The Blindside meets Friday Night Lights in Keanon Lowe's Hometown Victory when an NFL coach returns home after losing a friend to coach a team of struggling high school kids on a 23-game losing streak. Keanon Lowe was working as an offensive analyst for the San Francisco 49ers when his childhood friend and former high school teammate suddenly died from an opioid overdose. Keanon dropped everything--including the plum NFL job he had been working towards since childhood--leading him to a position as football coach at a struggling high school back in his hometown. At the time, Parkrose High School was in the middle of a 23-game losing streak--they were the ultimate underdogs. In many ways, the road to Parkrose was paved by Keanon's life-defining experiences--from a childhood spent dodging racist bullies and finding the support and mentorship he craved on the football team, to an NFL season where he worked closely with Colin Kaepernick as he evolved his sideline protest. Keanon was drawn to the young men on the Parkrose team, and to the school itself. After two years, he pushed them to become conference champions, mentoring countless players along the way. But still, there was that nagging sense that his calling wasn't meant to stop there. He was at that school for a reason. In May 2019, he got his answer when a 19-year-old student entered a Parkrose classroom with a trench coat and shotgun. Keanon disarmed him and pulled the boy into a hug, telling him he cared. In the boy, Keanon saw himself, and the young men he grew up with or mentored along the way--and weren't so many of them just looking for acceptance, for comfort, for love? With the heart of favorite football classics--The Blindside, Friday Night Lights, Remember the Titans--Keanon's journey at Parkrose is the true account of a life spent striving forward, even when faced with the unimaginable. Hometown Victory is a story about gratitude, service, and most of all, hope.

Coaches are critical to achieving top performance from individual athletes and teams. Coach profiles the 150 most successful of them-in every major sport-providing ample biographical background but lasering-in on their most teachable ideas and methods. Rich in quotations, each profile ends with a list of lessons that readers can apply not only to the sports they love but also to their own lives and careers. Profiles range from Bela Karolyi (who coached 9 Olympic and 15 world champion gymnasts), to Bill Belichick (the take-no prisoners coach of the Boston Patriots), to Pat Summitt (who racked up 1,098 wins as coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 to 2012), to Marian Vajda (the coach behind tennis phenom Novak Djokovic). Guided by the numbers-for all competitive sports keep score-this book finds the teachable moments, settling some arguments while starting others, in delineating the lives and careers of coaches who win with brains, heart, and the force of character.