Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen

Inspirational Joe Drape’s Our Boys follows the small tow

Inspirational

Joe Drape’s Our Boys follows the small town of Smith Center as it supports the football team in their pursuit of perfection. The season after the greatest class of seniors has left the gridiron, doubts rise in the minds of the citizens of Smith Center about whether the new class of seniors can continue the winning tradition. As the reader dives deeper into the pages of the book, it is discovered that this book is not about the pursuit of perfection on the field, but rather in the perfection of raising children to succeed in real life.
This novel is an inspirational tale of how the high school football team, the team with the longest winning streak, and all children in a small town called Smith Center are raised by the entire town to become champions on the football field and in life. Coach Barta supports this philosophy of the town by saying, “What we do around here real well, is raise kids…In fact we do such a good job at it-and I’m talking the parents and community-that they go away to school and succeed, and then pursue opportunities in the bigger cities” (Drape, 6). The major belief of this town is that it takes a village to raise a child. The success of this ideology is evident because of the success rate of the kids even though it is a very poor community.
I liked how Drape made the reader really connect with the members of the community, but most of all with the Redmen. The way that this was done had the reader truly rooting for the team in the games as well as hoping that all the effort that was put into raising them would not go in vain and that they would become a success. This was done by Drape really telling each individuals story allowing for the reader to become emotionally connected with the subject he was writing about. What I did not like is that Drape uses a lot of technical football terms that distract from the flow of the book due to the mass amount of numbers present and having to really think about what he is trying to say. This is especially evident when detailing the events of the games that are being played.
This book is very inspirational about how many people pool together their knowledge and raise successful children, and how the entire community comes together to love and support those very kids in all their endeavors. I recommend reading this book if you are a parent or a football fan/player. If you enjoy reading about football, the story will keep you riveted to the pages, but you have no interest in football the book will be dull due to amount of football terms and description of the games. Other books that are a great read are Friday Night Lights, Playing for Pizza, Ernie Davis, the Elmira Express: The Story of a Heisman Trophy Winner, as they are all inspirational.

Fantastic Read

Great book, sort of along the lines of Friday Night Lights.

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