Football Dreams

by David Guy

Book Overview

Novel about a young Prep School football player This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872236242
• ISBN13: 9780872236240
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Playboy Enterprises
• Length: 314 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Want to feel like you're in the game too?

David Guy makes it seem that you are right on the field with all of the other players in his book Football Dreams. This book begins with a flash-forward of Dan (the main character) coming home from varsity football practice his senior year. He had always dreamt of playing varsity football and his dream had come true. But this is not just a fairy tale story of a football star; Dan has to go through many conflicts in his years at Arnold Academy, one of them being his father being diagnosed with cancer. This became a struggle for him but he pulled through it. Dan not only experiences many new things when playing football, such as teamwork and weightlifting, but that winning isn't everything. This book will keep you hooked and it will be hard to stop reading when you get started because of the in depth description of the football practices, games, workouts, parties, events, and also the situations and troubles of his father. I looked forward to reading that book everyday because you never knew what was going to happen next on the field or at home. If you are into sports or especially football I would recommend you read this outstanding book.

Context for Football Dreams

As fact informs fiction, so did real life inform the story David Guy tells in FOOTBALL DREAMS. The Arnold Preparatory School is, in real life, Shady Side Academy; the campus Guy describes is the Senior School campus of Shady Side Academy, located in the Pittsburgh suburb of Fox Chapel. The neighborhoods to which Guy refers are in Pittsburgh's East End. Shady Side Academy merged with The Arnold School in 1940. The Arnold School was named to honor the renowned Arnold of The Rugby School (England). "Tea Parties" did occur at Shady Side Academy until the early 1970s. And many of the experiences of the protoganist in this story were experiences Guy and his classmates had when they attended Shady Side Academy in the 1960s. FOOTBALL DREAMS is a great story and should have a special appeal to anyone familiar with Pittsburgh, preparatory schooling, and coming of age in the early to mid 1960s.

one of the best

This is one of the very best books of its kind.I successfully used it in a college-level sports history course a few years ago.It beautifully represents the role sports often plays in coming of age.Somebody should bring it back into print.A real winner.

Great interpretation of the typical high school athelete.

FOOTBALL DREAMS is a great book in that it portrays the typical high school athlete. Guy really connents with the normal athlete. He talks about lost love and a more wishful love. Then in the end he goes out with a bang to end his high school career. Guy gives a good portrayal of what happens in the high school seen. In the middle of all this Dan, the main character, has to try and live through a death in the family. This book seems almost to be considered a biography it just portrays Dan's life so well. The feelings and the descriptions used by Guy are just so real. He gives every little detail and makes you feel like your sitting next to him in the classroom or with him at the party or even right there with him on the field. You feel almost like you are a good friend of Dan's at Arnold Preparatory School. You almost start feeling sorry for Dan when just nothing can go his way. He can't get the girl and he just seems to have problems everywhere; even his one sanctuary, football isn't going so well. Then later Dan learns a very important life lesson, which you can find out on your own. David Guy has written a wonderful novel that all high school athletes past or present should read. Even if you were never or are never going to be an athlete read this book.

Great coming-of-age story

This book uses the often difficult and confusing teenage years to comment perceptively on what true manhood is and how rigorous becoming a truly authentic person can be. do not be confused by the high school framework, though; this is a book for any truly intelligent and thinking adult.I only wish I could find something else written by this talented author, for I have searched vainly for years without coming across anything else that Guy has produced.