Running Loose

Chris Crutcher’s debut young adult novel, Running Loose (1983), features Louie Banks, a senior at Trout High School in Trout, Idaho, a homogenous community where the town’s residents all know one another and high school sports reign supreme. The football team has been undefeated for three years. Louie’s first-person narration is sarcastic but sincere.

Louis, a rising football star, begins practice for the fall football season, in addition to working at his summer job at the Buckhorn restaurant. His boss, Dakota, an older man, is a useful sounding board for Louie. Louie’s friend, Carter Sampson, is a tough-talking jock. Carter works out a lot and is idolized by his peers for his brawn. Louie and Carter work out together in order to earn starting spots on the football team; Coach Ledensky promotes Louie to starting running back. Adding to Louie’s enthusiasm for the school year, he asks out Becky Sanders, a smart, attractive cheerleader who agrees to date him. She is a cheerful, positive influence on Louie.

During their first football game against Salmon River, Coach Ledensky reacts harshly to the arrival of a new player, Washington, an excellent quarterback and the only black player on the opposing team. The Coach orders Boomer, a rough and rowdy player who is antagonistic toward Louie, to take out Washington in a targeted play. Louie encourages the referee to rule against Boomer’s play, succeeding only in angering and embarrassing Coach Ledensky. Louie protests this decision by walking off the field. After this incident, Louie decides to quit football as a matter of principle, though his friend, Carter, continues playing. Principal Jasper nearly expels Louie and forbids him from playing another school sport. Becky asks if Louie would like her to quit the cheerleading team to support him, but he doesn’t insist. She continues to support him despite his disenfranchisement from football.



Louie continues through the school year, depressed and disillusioned by the opinions and actions of his peers, primarily those of Boomer, the tough-talking footballer who is physically abused by his father. It is suggested that Boomer’s behavior springs from his strict and abusive father. Louie takes an interest in cross-country skiing. One weekend, Louis and Becky go to her parents’ cabin, where the two have a (vividly portrayed) sexual encounter. Louie prefers to wait to have sexual intercourse, and Becky, who is portrayed as more sexually experienced than Louie, accepts this decision.

During the winter, Louie’s mother, Brenda, tells him that Becky has been killed in a car accident. Louie immediately goes to the crash site, where he sees Becky’s crushed vehicle. Becky’s parents call Louie and explain that she was driving when a motorcycle swerved out of control. In response, Becky swerved her car to escape the collision, but she accidentally drove the car off a bridge into a river. Louie’s mother and his boss, Dakota, try to comfort him after Becky’s death. At the funeral, Louie loses his temper and runs out during the service in front of the entire town. While inside the church, Louie blames God for what happened to Becky and rails against the church.

Later, Louie destroys a school plaque set up as a monument to Becky. He defaces the monument primarily because Principal Jasper put his name on it, which Louie feels defiles the memorial. Lying about his actions, Louie escapes punishment, but he continually feels an inner compulsion to destroy the monument.



After Louie’s behavior at Becky’s funeral, Coach Madison, the former assistant football coach, tells Louie that he would not coach, as Louie would not play, on a team that promoted racism. Coach Madison advocates for Louie to convince Principal Jasper to let Louie run track. Louie enjoys track, participating in the two-mile event. In the final track meet of the season, Louie runs against Washington, the black student from the neighboring school’s opposing team. Washington tells Louie that he acted heroically during the football season; he feels honored run against Louis. Louie wins the race by a fraction. Finishing in fourth place the regional meet, Louie does not qualify for the state meet, but feels good primarily because of Washington’s words to him. Louie graduates in the spring, feeling good about his performance on the track team.

For its mild sex scenes and explicit language, Running Loose was listed on the American Library Association’s list of top 100 most frequently challenged books of the decade in which it was published. Nevertheless, it remains an honest and poignant account of the high school experience in small-town America.

Born in Cascade, Idaho, Crutcher works as a family therapist. He is an award-winning author who routinely writes about student-athletes and the unique pressures of adolescence.