58 pages • 1 hour read
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Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of domestic abuse, alcohol addiction, and ableism.
Sam Pickett is the novel’s protagonist. He is a 36-year-old English teacher who teaches the basketball team at Willow Creek in his free time. Sam is a dynamic and round character. His favorite novel is Don Quixote, which he references often. Sam moves to Willow Creek because he wants to escape his past and forget about the murder of his wife, Amy. He struggles with a combination of grief and guilt over Amy’s death. However, through the Broncs’ journey to victory and Sam’s new relationship with Diana, Sam learns to heal from his past trauma and move on from his depression.
Sam’s coaching of the Broncs highlights Sam’s need for support in his own life. Although Sam must learn how to guide the team, he ends up learning more from the boys’ resilience than he expected. Sam uses the Broncs’ continual striving in the face of adversity as a lesson to teach him to push forward, despite his sadness. Sam also learns to take a chance in his life in a way that he has not since Amy died. He decides to go out with Diana even though he fears that their relationship will lead to heartbreak. Diana and the Broncs teach Sam that the guilt he feels over Amy’s death is not his burden to bear because the tragedy of her death is not his fault.
Sam’s main internal struggles stem from his depression and grief over Amy’s death. Throughout the narrative, Sam experiences flashbacks to his childhood which mirror the grief that he feels. When Sam remembers his experiences with the baby elephant and the outhouse, Sam uses these memories to confirm his belief system that dooms him to be unhappy and unfortunate in his life. Through Sam’s relationship with Diana, he learns that this confirmation bias does not help him but only gives him an excuse to feel sorry for himself. Diana helps Sam heal from his trauma because she can empathize with him, but also because she can call him out for his behavior that harms him rather than helps him. West shows Diana and the Broncs’ positive effect on Sam through Sam’s reinterpretation of the Crow legend by the novel’s ending. Rather than seeing the legend as a manifestation of grief, Sam reinterprets the legend as a description of the courage that it takes to take a leap of faith and believe in something outside of himself.
Diana Murphy is the biology teacher at Willow Creek High School. She becomes the Broncs’ assistant coach and dates Sam. Throughout the narrative, Diana is extremely supportive of the Broncs, and she believes in their ability to win the championship before anyone else does. Like Sam, Diana moves to Willow Creek to escape the trauma surrounding her daughter Jessica’s death. Diana also experiences guilt over Jessica’s death as Sam does with Amy; however, Diana feels even more responsible because she was driving the car the night Jessica died in a car accident. Diana tries to suppress her guilt by controlling situations around her such as refusing to drive other people in her car and making sure that she drives the safest car on the road.
Diana struggles with guilt because she swerved to hit a raccoon the night of the accident. To assuage her guilt, Diana stops every time she sees a dead animal on the road and takes it off the road to preserve its dignity in death. Diana finds comfort in nature, which is why she goes hiking often. For Diana, nature shows her that she exists in a community, and it makes her feel part of something outside of herself. Diana shares this experience with Sam because she finds it helpful in healing from grief. Sam benefits from this meditation in nature with Diana because it finally makes him feel at peace.
Jessica’s death led to Diana’s divorce because her husband could not forgive her. As a result, Diana has difficulty trusting other people. Diana fears that other people will leave her because she will inevitably let them down. When Diana and Sam begin their relationship, Diana pulls away when she has feelings for Sam because she thinks that he will leave her once he finds out something about her that he does not like. Through their relationship, Diana and Sam must learn to trust each other to heal themselves so that they can live a full life once again. Diana’s decision to apply for a job in San Diego pushes Sam toward deciding to follow her and solidifies their feelings for each other. Although Diana does not fully heal from her trauma over Jessica, by the end, of the novel she makes several strides in her healing process, such as driving the boys to a game despite her fears. As she pushes through her fears, Diana learns that it is possible to love again and trust in other people to support her.
Grandma Chapman is Peter’s grandmother. Grandma Chapman acts like a mentor to Peter and the other boys on the team. She does not have a left hand because the doctors had to amputate it when she was younger due to her husband’s abuse and neglect. Despite Grandma Chapman’s difficult life, she expresses a passion for life that contrasts with other characters in the novel. Although Grandma Chapman never announces it, Hazel and Sam discover that she has leukemia and that the doctors do not think that she will live out the summer. Still, Grandma Chapman does not let this prognosis stop her from encouraging Peter and supporting him through the Broncs’ championship. Grandma Chapman never stops believing in the team, especially Peter, because she believes in people’s resilience and strength despite the odds stacked against them.
Grandma Chapman uses her life experience to help Peter through his difficulties with his parent’s divorce and his breakup with Kathy. Grandma Chapman never minimizes Peter’s struggles but instead empathizes with her grandson and tries to pass on her wisdom before she dies. Through Grandma Chapman’s abusive marriage, she learns that she cannot save anyone in her life; she can only be responsible for her own actions. After her leukemia diagnosis, Grandma Chapman purchases a large fedora, which represents her decision to live her life the way that she wants. Although Grandma Chapman wishes she had decided to take responsibility for her own life earlier, she does not waste a moment of her life after her diagnosis. Although she allows Peter to make his own decisions, she advises him on what to do about Kathy, especially because she fears that he will make a choice that he could regret for the rest of his life. Peter’s relationship with Grandma Chapman influences his return to Willow Creek to join the team because he understands that he has found his home with his grandmother in Willow Creek, not in Minnesota. Grandma Chapman does not tell Peter about her diagnosis in the space of the novel. She allows him to win his championship unburdened so that she can preserve his memories about this time of his life.
Peter Strong is a teenage boy who moves to Willow Creek from St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with Grandma Chapman after his parents’ divorce. When Peter arrives in Willow Creek, he feels resentful and bitter about his mother’s decision to send him to Montana because he believes that she does not want to deal with him anymore. Peter does not know how to mitigate his feelings of abandonment from his parents. At the beginning of the novel, Peter spends his time wishing that he could go back to living in St. Paul because he misses his friends and his girlfriend, Kathy. Even though he joins the basketball team, Peter continues telling Sam and everyone at school that he may not last through the season because his mother may want him to come home. Peter lives in this denial because he wants to believe that his parents and friends in St. Paul miss him. However, he soon learns to take advantage of the people around him who love him and need him, rather than living in the past and searching for validation from people who no longer want to be around him.
Peter decides to return to St. Paul in the middle of the season, even though it means letting down his teammates. Although Grandma Chapman tries to talk him out of leaving, Peter must go on his own to learn the lesson that she has been trying to tell him firsthand. Once Peter has closure on that area of his life and faces the difficult truth that Kathy does not want to date him anymore and his parents do not have time for him, Peter returns to Willow Creek with a different attitude. Peter realizes that the Broncs are his new community and that he wants to spend his energy with them because they are his real friends. Once Peter makes this decision, his attitude and performance in basketball skyrocket. He learns the importance of supporting his teammates, who in turn know how to support him. Rather than living in the past and thinking about what could have been, Peter forges ahead toward the championship with the Broncs.
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By Stanley Gordon West