketball star victimized by drugs and bad decisions, who died before he turned 40. O'Brien's sharp, intense reporting peers inside the souls of Cardinals nation while illuminating basketball's value to the community and its participants: the former uses it as a distraction from the gloomy everyday; the latter see it as a pressure-packed escape route. 18 b&w photos.
Customer Reviews
Best sports book of the year!
O'Brien tells a riveting story that exposes big-time high school basketball in a spell binding manner. Through his all-access story telling, I got a behind the scenes understanding of what highly prized recruits need to deal with. The book humanizes without patronizing. If all sports books were written like this, there would be a LOT more sports fans.