One Great Game : Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game [Hardcover]

Don Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2003

In the rich tradition of Friday Night Lights comes this heart-stopping account of the first ever national championship high school football game.

They said such a game was impossible. For 131 years, a No. 1 and a No. 2 high school team had never met -- though not for lack of trying. Then came October 6, 2001: two great teams, Concord De La Salle and Long Beach Poly, playing for all the marbles. Two contrasting cities, each upholding its vision of America. One thrilling game.

On the one side we find Concord, a wealthy, high-tech suburb in Northern California. De La Salle is private, nearly all white, and Catholic, with an astonishing nine-year, 113-game winning streak -- the longest of any team in any sport in history, amateur or professional. Coach Bob Ladouceur is a legend, and a mystic who demands perfection. The Spartans thrive on year-round training and a spirit of love. Critics call them a cult.

Long Beach is a gritty, mostly poor, Southern California seaport, the most diverse city in America. Poly High sends more players to the NFL than any other school, more students to the University of California, and alums such as Cameron Diaz and Snoop Dogg to stardom. Poly High is a beacon of public school excellence. But the Jackrabbits play in a fishbowl of high expectations and often excessive community scrutiny.

On both teams the young men are tested physically, mentally, spiritually, and most of all by the intense media spotlight on their behavior, skin color, SAT scores, economic class, and moral character. Would they crumple under the pressure? Can they withstand the lure of drug and supplement abuse while fighting off the distractions of college recruiters and rabid fans?

One Great Game takes us inside the schools and their teams, into the hearts and minds of the players, coaches, teachers, parents, and followers. Don Wallace spent a full year in their locker rooms and in their lives. The result is a powerful portrait not only of American high school sports but of two cultures that taken together define modern American life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On October 6, 2001, two California high school football teams played in what turned out to be the first, and perhaps the only, national championship high school football game. The De La Salle Spartans and the Long Beach Poly Jackrabbits came into the season as the two top-ranked teams in high school football, according to USA Today polls and various sports polls throughout the country. Wallace, who played for Poly in the late 1960s, skillfully chronicles the stories of these two football powerhouses. De La Salle, which sported the nation's longest winning streak at 113 games, is an all-male, predominantly white, Catholic high school in the wealthy northern California suburb of Concord. Long Beach Poly is an urban, inner-city high school with tremendous racial diversity, whose more famous graduates include Cameron Diaz and Snoop Dogg. With his journalist's eye, Wallace (author of the novel Hot Water) interviews the coaches and players of each team as they prepare for the 2001 season and the game that became known as the national championship. In a fast-paced narrative, he gives a play-by-play account of the game. Although Poly seems to have a physical edge over De La Salle, the latter keep their winning streak alive with a 27-15 win. Unfortunately, Wallace never makes it clear why this game was called the national championship game, especially because it was the teams' fifth game of the season, not the final one, other than that two top-ranked teams faced each other. Overall, though, Wallace's well-told story of this season and the game captures the emotions of everyone involved in the quest to be a winning team.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"[E]njoyable....Wallace gives an evenhanded account while conveying the excitement the game created."

-- Sports Illustrated

"Wallace deserves credit for a historic record of a game that won't soon be forgotten."

-- The Los Angeles Times

"A behind-the-scenes look at the players and coaches...as well as a play-by-play analysis of the big game itself."

-- The New York Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books (September 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743446216
• ISBN-13: 978-0743446211
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Don Wallace has written all his life: fiction and non-fiction, journalism, reviews and opinion pieces, an occasional poem, a song or two, even a computer program for traffic engineers. He has published four and a half books. His interests and subject matter circle around the same topics: love and friendship, interracial relations and social justice, sports, history (including naval and military history), business (particularly startup culture), the ocean, Long Beach (Calif.), France and Hawaii.

HOW DID I START? Reading was the first thing I was any good at, that and catching lizards in my neighborhood in Long Beach, California. Then writing burst upon me -- suddenly, in fourth grade, like a wave.

AS AN AUTHOR: I've written two novels (Hot Water; Soho 1991; The Log of Matthew Roving, US Naval Institute: serialized in Naval History Magazine, 2002) and a non-fiction book (One Great Game: Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First-Ever High School National Championship Football Game), a short memoir (The Skins of Our Ancestors), numerous essays and articles, in publications including the New York Times (Op-Eds, travel, sports), Harper's, Fast Company, Yachting, Islands, Kirkus Reviews, SELF, Redbook and so on.

MOST CURRENT NEWS: I'm featured in We Wanted to be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop (Skyhorse, August 2011). Also, PBS Hawaii picked up my 2010 film, Those Who Came Before: The Musical Journey of Eddie Kamae, for a July 28, 2011 showing.

MORE ABOUT THE FILM: It's a documentary about one man's 50-year search for the roots of Hawaiian music. Those Who Came Before: The Musical Journey of Eddie Kamae closed two film festivals in October, 2010. On Oct 20, it was the gala benefit finale of the Pacific Rim Film Festival in Santa Cruz. After a sold-out special preview showing in Honolulu at the Hawaii International Film Festival was greeted with a standing ovation, it was selected for Sunset on the Beach and the HIFF's closing ceremonies Oct 24. I was the writer on the project.

WHERE I'VE WORKED: Executive editor at Time Inc and New York Times Magazine Group; senior editor at Conde Nast and Hearst. Experience in all types of publications, including business, sports, women's, travel, literary/general, environmental. Specialist in start-ups and custom publishing.

MY BLOGS: A Salty Blog, The Green Man, all on blogspot.com. Also on the topic of "What It Means to Be a Writer Today" on wewantedtobewriters.com

MY (HUMBLE) WEBSITE: www.donwallacebooks.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don Wallace scores a touchdown................., September 18, 2003

By 

Juan Pardell - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Great Game : Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game (Hardcover)

Don Wallace's ability to capture an essence of not only the emotions of what was truly a first in the world of prep sports, but the historical content that lead to a memorable event just a few weeks after this nation's 9/11 tragedy. The game was a temporary remedy for sports fans wanting to escape the horrors that occured in New York City. ESPN had named it one of the top sporting events in the country to watch for that week.

Wallace is able to captivate an audience with his descriptions of the preparation that went into the game itself. His attention to detail as to how each schools football programs arrived at the point of their unforgetable matchup is outstanding. I am most impressed with how the book uses high school football as a metaphor for how life as viewed by those involved in the game.

Don Wallace describes his own upbringing in Long Beach and the dynamics that have that have occured since he has moved away. His definitions of the suburban community of Concord, California, and how it somewhat evolves around the school with the infamous winning streak, actually makes the town sound interesting.

I believe those choosing to purchase this book will realize it is more than just about one football game. It reaches more into depth of two contrasting communities, that despite the differences, are very similar. It is more about the country we live in today.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All-Star Prose for an Irresistible Matchup, November 3, 2003

By 

David Ferrell (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Great Game : Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game (Hardcover)

I confess I was intrigued partly because of the success of "Friday Night Lights," H.G. Bissinger's classic look at high school football. However, I like Wallace's book better. While "Lights" drifted into long, rather dry sociological digressions, "One Great Game" is focused, beautifully written, and still explores--in a hard-hitting way--the fascinating contrast in two football cultures. It's an irresistible matchup: white, upscale Concord De La Salle, No. 1 in the nation and riding a 113-game winning streak, versus blue-collar, diverse Long Beach Poly, No. 2 in the nation and producer of more NFL football talent than any school ever. I was amazed at the access Wallace must have gotten to produce this book. He obviously spent a lot of times in the lockerrooms, absorbing the changing emotions and dreams of these young athletes, and he also proves himself an exceptional student of the two communities where these schools are based. It's worth the read just to glimpse into the mind and philosophy of De La Salle coach Bob Ladouceur, architect of the record winning streak, a guy who's apparently able to turn young men of good or even modest athletic ability into a juggernaut through discipline and commitment to the common goal. It's the kind of thing that's rare and makes an amazing story.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A study of contrasts - very well written, July 29, 2004

By 

BasinBictory "Mister Basin to You" (Nowhere in particular) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Great Game : Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game (Hardcover)

This book chronicles the first-ever meeting between the #1 and #2-ranked high school football teams in America. In October of 2001, #1 Long Beach Poly, a Southern California powerhouse with a long, storied tradition, alma mater to a record 50 past and present NFL players, played host to #2 De La Salle, a Catholic all-boys school from the upper-class suburban town of Concord, CA, home of the nation's longest football (and perhaps all team sports) winning streak, which, before the Game, stands at an astounding 116 games.

Prior to this game, no #1 and #2 teams had ever met in head-to-head competition, which always beggared the question, "Who's REALLY #1?," since most, if not all of the USAToday's Top 25 high school teams would end up the season undefeated.

Long Beach is the "most diverse city in America," a sprawling city of 425,000 sandwiched between monstrous L.A. to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. It has a long and rich history, much of it less-than-sparkling, where waves of immigration, first of blacks, Hispanics, and Japanese in the early part of the 20th century, then of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Central Americans following upheavals in their respective homelands, made for a boiling brew of racial tension. Despite all this, Polytechnic High School, located in the decaying heart of downtown Long Beach, is a shining beacon for the whole community, not only as an athletic powerhouse, but as an academic springboard to prestigious colleges. in the 2001 season, the Poly Jackrabbits have perhaps their most talented team ever, with 5 players ranked among the 100 best high school players in the country.

Concord, California, is a wealthy, mostly white, upper-middle-class suburb in the East Bay Area, populated by the professional, educated types who toil in nearby San Francisco. De La Salle is an exclusive all-boys school where tuition is $7,200 per year. The De La Salle Spartans are coached by a living legend, Bob Ladouceur, who since 1979, has lost only 14 games in his entire career, and none since December of 1991.

The book takes two parallel stories, one of Poly, the other of De La Salle, focusing on the players, coaches, families, and overall atmosphere of each school and community, before intersecting them at the Game, which is described in bone-jarring play-by-play detail. You can almost imagine listening to the game on the radio, the play-by-play is so well-written.

The Game was billed as a sort of David vs. Goliath, with De La Salle playing the part of David, traditionally undersized but winning on the basis of suberb coaching and relentless conditioning, and Long Beach Poly playing Goliath, with massive offensive and defensive lines and Division I college talent populating every skill position. However, when reading about each program, the reader gets the impression that instead of David vs. Goliath, it's more like Godzilla vs. Mothra, two unstoppable juggernauts heading toward a climactic Battle Royale. And ultimately, that is exactly what it is - simply one of the finest battles between two programs of the highest caliber in the biggest game of their lives, and possibly the lives of many others.

I was very satisfied with this book. If you like football, sports in general, or just like a thrilling and consuming read, this book delivers.