Our Boys is an amazing tale about the high school football team from tiny Smith Center, Kansas. As of the 2000 census, the town had just 1,931 people with most of them living in town or near it on family farms. Despite having such a small town to draw athletes from, the Smith Center High School Redmen football team prior to the 2008 season had won four consecutive Kansas 2A titles and boasted a record winning streak of over 50 games.
Joe Drape, a reporter for the New York Times, a Kansas native, originally discovered the Redmen and Smith Center after the team set a high school scoring record, scoring 72 points in one quarter. Drape moved his entire family to Smith Center at the beginning of the 2008 season in order to chronicle the Redmen's drive for their fifth straight 2A state football title and their pursuit of the all-time winning streak record of 66 wins in a row. This book is the result.
The book's over 250 pages, and I read it in a single day. That's how good this story is, and how much I as a reader cared about Head Coach Roger Barta, his assistants, the players, and everybody else in the town of Smith Center that Drape writes about.
This isn't "just a sports book," although the game action described by Drape is very well done. The point of the book, and according to Coach Barta, is it's not about the wins and losses, one just needs to focus on getting better each day. That's a good life lesson for all of us. Barta knows that his players aren't going to go on to play in the NFL, (although one of his former players already has) he wants to make them better people while they're playing football and having fun. He also teaches his players about the value of hard work, which is, I have no doubt, why, as Drape writes, so many of his players go on to have successful careers at whatever they choose to do in bigger cities.
After I finished the book, I found myself using the Internet to find out more information on all of the team's seniors. That's how good Drape is at writing about this team and the players on it. As a reader, I really cared about the players by the end of the book. I really hope every one of them is successful in what they chose to do after high school.
Drape also does a great job at writing about the community of Smith Center, and how the high school is such a big part of that community. He also portrays why small town life is so wonderful to so many people, because everybody cares about everybody else. Everybody in Smith Center cares about the players, and not just because they're football players and won games, but because they're the town's kids. There's a tendency, I think, from many people to think kids like the ones Drape writes about are "too perfect" but Drape does touch on their mistakes and misjudgments at times. They're definitely real kids, just ones with the mindset that they want to do the right thing off the field, and win in sports with class and dignity. That's a real good antidote to those of us who live in major metropolitan areas and see so much on the news about kids who don't do the right thing.
Drape also writes about his personal experiences in Smith Center, especially about how his young son Jack immediately took to the town, its people, and especially the football team. I'm originally from Nebraska, and some of Drape's writing about being surprised at how much e-mail, texting, social network web sites, and other technology has permeated the teenage culture in middle America I had to laugh at. Middle America isn't the Moon, the kids there in many ways are no different than the kids in New York City, Boston or any big city in America. I had to laugh when Drape writes about being shocked by this, it's a good description of how our society has preconceived notions about different areas of the country. I give Drape credit for being bold, and secure, enough to include that in his book. He's also quite complementary of the town in general, writing in at least two places about how good the food is, and how he couldn't get meals that good for those prices in New York City. He doesn't overlook the shortfalls and problems of the town though, noting that it's losing population and the vast majority of the people still living in Smith Center won't be alive 20-25 years, or even less, from now. Drape doesn't go as far as he could have though in writing at least a little bit about the decline of small towns in Middle America, which I find profoundly saddening.
As a historian, I wish he'd written about more of the town's history though. Drape doesn't even mention that silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was born in Smith Center. He quotes NFL linebacker Mark Simoneau who played for Barta, but he doesn't even mention, much less quote, former NFL special teams standout Steve Tasker, who's also from Smith Center.
This story from Coach Barta on down to his players and the community shows, as another reviewer wrote, what is right about America.
Unfortunately, I can't lavish the same praise for the book's editing and that's what keeps this book from being five star material. I counted no less than a dozen errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and facts in the book. Most of the errors were simply due to bad, or lazy, editing by the publisher. I really hope they're all corrected before publication because they mar an otherwise outstanding book. Drape also gets his facts wrong on a couple of occasions. He writes about an assistant coach who joined the staff in 1990 as being the newest assistant on Coach Barta's staff, when on the same page just a few paragraphs before he wrote about another staff member who he says joined the Smith Center coaching staff in 1993 immediately after graduation from the school. Drape also makes a statement about a player being good at "Mario Kart on the XBox." Sorry Joe, Mario Kart isn't on the XBox and never has been. Your editor should have caught that.
If the errors weren't there, or are corrected before publication, this book has the potential to be another Friday Night Lights. I can say without reservation that I'm now a Smith Center Redmen fan and I think anyone else who reads this book will be too. It's a feel good story that you won't be able to put down.
Go Redmen!
