I remember reading the Sports Illustrated article ("Winnersville USA") my senior year in college (1988) that introduced the adulated history and lofty expectations of the Valdosta High School football program. The article detailed the pressure of the current coach (Nick Hyder) having to work under the ever-looming shadow of a deceased predecessor, Wright Bazemore, a legend that all subsequent Valdosta coaches would forever be compared. At the time of the article, Hyder was in the midst of eclipsing Bazemore by taking the program to even higher standards ... "national championships". Twenty-four years later, Drew Jubera revisits the Valdosta football program to find it a decaying shell of its former self and desperate to bring back the glory of yesteryear. While MUST WIN captures the uniqueness of Valdosta with its celebrated history, the book ironically struggles to free itself from the literary shadow cast by a like-minded book ... Buzz Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights".
Dating back to 1913, Valdosta football has maintained an astounding 79% win rate with (as of now) 869 wins. Losing is not a bitter pill that Valdosta's rabid fans and alumni must swallow, it's simply intolerable. Jubera drives this home in the first several chapters as the new coach in town, Rance Gillispie, is introduced to the Valdosta community that unceremoniously dumped several previous coaches for not living up to the standards of Bazemore and Hyder. Gillispie is even taken the cemetery where Bazemore and Hyder rest with the promise of his own personal plot if he can bring Valdosta back to its winning ways. While readers are following the new coach being "welcomed" into the fold, we are also being introduced to the various players the new coach must depend on to keep his job. Complicating an already difficult task is that the town that once served as the backbone of the Wildcats success has been decimated over the years by economic struggles and a wave of drug-related violence. MUST WIN details the trials and tribulations associated with the merging of these elements (new coach, past glory, young men and a decaying social scene) heading into the 2010 football season.
Although the ingredients are there, MUST WIN never seems to muster enough "mojo" to stand out as I found myself constantly reminded of Bissinger's iconic "Friday Night Lights". While the storylines parallel to a certain extent, Valdosta's pedigree status among high school football programs never gives the book enough steam to eclipse Bissinger's book in terms of immersive quality. The storyline, as promising as it seemed, was simply not captivating. The struggles of the players dealing with some serious issues (drug-related violence) while trying to stay in school and play football should be entrancing, but I found myself struggling to remember who was who throughout the book ... the stories just did not stand out. Most of all, there was a pervading sense that I had read and seen this before, only with different names and a different location. Basically, I felt this book was "Friday Night Lights, Part II" ... and we all know how sequels often don't measure up to the original. Jubera does a great job defining the atmosphere of Valdosta by detailing the coaching and winning legacies and the pressures Gillespie faces as the head coach. I especially enjoyed reading about Valdosta's frustration with cross-town rival, Lowndes High School ... a newer, spin-off school that, in recent years, has stolen Valdosta's "king of the hill" status by winning numerous state championships. The contrast between the two schools and Valdosta's desire to knock Lowndes off the pedestal it once owned proved to be interesting. The game-calling, however, was less than stellar and I found this to be somewhat disappointing given Jubera's experience as a sportswriter. And while it's clear that Valdosta coaches are held to high win standards, I never really got the sense that the 2010 season was "do-or-die" for Gillespie or the town ... just a fresh start for both. In fact, I felt Jubera was overly supportive of Gillespie throughout the book as the coach is portrayed in an almost saintly manner. I will be curious as to how long Valdosta's budding love affair with the coach will last.
I felt MUST WIN was hit-and-miss throughout. There were some instances where I really started to feel involved only to have Jubera switch gears and get me off-track. While the book has a degree of continuity, I felt it was a little "choppy" at times. The overall story, however, is interesting and somewhat inspiring ... as many high school sports stories are. My problem is that this storyline has already been told and MUST WIN simply doesn't measure up to the standard set by the original.
