Girl Sports: Hoop Girlz by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

River Borowitz-Jacobs has a long name, but she's short for a basketball player. Still, because she plays in the same gym where Emily Hargraves, WNBA's Most Valuable Player, learned the sport, she dreams of someday growing into a star. When River learns that the MVP of the playoffs in her league will get a scholarship to Emily's summer basketball camp, she knows she has to make the A-Team and catch Hargraves' eye.

But in the tryouts, intimidated by the former NBA coach and his smooth, mega-tall daughter's shooting skills, she freezes in the clutch, dooming herself to a B-Team slot. River despairs of ever getting the chance to show off her real skills. Their "coach" is a mom who makes great cookies but has never picked up a basketball, and the B-Team looks hopeless, with one player who's always on her cell phone, one terrified to shoot whenever she gets a pass, and one in a wheelchair! There are five players only if they let somebody's fourth-grade sister play. And to make things worse, they can only practice on an outdoor court--in Oregon, where it rains, ALL THE TIME!

But when the A-Team coach points out that the B-team needs her leadership, River digs in and begins to show what she's got. She changes the team name to Hoop Girlz. She recruits her older brother to coach and they come up with a dry place to practice--even if it is the ballroom of the town's notorious haunted mansion. When her point-playing friend quits the A-team and lines up with the Hoop Girlz, River at least has five sixth-grade starters and a fighting chance at the playoff game. Coach Glover told her she had to want to play, totally want to win, and now River does.

"Basketball is a metaphor for life," Coach Glover said.... "You win some, you lose some," and River is about to learn a lot about both.

In Hoop Girlz Lucy Bledsoe has written a fast-moving sports story with plenty of game action, but also a thoughtful story about an eleven-year-old who begins to grow up when she takes her future, along with her basketball, into her own hands.