Wrestling With Tradition

Wrestling with Tradition

This novel is a wonderful story that will grab fans of sports. It is not just a tale about a hero; it is the story of a community. It explores how a sporting activity can keep a community together. Dale Stopperan creates dialogues that are wonderful and features the kind of banter that reflects the world of the characters. The prose is gorgeous and sprinkled with vivid descriptions. Focused and well-crafted scenes, exciting dialogues, action, and emotionally rich characters are a few of the elements that elevate the quality of this narrative, turning it into a gripping story.

Tom Kilmer replaced the retiring legendary wrestling coach in a small Iowa town recognized for its deep winning tradition. In a community where winning on the wrestling mat had become a family trait, transitioning to a new coach would not come easy, and losing would be difficult to accept. In the coach's first year, the tradition came crashing down on the Cresco Spartans, who suffered their first losing season in twenty-eight years. The coach understood how the physical aspect of growing up working on a farm contributed to the brutal and mental toughness of being a successful wrestler. But as the wrestlers and their families struggled through personal tragedies, they found themselves depending on the young coach and his wife for support. Would his relationships with his wrestlers be enough to pull his team together before the weight of the tradition becomes too much?
This creatively written novel presents readers with an inside perspective of the life within a successful high school wrestling program in the early 1970s, displaying how the athletes, coaches, and those around them interacted, grew and dealt with adversity. Sports enthusiasts and supporters, young and old, will resonate with many of the experiences and situations that the characters find themselves within as they develop team cohesiveness in a totally individual sport.