The Assist: Hoops, Hope and the Game of their Lives

By IGL Alumnus and Boston Globe Staff writer Neil Swidey (A'91)

About the book:
Jack O'Brien is a high school basketball coach extreme in both his demands and his devotion. With monastic discipline, he has built a powerhouse program that wins state championships year after year while helping boys rise above the neighborhood forces pulling them down, and get to college. He does this as a white suburban guy working exclusively with black city boys who make the daily trek across Boston to attend Charlestown High School, where the last battles of the city's school desegregation wars were fought a generation ago. The Assist is a gripping, surprising story about fathers, sons, and surrogates, all confronting the narrow margins of urban life. At its center are the interwoven lives of O'Brien and two of his stars, easygoing Ridley Johnson and fierce Jason "Hood" White. The book follows Ridley and Hood on their hunt for a state title. But it also stays with them, to see how young men who seldom get second chances survive without their coach hovering over them -- and how he survives without them. A minister friend says O'Brien does the Lord's work "filling the space in these boys' lives." But O'Brien is no saint. Saints give without expecting anything in return. O'Brien needs his players and their problems as much as they need him.

Reviews:

"Neil Swidey might have started out trying to tell the tale of an exceptionally successful high school basketball team and their coach, but as he spent time with the subjects of his story, he realized that they could help him explore a much larger story. His book is about basketball, certainly, but it is also about education, race, the hypocrisy with which our games are riddled, and a collection of young men trying to figure out who they are and who they can be."
-- Bill Littlefield, Host of NPR's Only a Game

"Anyone who cares about Boston and race and hope and hoops will take heart from Neil Swidey's The Assist, in which decent kids jockey for a lucky break in a world in which decency and luck are often in short supply. Set in compact, feisty, history-haunted Charlestown, this book is a powerhouse work of literary journalism about a powerhouse basketball program and the coach who wouldn't take no for an answer."
-- Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle

For more information: theassist.net
(from PublicAffairs Publishing)

The Alray Taylor Second Chance Scholarship Fund

Inspired by the stories in The Assist, this new scholarship is designed to help promising Boston students who left college get back on track and graduate. It is named in memory of Alray Taylor, a warm-hearted former Charlestown High basketball star who was killed in 2006. Tax-deductible contributions may be made by credit card through Paypal.
www.c-townspirit.org/scholarships.htm