Full-Court Press: A Season in the Life of a Winning Basketball Team and the Women Who Made It Happen

by Lauren Kessler

An award-winning author chronicles the inspiring story of the new coach and her underdog women's basketball team at the University of Oregon, who overcame administrative and technical obstacles to play a winning season.

Genres: Basketball, Sports

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1997

About the author

Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author and immersion reporter who combines lively narrative with deep research to explore everything from the gritty world of a maximum security prison to the grueling world of professional ballet; from the wild, wild west of the anti-aging movement to the hidden world of Alzheimer’s sufferers; from the stormy seas of the mother-daughter relationship to the full court press of women’s basketball. She is the author of 12 works of narrative nonfiction, including Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Dancing with Rose, Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding. She is also the author of Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig, which was chosen as the book for all Oregon to read in honor of the states 2009 sesquicentennial.

Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O magazine, Utne Reader, The Nation, newsweek.com and salon.com. Club www.laurenkessler.com

Reviews

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Previously unknown to me, I found this little gem at the thrift store. Jody Runge is an (in)famous legend around here and this not only details a season in the life of a basketball team, it also shows how her fight for equity for women's sports played out in a male-dominated university. I'd recommend this for the look at how bad it was for women's sports twenty years ago.

But you also get Kessler's writing and cagey ability to elucidate the individual's points of view; she clearly lays out the miscommunication and misreads between coach and players, administration and lawyers.

Recommended.

[Vjera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at a bit of sports history I hadn’t paid much attention to before. Women’s basketball has progressed a lot!

There’s a lot of grinding over the same problems, but seems accurate to how the year went.

I just read Kessler’s ballet book. In it she mentions learning about bus etiquette while researching the basketball book. Unfortunately she doesn’t mention her lesson in this book. In fact, she doesn’t mention hardly anything about the experience of researching this after the introduction. I enjoyed the research perspective in the ballet book and missed it in this book.

[Anye Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy to see how far Oregon women's hoops has come. Coach Runge is very inspirational!

[Carl Pierson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the way this book took on the topic of Title IX and the regular (and intentional) lack of enforcement that was so common in the 80s and 90s.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer Lauren Kessler spent a year with the University of Oregon women's basketball tem....the year of 1993. In the face of underfunding, gender discrimination, and a team that had just had its worst season in 20 years. Against all odds, she brought about a winning season. It's a wonderful story about winning, but the way she is treated by the university is heartbreaking. those of us who live in Oregon know that even though she had winning teams she was fired. Looking back, I would wish she could have come into coaching a few years later.....she would have had the support she needed.

[Jojo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jody Runge seems like a coach I would hate to have played for, but she played an important role in making sure that female coaches are adequately compensated at the college level, which in turn has helped raise the level of the women's college game.

The issue of female college coaches is an interesting one from so many standpoints. This is a good introduction to some of the issues, but only scratches the surface.

[Janell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly worth a read if you are a college women's sports fan, or a Duck fan. Seemed like the author assumed a lot and some of the writing is over the top, but she pieced together a complicated story and it read easily.

[Gerardo Munoz · Rating 4 out of 5]

An honest story of sport that challenges the old structure of "That Championship Season" or the triumphalist notion of why we play sports. Sometimes we just play, and our dreams don't come true, we won't be remembered forever, we aren't legends. That is where our love of any game is tested.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent and lively true story of a pivotal moment in women's collegiate basketball. If you are interested in the lives of strong women who overcome challenges, I recommend this book. If you are a basketball enthusiast, I recommend this book. I couldn't put it down.