Since the birth of basketball in the YMCA's of New England at the dawn of the 20th century, the game has known many great coaches. Each makes his own contributions to the sport, others learn from his successes and build on what they've learned to make their own mark on the game. However, there was a time when there was no one to learn from, no successes to emulate. Someone had to be the first. When basketball was in its infancy, many men saw the sport's potential for building physical fitness and good character in young men. But one man possessed the rare combination of skill, passion and charisma that came together in unique circumstances to produce basketball's first great coach. Ernest Blood developed a system of training boys that dominated basketball in a way like none other before or since. Affectionately called Professor Blood or "Prof" Blood for short-the game's first coaching phenom amassed a mind-boggling 159-game win streak spanning six seasons with his teams at New Jersey's Passaic High School. It was no wonder his teams were dubbed the "Wonder Teams". Like many transcendent success stories, this one is rife with controversy and adversity, jealousy, and battles of wills. At the heart of it all, though you will find a coach whose greatness is not merely measured by his extraordinary record, but also by his deep love of the game, unquestionable values and a desire to help boys become men of integrity and honour. This is his story.

Boys' Life is the official youth magazine for the Boy Scouts of America. Published since 1911, it contains a proven mix of news, nature, sports, history, fiction, science, comics, and Scouting.

Winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing The true story of the game that never should have happened--and of a nation on the brink of monumental change In the fall of 1943, at the little-known North Carolina College for Negroes, Coach John McLendon was on the verge of changing basketball forever. A protégé of James Naismith, the game's inventor, McLendon taught his team to play the full-court press and run a fast break that no one could catch. His Eagles would become the highest-scoring college team in America--a basketball juggernaut that shattered its opponents by as many as sixty points per game. Yet his players faced danger whenever they traveled backcountry roads. Across town, at Duke University, the best basketball squad on campus wasn't the Blue Devils, but an all-white military team from the Duke medical school. Composed of former college stars from across the country, the team dismantled everyone they faced, including the Duke varsity. They were prepared to take on anyone--until an audacious invitation arrived, one that was years ahead of anything the South had ever seen before. What happened next wasn't on anyone's schedule. Based on years of research, The Secret Game is a story of courage and determination, and of an incredible, long-buried moment in the nation's sporting past. The riveting, true account of a remarkable season, it is the story of how a group of forgotten college basketball players, aided by a pair of refugees from Nazi Germany and a group of daring student activists, not only blazed a trail for a new kind of America, but helped create one of the most meaningful moments in basketball history.

Nearly half of all American high school students participate in sports teams. With a total of 7.6 million participants as of 2008, this makes the high school sports program in America the largest organized sports program in the world. Pruter’s work traces the history of high school sports from the student-led athletic clubs of the 1800s through to the establishment of educator control of high school sports under a national federation by the 1930s. Pruter’s research serves not only to highlight this rich history but also to provide new perspectives on how high school sports became the arena by which Americans fought for some of the most contentious issues in society, such as race, immigration and Americanization, gender roles, religious conflict, the role of the military in democracy, and the commercial exploitation of our youth.

For more than 150 years, waves of poor immigrants flow into Passaic, a small city in New Jersey seeking jobs and a new life. The common dream of these hard working people is for their children to become educated and then successful in America. Climbing The Rainbow. And that's exactly what happens. Each generation is educated in the city's school system, then moved on to successful careers throughout our nation. This mobility allows a new flood of even poorer immigrants to take their place. The success process is again renewed. This book contains twenty-eight stories, each written by a person who grew up or worked in the unique City of Passaic at different times during the last ninety years. These authors are representative of the many ethnic, racial and religious groups that live peacefully side-by-side in this unique melting-pot city. Quoting from one of the book chapter authors, Jose Rodriguez who describes his reaction as a seven-year old on his first day in Passaic. ...As I walked into the parking lot on Market Street, I entered a strange new world, exciting and alive with activity, life and color...black, white, brown, yellow and yes, even red. This was not the pigment on the walls of this parking lot but the skin tones of the youth in this piece of the world. That day in 1978 in the wonderful City of Passaic I saw the rainbow that would make up the road of my youth...it was the truest of melting pots.

Growing up is bewildering and exciting to every child. This was particularly true for a child born during the Great Depression (1930's) and who also experienced the "Home Front" efforts of World War II. Coupled with these great national events was the fact that this child lived in a multi-ethnic "melting pot" city of Passaic, New Jersey. The true growing up adventures are told in a series of stories, some with side-splitting humor, others highly poignant. For example: How learning the "facts of life" from the older guys on the street corner caused a major lifetime disaster; how, with his best friend, he personally helped defeat Japan and Germany in WWII; how he witnessed the three greatest aeronautical events of the 20th century; how the handwriting rules in the Passaic schools caused a blunder in front of President John F. Kennedy which helped Kennedy to decide to send a man to the moon; how the structural design of the giant Saturn rocket booster was actually invented in a Passaic toilet bowl. But more important, the stories provide the secret of how the immigrant-dominated Passaic uniquely prepared its children to succeed in America, and how it still doing it today.