Forum: Story Recommendations

I have been reading a lot of sports stories lately. I was wondering if anybody has one where a kid was a superstar in high school but life (girl/crime/family) gets in his way. Several years (5+) later gets a second chance and hits it big.

Maybe "The Outsider" by Jay Cantrell?

There is only an 18 month interruption in that case.

Just finished "The Outsider" stories which gave me the idea in the first place.

Not sure but maybe this one by Ernest Bywater:
"Star Performance
Young Adult
A Story in the Life in the Suburbs Universe
16 y/o Hal Smith is a quiet, unassuming Australian teen boy with a bad knee and no dreams. Taught to help people, he does; without thinking before acting. In Year Ten in a new city and school, it's a year of living in interesting times as he's often in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the right thing. He'd once dreamt of being a world athlete and had the skills to make them true, but lost them helping a stranger; and delivered a Star Performance greater than most athletes can ever do.
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Tags: Teenagers, Romantic, Fiction, School, Rags To Riches, Violent
Sex Contents: No Sex
Posted: 3/31/2011, 7:58:13 PM Concluded: 4/8/2011, 7:21:55 PM

In dead tree there is The Natural by . . . CRS

By Bernard Malamud

edited for name