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Overview
Once in a while you get a second chance. For Travis Cody this is one of those times. His team, the Oil Camp Roughnecks, is facing the Pineview Pelicans for the state championship. Travis will have forty-eight minutes head-to-head with rival Jericho Grooms. Forty-eight minutes to redeem himself for letting Grooms break him on the play that cost the Roughnecks an undefeated season. Forty-eight minutes to prove he isn’t a quitter.
Travis Cody prepares for the final game of his high school football career, a rematch with his school's chief rival.
Synopsis
Once in a while you get a second chance. For Travis Cody this is one of those times. His team, the Oil Camp Roughnecks, is facing the Pineview Pelicans for the state championship. Travis will have forty-eight minutes head-to-head with rival Jericho Grooms. Forty-eight minutes to redeem himself for letting Grooms break him on the play that cost the Roughnecks an undefeated season. Forty-eight minutes to prove he isn’t a quitter.
VOYA
Football is such an obsession with the residents of Oil Camp Louisiana, that when a boy is born, he receives a miniature plastic football from the town's Touchdown Club. A collection of state championship trophies fills Oil Camp High's trophy case, and the Oil Camp Roughnecks appear to be on the threshold of adding another if they beat archrival Pineview, who defeated Oil Camp earlier in the season. Not only is this game a rematch between the schools, but for Travis Cody, the Oil Camp center and noseguard, it is a chance to redeem himself, since he feels personally responsible for the previous loss for failing to contain Jericho Grooms, his Pineview counterpart. Even worse, he beilieves he did not go down fighting, that Grooms forced him to give up before the play was over, something he had never done before. If you are expecting a great deal of football action, you will be disappointed. However, if you want to discover how a likeable young man haunted by one mistake matures and rises to the occasion, you will love this story. It takes place in one day-the day of the state championship game. Through the skillful use of flashbacks, we become privy to Travis's thoughts and feelings about his economically dying town, widowed mom, deceased grandfather, friends, teammates, girlfriend, and future. Travis, like anyone who completely devotes himself to a sport or activity, questions whether the time and pain devoted to it are worth it. Because he loves football, his answer is, unhesitatingly, YES! Cochran has speckled the story with characters reminiscent of people we might have met in our lives. Travis's memories about his grandfather, Pawpaw, are particularly poignant. He feels guilty about pulling away from the man Pawpaw became after he had a stroke; instead he dwells on the Pawpaw who was like a father to him. The humor and kindness of Mr. Shackleford, his boss at the gas station where he works part-time, are unforgettable, as is old Mrs. Hammontree, whose declining driving skills render her a hazard to drivers and pedestrians alike. And there is Nita, the beautiful, understanding girlfriend who will go just so far, and Crews, the driving and demanding football coach, who molds a group of individuals into a team, concomitantly forcing each to realize his potential. Most of all, however, there is a young man who knows there is just so much time in life and that he better make the most of it. As with real life, the ending is uncertain, with Travis pancaking Grooms in the first play as the Roughnecks pass for a touchdown. But what a start! Readers who enjoyed Jimmy Doyle, the main character in David Klass's Danger Zone (Scholastic, 1996/VOYA April 1996), and who appreciate Chris Crutcher's humor will find Roughnecks a winner! VOYA Codes: 4Q 4P M J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Broad general YA appeal, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).
Editorials
The ALAN Review -
This is the best YA novel about high school football ever written. It is the story of Travis Cody's preparations for the final game of his senior year, the Louisiana state championship against the Pineview Pelicans, his team's archrivals. As Travis prepares physically and mentally for the big game, he recalls events from the past season, especially his blown assignment that ruined his team's perfect season. The state championship game is his chance to redeem himself, and he is riddled with anxiety that when he faces the best nose tackle in the state for the second time, he might fail again. Cochran gets it all right: The writing is clean and direct, and the story is engaging; the football details-the game action, the players' conversations, thoughts, and attitudes, the feeling, the tone, and the setting-are perfect. Fortunately, this novel is much more than just a story of a boy getting ready for his last big game; it's really a coming of age story. Travis is a football player, but football is only the vehicle used to reveal Travis' concerns and to allow him a place to mature and to make important discoveries about himself and about life. Readers who liked David Guy's Football Dreams will love this novel, but so will anyone interested in football or in seeing the human, personal side of high school football.Children's Literature -
Once in a while you get a second chance, and for high school senior Travis Cody this is one of those times. The Oil Camp Roughnecks are going up against the Pineview Pelicans for the Louisiana AA state high school football championship. Travis now has forty-eight minutes to redeem himself and erase the stigma of having let Jericho Grooms break him on the play that cost the Roughnecks an undefeated regular season. The story takes place in one day, the day of the Pineview game, with much of the action told through the flashbacks of Travis' memory. Readers looking for play-by-play football action and an ending with all questions answered will not be satisfied. Readers with a passion for football who enjoy a book delving into the main character's life will.VOYA -
Football is such an obsession with the residents of Oil Camp Louisiana, that when a boy is born, he receives a miniature plastic football from the town's Touchdown Club. A collection of state championship trophies fills Oil Camp High's trophy case, and the Oil Camp Roughnecks appear to be on the threshold of adding another if they beat archrival Pineview, who defeated Oil Camp earlier in the season. Not only is this game a rematch between the schools, but for Travis Cody, the Oil Camp center and noseguard, it is a chance to redeem himself, since he feels personally responsible for the previous loss for failing to contain Jericho Grooms, his Pineview counterpart. Even worse, he beilieves he did not go down fighting, that Grooms forced him to give up before the play was over, something he had never done before. If you are expecting a great deal of football action, you will be disappointed. However, if you want to discover how a likeable young man haunted by one mistake matures and rises to the occasion, you will love this story. It takes place in one day-the day of the state championship game. Through the skillful use of flashbacks, we become privy to Travis's thoughts and feelings about his economically dying town, widowed mom, deceased grandfather, friends, teammates, girlfriend, and future. Travis, like anyone who completely devotes himself to a sport or activity, questions whether the time and pain devoted to it are worth it. Because he loves football, his answer is, unhesitatingly, YES! Cochran has speckled the story with characters reminiscent of people we might have met in our lives. Travis's memories about his grandfather, Pawpaw, are particularly poignant. He feels guilty about pulling away from the man Pawpaw became after he had a stroke; instead he dwells on the Pawpaw who was like a father to him. The humor and kindness of Mr. Shackleford, his boss at the gas station where he works part-time, are unforgettable, as is old Mrs. Hammontree, whose declining driving skills render her a hazard to drivers and pedestrians alike. And there is Nita, the beautiful, understanding girlfriend who will go just so far, and Crews, the driving and demanding football coach, who molds a group of individuals into a team, concomitantly forcing each to realize his potential. Most of all, however, there is a young man who knows there is just so much time in life and that he better make the most of it. As with real life, the ending is uncertain, with Travis pancaking Grooms in the first play as the Roughnecks pass for a touchdown. But what a start! Readers who enjoyed Jimmy Doyle, the main character in David Klass's Danger Zone (Scholastic, 1996/VOYA April 1996), and who appreciate Chris Crutcher's humor will find Roughnecks a winner! VOYA Codes: 4Q 4P M J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Broad general YA appeal, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).Kirkus Reviews
Cochran's first novel puts a fresh angle on a familiar story: Rival high-school football teams square off for the state championship. Instead of putting readers on the field, though, Cochran takes them inside one player's head for a full day's mental preparation, rituals, flashbacks, and general ruminations.Senior Travis Cody, raised in a Louisiana town so obsessed with the sport that every boy gets a toy football at birth, looks with mixed feelings at what will most likely be his final game. He is eager to face the team that handed the Oil Camp Roughnecks its only defeat in the regular season, but all the backslapping and boosterism is beginning to wear thin, and the once-remote prospect of life after football is upon him. Rising before dawn on game day, Travis mulls over the personalities and personal influences of nearly everyone he knows, recapping the history of his dying oil town, college plans, football's pleasures, pains, and character-building aspects, and other topics. With an artfully suspenseful set of pre-game preparations, the stage is set, but the characters remain stuck in prescribed, limited roles; Travis occasionally sounds more like an adult looking back than a teenager looking ahead. Cochran primes readers for an explosive contest, then pulls out the rug by ending the story after one play—closure on an intellectual level, but not an emotional one. Despite the unevenness, this is a promising debut: thematically complex, strongly written.