Basketball and life are one of the same in the hoops-mad town of Gaithersburg. And for good reason. The Covenant Prep girls team is one of the best in the state, led by the mighty Lyla Storm, who may be the best player in the country. She has the college offers and records to prove it. The boys, too, are championship-caliber, having finished second in the state just a year ago while returning the majority of their top players. Both could realistically win the title. And then, quick as a hiccup, devastating as an Earthquake, the town's world comes crashing down. Prep's legendary basketball coach, Bill Stottlemyer, passes away, leaving his son, Kevin, the team's star point guard, wondering if it's really all worth it, playing this game. He couldn't play, not without Coach. The community is shaken - and then shaken again, when Tara French, a player on the girl's team, is hit by a car, leaving Lyla, her best friend, wondering, too, if it's really all worth it. She couldn't play, not without Tara. The town couldn't disagree. How could they ask its two young stars to play a game in the wake of such tragedy? But they needed something, anything, to provide an escape from the specters that hung over Gaithersburg. Basketball became their collective source of refuge. So play they did, in a season that became less about the wins and losses, points and box scores, and more about life, and how sports can so often help us get through it. And the simple sport of basketball became far more than a game.
About the Author: I have become many things in the 26-plus years I have spent on this Earth. I am a son and a brother, a writer and a reader, a high school benchwarmer and a halfway decent golfer, a beach bum and a college graduate, a North Carroll Panther and a Maryland Terrapin. There is one thing, however, that I quite honestly never thought I'd become: An author. I always wanted to, but it's hard, you see, writing a book. I'm not much of an outliner. Most of my thoughts come on a whim, unexpected and unbidden - on a run, reading, drinking coffee, watching my Terrapins blow another lead. And I'll grab whatever writing utensil I have and just let the words in my brain flow through my hands. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm about to write until I'm physically doing it. It's kind of fascinating, because I'm discovering what my book is about as I'm writing it. Maybe this isn't the most traditional path to literary success, but whatever, it works for me. I've always been a fan of homegrown styles. I was raised that way, anyway, in a sports-mad hamlet in northwest Maryland named Hampstead. The town is so small that, during my sophomore year of college, I had hitched a ride home for winter break with a friend from New Jersey. She typed Hampstead, Maryland into the GPS and nothing popped up. The town was literally too small for a navigation system. My dad, a fine American from Pittsburgh, and my mom, Jill, the most pleasant woman you'll ever meet, raised my brothers and me on a steady diet of church and sports. Sometimes the latter would interfere with the former, but we'd never let anything get in the way of our sports - golf, soccer, football, basketball, baseball, swim, beach volleyball. You name it, we played it. I wasn't good enough at any of them to play at a major college, so I did the next best thing: I wrote about them. Writing has taken me to the Florida Panhandle, where I wrote for the Northwest Florida Daily News and covered a number of athletes I now watch on ESPN on Saturdays and Sundays. And it has since taken me to California, where I'm freelancing and taking my first literary shot at non-fiction, in a book on beach volleyball. It's kind of cool, hanging out with Olympians, you know? On the pages of this site, you can find updates on the progress of all my books and the occasional piece I might want others to read. It's a good life we sportswriters live.