11 YA Sports Books That Belong in Your Classroom Library
Sports were incredibly popular on our campus. Our teams weren’t necessarily great or even in a particularly competitive division, but we had a lot of athletes and a lot of sports fans.
When we tried to recommend books to our more reluctant readers, many of them requested sports books. This was a tough request for us: neither of us is particularly athletic, so it’s not a genre we sought out in our free time. The few recommendations we did know tended to be written for adults or were a bit young for our students (we may not have read much Matt Christopher when we were in elementary school, but we sure remember seeing it on the shelves!).
After combing the Internet for highly recommended YA sports books, we’re both excited and somewhat regretful. Our students would have loved some of these titles, and we feel bad that we didn’t have the time to seek them out when we were still in the classroom. But at the same time, there are some really good YA sports books out there, and we’re excited to tell you about them so you can share them with your students.
11 YA Sports Books for Athletics-Loving Readers
Our students would have loved this book. Bunny is a basketball star in the making. When he transferred from Whitman High to St. Sebastian’s, a private school that offered him an academic scholarship, he was one step closer to reaching his dream of playing professional basketball. But his best friend Nasir hasn’t forgiven him for transferring schools without even telling him, and now the two boys are playing on rival teams.
While Bunny faces all the pressures that come with being a top athlete, Nasir spends more time hanging out with his cousin Wallace. Wallace also judges Bunny for abandoning Whitman High, and he has troubles of his own: he and his grandma are about to be evicted from their apartment. Nasir can’t understand why everyone’s willing to help Bunny while he’s the only one willing to help Wallace.
As tension builds throughout the book, Nasir, and eventually Bunny, get drawn into bigger troubles than they could have anticipated, and more than just their friendship is at stake. The story itself is compelling and thought-provoking (it reads a lot like All American Boys, though the subject matter isn’t the same). We really loved the two boys (especially Bunny), and the high-action basketball scenes will definitely appeal to your sports-loving students.
There is quite a bit of profanity in the novel; beyond this, however, it’s appropriate for a fairly wide audience.
It’s no secret to us that Kwame Alexander’s novel in verse is a hit and at the top of every list of YA sports books, but we finally got the chance to read it for ourselves, and we understand why it’s so beloved!
The Newbery Award winner tells the story of 12-year-old Josh Bell, who excels at basketball just like his twin brother Jordan and their father, a former basketball star himself. There’s plenty of basketball to enjoy, written in Alexander’s high-energy verse.
But at heart, The Crossover is a family story. Josh and Jordan have been inseparable their entire lives, but when Jordan gets his first girlfriend, the two start to grow apart and Josh is angry. He’s preparing for the biggest game of the season without the closeness he’s used to from his other half. And underlying it all is concern for his father, who’s struggling with heart problems. We loved watching the Bell family come together, work through their conflicts, and support one another, and the family story gives the novel appeal far beyond the boys’ love of their sport.
While technically a fantasy novel (and thus not about a real sport), Daughters of Oduma certainly feels like a sports drama! Dirt is Second in the Mud Fam, and though she has retired from the all-female fighting sport of Bowing, she loves training her younger “sisters” and sparring with Sis Webba as Webba prepares to represent the Fam in the South God Bow tournament. It’s essential that Mud win the tournament since they’re down to only five members and the winning team gets all of the year’s new recruits.
But when Sis Webba is severely injured in a match against her rival, Dirt is the only one left to compete. Too old and out of shape for fighting, Dirt doesn’t think she can do it (and Swoo, an excellent fighter who is just below the age limit for the match, resents her for it). As Dirt trains alongside her sisters, however, under the watchful eye of Sis Webba, she discovers a hidden power that might save the Mud Fam after all.
The descriptions of the tournament matches are exciting (especially when the power of the gods is channeled through the fighters), but the novel increasingly becomes one of sisterhood, self-confidence, and discovering your true potential. For more than one of the five girls in the Mud Fam, the future doesn’t look like they had anticipated, and it’s rewarding and inspiring to watch them work it out.
High school football games are an All-American experience. Most schools have a team, and football season is often one of the highlights of the school year. Students (and staff) turn out in droves, far more so than for any other sport. And to a certain extent, we understand why—the games are exciting with big and surprising plays, they happen under the big lights in the stadium, and the enormous crowds make for a fun experience. Most high school students have some experience with “Friday Night Lights” on their own campus, regardless of whether they’re an athlete or not.
Bissinger captures the excitement of football season, following the Permian Panthers of Odessa, Texas, through an entire season, capturing the wins and losses, and describing many exciting games. In small-town Texas, football brings the entire small town together, and the weight of expectations on players is high, a weight familiar to many students who have played high school sports at the highest levels.
And yet Friday Night Lights is about so much more than just football: it’s about small town America, it’s about racial and social issues, it’s about education, it’s about the hopes and dreams of the young men on the field each Friday night. There is a lot for students to relate to, regardless of their personal connection to football.
Students definitely need some frontloading before tackling this nonfiction bestseller: there is plenty of football excitement to be had, but if they’re expecting all action, they will be thrown off by the other themes Bissinger explores. If they’re prepared, however, this can be a powerful read, especially for older students.
Another one we wish we had read earlier and recommended to our students, Saied Méndez’s novel is excellent. She tells the story of Camila Hassan, a young woman known as La Furia on the Argentinian soccer field. Her family has no idea: they think she’s the perfect daughter, living up to their narrow expectations, and all their pride is directed toward their son Pablo, a rising soccer star.
But Camila’s team wins a chance to go to the South American tournament, and Camila is determined to go, taking another step toward her dream of playing women’s soccer in the United States.
Her already complicated life gets even more complicated when Diego, her childhood love, returns home for a visit. He’s a soccer star playing for Juventus in Italy, and beloved in the community, outshining even Pablo. And it turns out he still has feelings for Camila. But can she trust this man who lives the life of a celebrity in Europe? And what about her own hopes and dreams? She wants to be a soccer star, not a soccer star’s girlfriend.
We loved Camila, we loved Camila and Diego’s relationship, and we loved that, at heart, the novel was about a young woman struggling to rise above the world’s expectations for her and be the woman she longs to be. There’s plenty of soccer for your sports fans, but this is a novel that will appeal to and resonate with many students.
If you’re interested in using Furia as a class read, check out Brave New Teaching’s interview with Yamile Saied Méndez as well as their debrief episode, where Amanda and Marie talk about how they might use the novel in the classroom.
While not, perhaps, what we immediately think of when we think of sports, Into Thin Air is a mountain climbing memoir, and we’re pretty sure mountain climbing qualifies as athletic!
Krakauer’s memoir describes his experience climbing Mount Everest during the infamous blizzard that hit the mountain on May 10–11, 1996, killing eight climbers. There’s a lot to enjoy about it. Krakauer brings to life the world of mountain climbing, with which many of us (and certainly our students) are unfamiliar. It’s mind boggling to consider the lengths these men and women go to, putting themselves in harrowing physical conditions and spending large amounts of money, just to reach the top of the world’s tallest mountains.
The description of the blizzard itself is also riveting: not only does Krakauer describe his own experience getting safely back to camp, but he conveys the suspense and fear he and the other climbers experienced as they waited for their teammates to come down from the summit. In many parts, especially during the blizzard, the memoir reads like an adventure story.
The memoir is troubling in some ways: many of the deaths could have been avoided, but as Krakauer points out, mountain climbers tend to be risk-takers, and they spent exorbitant amounts of time and effort preparing for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s difficult to exert the self-control needed to turn down a chance at the summit once you’re so close.
Our sophomores used to read an excerpt from Krakauer’s memoir when studying irony, contradictions, and incongruity, and it was a high-interest unit, though it did require some frontloading to help students engage with the unfamiliar sport. The IMAX documentary made a great introduction, helping students to visualize the experience, especially since the IMAX crew was on the mountain at the same time as Krakauer’s group.

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Khadija Shami is an anomaly within her mother’s Syrian American circles. She loves boxing, she’s loud and stubborn, and she most certainly does not behave like the “proper Syrian girl” her mother wants her to be. She’s determined to go to Europe with her best friend Nassima as soon as they graduate from high school, if only she can get her mother to agree.
So Khadija is not thrilled when she finds that her mother has agreed to let Leene and her mother, Syrian refugees, live with them while they settle into life in America. Not only are they going to be in her home and sleeping in her grandmother’s old room (which means the room will no longer hold onto the smell of her beloved grandmother), but Leene is the proper Syrian girl Khadija’s mother wants her to be, and Khadija is never going to hear the end of it.
Told in chapters that alternate between Khadija’s and Leene’s points of view, we learn about Leene’s life as a Syrian refugee and struggles to acclimate to life in America as well as Khadija’s experience as a Muslim young woman who has grown up in post-9/11 America. While the girls’ experiences are certainly different, they come to appreciate each other in new ways as the novel progresses, especially when a piece of Leene’s tragic past bursts into their lives.
The novel presents Syrian culture in America through two different perspectives, and it’s interesting to read about the conflicts they face within and outside of their own culture. It’s ultimately a novel about belonging, family, and coming-of-age, but there are a few good boxing scenes to pull in your sports fans.
Tre Brun dreams of becoming an NBA player, despite the odds stacked against him as a member of the Ojibwe tribe. He plays for the Red Lake Reservation high school team, where his brother Jaxon was a star before he died in a car accident, and Tre’s best friend Wes is going to make a documentary about Tre’s rise to fame.
When Tre gets pulled up to the varsity team, he’s under a lot of pressure. The team is determined to make it to the state championship game, the varsity team has played together their entire lives, and the entire community (not to mention Tre’s family) is counting on him to be perfect.
But Tre is also a high school student, trying to juggle classes, parties, and Khiana, the new girl on the reservation who is definitely his friend (but whom he wants to . . . maybe . . . be something more). It’s a lot for a sophomore to handle.
This is another one our students would have really enjoyed, and it’s heavy on sports action: the basketball scenes are suspenseful! It also offers a window into some of the challenges Native Americans face (and we love that the novel is published by Heartdrum, a publishing imprint devoted to contemporary stories about Indigenous young people).
While the novel will likely appeal to students of all ages, it’s more appropriate for older students. It’s got quite a bit of profanity (including in the first chapter), and it has a casual attitude toward teenage drinking that some teachers may feel uncomfortable with. Despite this, however, it’s a high-quality story that’s worth reading.
“I am a runner. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. Running is all I want, or know, or care about.”
When Jessica gets in a car accident and sustains injuries that require her to have her right leg amputated just below the knee, she feels like her life is over. Not only will she never run again, but she’ll have to relearn how to walk and navigate through life, first without her leg and then, once it heals, with a prosthetic.
Jessica is reluctant to return to school, knowing that everyone’s attention will be on her but that people won’t know what to say to her. In her math class, she’s seated next to Rosa, who has cerebral palsy (CP) and offers to tutor her in all the math she’s missed. As the girls build a friendship, Jessica realizes that she’s overlooked Rosa the same way people now overlook her.
Over time, Jessica begins to flourish with the support of her family, friends, track team, and her prosthetist, Hank. As she starts to rebuild her life and work toward someday running again, Jessica develops a desire to improve Rosa’s life as well.
We really enjoyed Jessica’s story, and we think many students will find it inspiring as well. It’s a refreshingly hopeful novel amidst a world full of conflict and challenges.
Bloor’s novel is action-packed while addressing a series of important issues relevant long after its 1997 publishing date. Paul Fisher is legally blind, but he is serious about playing soccer (and he’s pretty good, too!). Too bad his family is caught up in The Erik Fisher Dream, supporting his older brother Erik’s efforts to be the best field goal kicker in the country.
When the Fisher family moves from Houston, Texas, to Tangerine County, Florida, they have a lot to adjust to. Not only do Paul and Erik have to adapt to new schools, but Florida’s weather includes daily lightning strikes, and a muck fire burns perpetually below the town. Paul is frustrated that because of his vision problems, his school requires him to have an IEP, which makes him ineligible to play on the award-winning middle school soccer team. So when a sinkhole opens up beneath his school, he is more than happy to move to Tangerine, the other middle school, where he can have a fresh start.
As Paul navigates his new middle school and the tensions between the two communities, he also starts to remember losing his eyesight, and . . . it doesn’t seem to have happened the way his parents and Erik said it did.
What starts out as a lighthearted novel tackles important issues of race, class, disability, and family conflict as Paul grows into his own, becoming stronger and determined to stand up for what is right. And all throughout, there are some action-packed soccer scenes that your sports fans are sure to love.
While your non-athletically-minded students might enjoy this book for the scandal and drama that surrounds the main character (or its good teen romance), it is a sports book.
Liv Rodinsky is an excellent softball player. She’s a star on her private school’s team, hoping to earn enough attention to get a college scholarship, but when one of the opposing players from local public school Northland makes a homophobic slur about her sister (the coach), Liv slugs her. Liv’s punch gets her kicked out of Windsor Preparatory School, and she has to attend the local public school: Northland.
Liv desperately needs to get on the softball team at Northland (she still hopes for that college scholarship, after all), but the coach is reluctant to allow Liv to join until she has demonstrated that she can be a team player. While on the search for a fall sport to join, Liv is tossing a football with her younger brother when the injured quarterback, Grey Worthington, sees her amazing arm and convinces her to join the football team as his backup. Oh, by the way? The softball coach is his mom.
As Liv and Grey get to know one another and Liv faces down the intense pressure of filling in for the quarterback, there’s plenty of exciting football action. And honestly? We really liked the girl power of Liv in the team’s starring role.
Sports books are excellent First Chapter Friday recommendations: they’re chock full of exciting, high-action scenes that capture many reluctant readers’ interest. But they’re not only for sports fans: all the best sports books are ultimately about something more than the game, and that’s certainly the case for the books we’re recommending here. Please share with us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works if you and your students have discovered great YA sports books that we can add to our list.
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Looking for YA books to suggest to your students or use for your own FCF activity? Check out the YA book section of our website for all our recommendations.