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Must Win: A Season Of Survival For A Town And Its Team (2012)

by Drew Jubera(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0312642202 (ISBN13: 9780312642204)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

St. Martin's Press

review 1: I wasn't aware of this book's existence until I spoke to a friend over lunch awhile back. When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the Valdosta Wildcats even when I barely understood the game. Reading this book was nostalgic in that it reminded me of how passionate I once felt about this team. Also, it was fun being so familiar with many things in the book since it covers the 2010 season as I was living right here in Valdosta and was hearing about many of the events in the book peripherally. I thought the book does a great job of illustrating how passionate this city is about its football and how this high school team is so intricately entwined in the town's fabric. The way the author portrays the kids was also well done. I thought I had a good picture of all the kids' person... morealities, almost as if I knew them personally. My only real beef with this book was that I felt that it wasn't so much an objective journalistic exposé of the team as it was a glorification of it. I love football as much as anyone but I also recognize the extreme overemphasis of it can be a detrimental thing to the kids who play it and the institution they represent and I didn't feel that this book delved into that as it should have. I felt that in that way it fell short of H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights which I would guess is the standard for this kind of book.
review 2: In Valdosta Georgia nothing but religion comes before football. The winningest town in high school football history is so good that they could go the next 65 years without winning a game, and still have a winning record. Recently though, the team has been in a bit of a slump. Over the last four years the team has gone a foul 22-21. So the school brings in a former Georgia State coordinator named Rance Gillespie to turn the team's losing ways around. The story is a day by day chronicle of Rance's trials in a town that won't accept anything but winning. The pressure is immense considering that the school and town won't accept anything but winning. And win is exactly what Gillespie does in the phenomenal book. less

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