Sports - Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Raising Empowered Athletes: A Youth Sports Parenting Guide for Raising Happy, Brave & Resilient Kids

By Scott J. Pearson | October 29, 2023October 29, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Youth athletics in America is an ever-evolving landscape. People continue to focus on its educational benefits, whether learning teamwork or getting a college scholarship. However, these competitive foci can also bring out the worst in parenting. Parents often become more drawn into success than their kid-athletes. At the college level, tantalizing new constructs like the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) marketing and the Transfer Portal require wise decision-making to avoid pitfalls. What are kids to…

The Recruit’s Playbook: A 4-Year Guide to College Football Recruitment for High School Athletes

By Scott J. Pearson | May 29, 2023May 29, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Recruiting for college football is a complicated but important process. Many aspire to its benefits, but only a few will move onto the next level. Like anything in sports and life, those who prepare the best will succeed the most. So how do you prepare, aside from dominating on the field? Larry Hart’s guide is a great way to start. An ex-NFL player and current college coach, he shows aspiring players what they should be…

Biography-Memoir Sports

Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father & the Team that Changed the Game

By Scott J. Pearson | December 19, 2021December 19, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

The author Maya Washington’s father is Gene Washington. (In order not to confuse, I will refer to them in this review by their first names.) Gene was among the first black football players on nationally prominent college and NFL/AFL teams in the 1960s. He grew up in Jim Crow Texas, but played football for Michigan State University. Not only did he help to integrate the sport; he also laid the groundwork for football becoming so…

History Sports

Sprinting Through No Man’s Land

By Scott J. Pearson | June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

The Tour de France is established each year as an endurance race that lasts for about an entire month and encompasses the entire range of French lands. In 1919, following the armistice ending World War One, the Tour resumed after a multi-year hiatus. It included areas in the northeast that were decimated from warfare. Many of the riders, too, had personally experienced the tumults of war. The French people needed something to boost morale as…

Biography-Memoir Sports

Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar

By Scott J. Pearson | May 15, 2020August 13, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Despite watching tennis religiously throughout my life, I did not know the name of Charlotte “Lottie” Dod. She was a five-time winner of Wimbledon in the late 1800s. But she was more than a mere tennis player. She was an ice skater, a tobogganist, a mountain climber, an endurance bicyclist, a hockey player on the English national team, a championship golfer, and an Olympic silver medalist in archery. Quite the resume. After her sporting days…

Sports

We Will Rise: A True Story of Tragedy and Resurrection in the American Heartland

By Scott J. Pearson | February 1, 2020February 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This new release seeks to tell the tale of basketball at the University of Evansville, a small Division I school in Indiana. Like many areas in the American midwest, the community surrounding the school is tight-knit and obsessed with basketball. Before moving into Division I, the program even won several national championships at the Division II level. There’s a wrinkle in the true story that makes its telling especially emotional. In 1977, the entire basketball…