One Great Game Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game

For more than a century, no Number 1 and Number 2 high schoolfootball team had ever met -- until October 6, 2001One Great GameThis is the story of two teams -- Concord De La Salle, a private Catholic school in an upscale Northern California suburb, and Long Beach Poly, a proud public institution from a blue-collar SoCal seaport -- striving to achieve the same goal: the all-American dream.In this supercharged account of the first-ever national high-school championship game, acclaimed sports journalist -- and former Poly varsity football player -- Don Wallace goes out onto the field and straight into the heart of each team.One Great Gameoffers a rare look at the world of young-adult sportsmanship, featuring up-close and personal interviews with the team players and their families, coaches and cheerleaders, rabid fans and sworn enemies. The result is a powerful piece of sports literature in the tradition of the classicFriday Night Lights.More than a book about football,One Great Gameis an engaging cultural history about twenty-first-century American life.

Don Wallace is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, and dozens of other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, he is the Michener Prize-winning author of the novels Hot Water and Log of Matthew Roving. He lives in New York City with his family.