Sports in YA

I love YA novels about student athletes. Many but not all are "boy books" and quite gritty, with creepy villains and crimes to solve. A girl hanging around a bunch of hockey players, rather than playing herself, doesn't sound quite as gripping, but I suspect NHL players are quite a rough and rugged bunch, enough to appall the average teen girl, so that could be amusing. What about a girl playing on an all-guy hockey team? Now that would rock my socks!

To read:

Tangerine (best crazy violent soccer playing ever!)
Leverage (such a good big scary dumb/secretly sensitive and nice guy)
Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes
Payback Time
Lots more by Carl Deuker, Walter Dean Myers, Mike Lupica
someone else recced me Ball Don't Lie but I haven't read it yet. Looks awesome.

They are MG but super good and will probably make you cry a lot:
Maniac Mcgee
The Aurora County All-Stars

Dairy Queen!

Lots of people love it. I personally avoid all of them except for basketball books. But very few people hate sports the way I do. Except basketball. I love basketball. And a good basketball book--PLAYERS by Joyce Sweeney is so great.

But that's just me. Don't write books for me. I'm cranky and too old for YA.

Not a book, but a TV show--Friday Night Lights. It's extremely well-written and focuses on the lives of some high school football players. There's even a girl working for the team this season. I'd recommend it if you're just trying to get a vibe of what it's like behind the scenes of serious athletics.

Just about all of Chris Crutcher's books are sports books. Stotan!, Running Lose, and so on. Staying Fat for Sarah Bynes was mentioned above, there's also Deadline, Whale Talk, etc. They're a bit gritty at times, but he pretty much rallies at making sports matter to people like me, who can't stand actually watching a sports game, which I think matter. I love the books, even if they're "about" something that doesn't appeal to me -- wrestling, football, basketball, and so on.

I think Walter Dean Myers writes about sports a lot. I remember reading a fantastic book about 2 teens that get press passes to the final four and there's this player scandal (I think an ESPN guy wrote it, but it's really great)...And google tells me it was called Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery by John Feinstien. It's more middle school YA (when I read it), but worth checking out. Mike Lupica writes YA sports novels.

I would certainly read about a girl working for an NHL teams because I love hockey and my sister intends to intern with the Canes in college. Would definitely be fresh in the U.S. market (I don't know about Canada haha)