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The first comprehensive
history of
high school basketball in Illinois!
In urban and rural high schools throughout Illinois, basketball is a
Friday night ritual. Local games are often the biggest thing happening
all week, and the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and state tournaments
attract fanatical fans by the thousands.
Far from the jaded professionals, the
stories in Taylor Bell's Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe
are of hungry young men playing their hearts out, where high-tops and
high hopes inspire "hoop dreams" from Peoria to
Pinckneyville, and Champaign to Chicago. Bell, a life-long fan and
authority on high school basketball in Illinois, brings together for
the first time the stories of the great players, teams, and coaches
from the 1940s through the 1990s.
The book is titled for four players who
reflect the unique quality of high school basketball, and whose first
names are enough to trigger memories in fans who love the sport —
Sweet Charlie Brown, Dike Eddleman, Cazzie Russell, and Bobby Joe
Mason. Bell offers exciting accounts of their exploits, told with a
journalistic flair.
Beyond a lifetime spent covering the
sport, Bell's research includes three hundred and fifty personal
interviews with coaches, administrators, family members, and fans. He
has attended the Elite Eight finals of every boys' state basketball
tournament since 1958, and met and written about many of the most
outstanding teams, coaches, and players who helped to make Illinois
one of the most exciting arenas for high school basketball in the
United States. Sixty photographs add depth to the accounts.
By a fan, for the fans, Sweet Charlie,
Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe is the authoritative book on high
school basketball in Illinois, and will elate anyone who has thrilled
to the poignant highs and shattering lows of high school sports.
Offered by the
Illinois High School Association by special arrangement with the
University of Illinois Press.
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