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Hometown Victory: A Coach's Story of Football, Fate, and Coming Home

by Keanon Lowe

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1911,150,924 (5)None
"The Blindside meets Friday Night Lights in Keanon Lowe's Hometown Victory when an NFL coach returns home after losing a friend to opiods to coach a team of struggling high school kids on a 23-game losing streak. Keanon Lowe was working as an offensive analyst for the San Francisco 49ers when his childhood friend and former high school teammate suddenly died from an opioid overdose. Keanon dropped everything--including the plum NFL job he had been working towards since childhood--leading him to a position as football coach at a struggling high school back in his hometown. At the time, Parkrose High School was in the middle of a 23-game losing streak -- they were the ultimate underdogs. In many ways, the road to Parkrose was paved by Keanon's life-defining experiences -- from a childhood spent dodging racist bullies and finding the support and mentorship he craved on the football team, to an NFL season where he worked closely with Colin Kaepernick as he evolved his sideline protest. Keanon was drawn to the young men on the Parkrose team, and to the school itself. After two years, he pushed them to become conference champions, mentoring countless players along the way. But still, there was that nagging sense that his calling wasn't meant to stop there. He was at that school for a reason. In May 2019, he got his answer when a 19-year-old student entered a Parkrose classroom with a trench coat and shotgun. Keanon disarmed him and pulled the boy into a hug, telling him he cared. In the boy, Keanon saw himself, and the young men he grew up with or mentored along the way -- and weren't so many of them just looking for acceptance, for comfort, for love? With the heart of favorite football classics - The Blindside, Friday Night Lights, Remember the Titans - Keanon's journey at Parkrose is the true account of a life spent striving forward, even when faced with the unimaginable. Hometown Victory is a story about gratitude, service, and most of all, hope"--… (more)
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HOMETOWN VICTORY, by Keanon Lowe & Justin Spizman, is the memoir of Keanon Lowe, a gifted college athlete who fell into coaching after graduation. He quickly found himself an assistant in the NFL, but found his calling in his mid-20's to become head coach at Parkrose High School. Parkrose had lost twenty-three straight games when Lowe takes over and Lowe had to find a way to cultivate hope in a group of young men that are accustomed to losing on the field and in life. As Lowe finds his way as a coach and connects to his players in ways no adult ever has, the Parkrose team begins to shed their past and find that by loving and caring for each other, their team can become greater than all of it's parts. Lowe finds a beautiful balance between compassion and toughness that few coaches find.
From beginning to end, I found myself completely entranced by this book. The reader is taken on the journey of head coaching discovery that Lowe is going through as a first timer. Emotional highs and lows are felt all along the way and those challenges are a lot of fun to read about. The writers intertwine some thoughts on how to live and how to find happiness. By the end of the book, I audibly cheered every challenge met and win captured by the Parkrose football team. Lowe's presence at Parkrose also had another wonderful result described in the book and is the reason why the reader might know his name before reading this book, but I will leave that part for the reader to find.
HOMETOWN VICTORY is written with a soothing rhythm and recreates events with clarity and exacting specificity, but without extra words and unnecessary supplementation that would only bog down the book. A pleasure to read, this book left a smile on face long after I finished reading it.
Thank you to Flatiron Books, Keanon Lowe & Justin Spizman, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ( )
  EHoward29 | Apr 7, 2022 |
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"The Blindside meets Friday Night Lights in Keanon Lowe's Hometown Victory when an NFL coach returns home after losing a friend to opiods to coach a team of struggling high school kids on a 23-game losing streak. Keanon Lowe was working as an offensive analyst for the San Francisco 49ers when his childhood friend and former high school teammate suddenly died from an opioid overdose. Keanon dropped everything--including the plum NFL job he had been working towards since childhood--leading him to a position as football coach at a struggling high school back in his hometown. At the time, Parkrose High School was in the middle of a 23-game losing streak -- they were the ultimate underdogs. In many ways, the road to Parkrose was paved by Keanon's life-defining experiences -- from a childhood spent dodging racist bullies and finding the support and mentorship he craved on the football team, to an NFL season where he worked closely with Colin Kaepernick as he evolved his sideline protest. Keanon was drawn to the young men on the Parkrose team, and to the school itself. After two years, he pushed them to become conference champions, mentoring countless players along the way. But still, there was that nagging sense that his calling wasn't meant to stop there. He was at that school for a reason. In May 2019, he got his answer when a 19-year-old student entered a Parkrose classroom with a trench coat and shotgun. Keanon disarmed him and pulled the boy into a hug, telling him he cared. In the boy, Keanon saw himself, and the young men he grew up with or mentored along the way -- and weren't so many of them just looking for acceptance, for comfort, for love? With the heart of favorite football classics - The Blindside, Friday Night Lights, Remember the Titans - Keanon's journey at Parkrose is the true account of a life spent striving forward, even when faced with the unimaginable. Hometown Victory is a story about gratitude, service, and most of all, hope"--

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