Soccer youth participation in the US declined by nearly 25% in recent years . The US men's national team went from the verge of a breakthrough to elimination from the 2018 World Cup. What's gone wrong with American soccer and what can be done to fix it? "The Shoeless Ones" was Pele's first team. The greatest footballer of all time had no cleats, shin guards, grass fields, cone drills, or heroic soccer-parent carpooling from practices, games, and tournaments. Heck, he learned to play with a sock stuffed with rags. Let's return football to its roots, to the blacktops, vacant lots, and patios where kids play and creativity flourishes. Let's undress the corrupted American version of soccer and shut down the club, travel pay to play system for a grassroots uprising so American kids can compete with the world's best. What we are doing now is not working, and even worse, everybody knows it. From what we've seen in our travels around the world and travails in America's youth soccer programs, once we start playing what we'll be calling Shoeless Soccer in honor of its stripped-down approach, the sky's the limit.

" NFL placekicking has quite a history, from the dropkick, to the placekick, to kicking barefoot, to soccer style kicking. Each style of kicking is analyzed through statistics to show its effectiveness for field goals and extra points. Also discussed is the use of artificial turf and the development of domed stadiums and their effects on placekicking accuracy"--

Winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Young People's Literature A 2021 Newbery Honor Book A 2021 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book A 2021 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist A 2021 Orbis Pictus Honor Book A unique account of the amazing Thai cave rescue told in a heart-racing, you-are-there style that blends suspense, science, and cultural insight. On June 23, 2018, twelve young players of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach enter a cave in northern Thailand seeking an afternoon’s adventure. But when they turn to leave, rising floodwaters block their path out. The boys are trapped! Before long, news of the missing team spreads, launching a seventeen-day rescue operation involving thousands of rescuers from around the globe. As the world sits vigil, people begin to wonder: how long can a group of ordinary kids survive in complete darkness, with no food or clean water? Luckily, the Wild Boars are a very extraordinary "ordinary" group. Combining firsthand interviews of rescue workers with in-depth science and details of the region's culture and religion, author Christina Soontornvat—who was visiting family in Northern Thailand when the Wild Boars went missing—masterfully shows how both the complex engineering operation above ground and the mental struggles of the thirteen young people below proved critical in the life-or-death mission. Meticulously researched and generously illustrated with photographs, this page-turner includes an author’s note describing her experience meeting the team, detailed source notes, and a bibliography to fully immerse readers in the most ambitious cave rescue in history.

"In Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life high-profile personality Dr. Gene Landrum presents, in a self-help format, the 13 winning behaviors modeled by the 13 greatest athletes of the modern era. Landrum's research into the lives of the great entrepreneurs and athletes, supported by a growing body of evidence, suggests that eminence, whether in business or sports derives not from genetic superiority, but from winning behaviors and learned emotional dispositions.With a delightful blend of gifted story-telling and intellectual scholarship, Dr. Landrum has created a book that melds the recent discoveries in psychology and brain research with the dramatic performances of the world's greatest athletes. Charismatic athletes such as Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Martina Navratilova and Tiger Woods are analyzed in psycho-biographical profiles that focus on the underlying motivations and behaviors of these preeminent personalities rather than on what they achieved. In this respect and in its connection to the recent research in brain function and psychology, Dr. Landrum's work is unprecedented in the extant literature on athletes and athletic technique."--Amazon.com.

Throughout the twentieth century, athletic heroes have altered their respective sports with spectacular achievements, renewing their fans' confidence and surpassing their expectations with pioneering fearlessness, powerful expertise and unforgettable performances. In They Changed the Game, authors Ken Rappoport and Barry Wilner profile professional sports' trailblazing champions, from boxing great Muhammad Ali to runner extraordinaire Jesse Owens, from stock-car racer Richard Petty to incomparable sportswoman Babe Didrickson.

Like millions of other young Americans in the 1930s, Charles Furey grew up surrounded by the images and memories of World War I, not knowing that he was part of a generation bred for another war. Pearl Harbor changed all that. In 1942 he enlisted in the Navy and, for the next three years, fought in a war that transformed him, the nation, and the world. From that time Furey has fashioned this superbly written memoir that follows him from his stateside training, his service as an air crewman on a patrol bomber, his long recovery from a fiery plane crash, all the way to his poignant homecoming. Along with harrowing accounts of air actions over the South Pacific and grim descriptions of wounded men in hospitals, Going Back includes many vividly portrayed characters and offers remarkable insight. Readers will long remember such men as Lieutenant Morrison, the man whose small gesture forged an intense camaraderie among his crew, and Murphy, the Marine whose humor helped dull the pain of Furey's wounds. Nor will they soon forget the author's reflections on the fate that history held for him, his friends, and all those who came of age with him, or his stunning evocation of a period of great national change. Going Back provides a colorful and honest recollection of the war years and addresses such timeless themes as loyalty, humor, family, and profound loss.

This narrative of U.S. soccer’s history and present-day status addresses the issues of socioeconomics. Emphasizing the differences between social classes in U.S. soccer past and present, as well as those between American soccer and international football, this work analyzes the role of class in American soccer’s failure to carve out a more prominent place in the sports landscape. Contemporary soccer is explored from its beginnings in informal Parks and Recreation leagues to the development of formal club programs, and university, professional, and U.S. national teams. In recent decades, Hispanic leagues formed primarily by Mexican and Central American immigrants have reinforced the theme of a class-based, exclusionary space in U.S. soccer. A personal perspective based on the authors’ experience coaching soccer at the informal level broadens the book’s appeal.