Beyond Winning

In Beyond Winning, S. S. Hanna profiles the birth and adventures of Geneva College's women's soccer team, and in so doing universalizes the experiences of other college teams throughout the United States. Written from the point of view of the head coach, Beyond Winning follows the team's debut season from its early practice sessions to its last game. Laced with humor, irony, tension, characterization, and dialogue, this highly entertaining book goes to the practice fields, the games, the classrooms, the family dinner table, the coach's office, the field house, the campus snack bar, and on road trips to neighboring colleges. In addition to sketching the team's adventures, Hanna comments on important issues in women's and men's sports, with particular reference to Title IX and gender equity, "jockships" versus scholarships, winning and losing, recruiting and participation at the varsity level, and the wisdom of men coaching women. Hanna's book will engage a wide audience because it is written not only from the perspective of an athlete (Hanna played and coached college football) but also from the perspective of a scholar, a professor of English, and a published writer of comic prose.