Lipsyte, Robert.
Raiders Night. HarperTeen, 2006. 232 pages. Tr. $12.41,
ISBN: 978-0-329-62885-7
Plot: The Nearmont Raiders are all about winning, and the
players on this football team will do anything to make that happen. Matt Rydeck,
a co-captain and top player on the team, is excited to start the new season,
especially with all of the Division One teams trying to recruit him. But he’s
doping (with his father’s support) and taking painkillers, and he’s having a
hard time keeping a lid on his emotions. Then, at camp to prep them for the new
season, a new sophomore on the team named Chris is so good that he threatens
the hostile Ramp, the other co-captain. At a camp ritual one night, a hazing
incident gets horrifically out of hand and Ramp, in front of the entire team,
sexually assaults Chris with a baseball bat. Everyone in the room is complicit
in some way, but no one tells. Matt is tormented by his knowledge. When he gets
back to school, he gets more confused and unstable every day. Tired of his
shallow relationship with his girlfriend, he meets an interesting new girl who
is outside of his typical circle. With his father completely obsessed with his
football career, all of his friends focused on the goal of winning, can Matt do
the right thing and tell? Does anyone want to hear the truth?
Critical Evaluation: A tough critique of sports culture,
this story uses the pivotal plot point at the beginning to spin the main
character out of control (already tenuous, even at the beginning). Matt is a
product of his world, one in which the football players rule, the adults are
willing to do anything to make them perform well on the field, and girls are
merely sexual treats after a hard day of juicing and working out. Lipsyte uses
Matt’s fragile state – at the beginning of the book, he’s already tired of his
girlfriend and feeling off-kilter because of the drugs -- to create a character
who is fully immersed in the world but who becomes a possible rebel. If Matt had been more stable, would he
have opened the door to a real relationship? Would he be rocked by his guilt? To
the rest of the team (including the parents and coaches here), being a rebel,
even if you’re in the right, makes you a traitor. Especially in light of the
Penn State scandal, this book seems to be an all-too-realistic look at the
insular world of a football team willing to stifle horrible truths for the sake
of a winning team.
Reader’s Annotation: When a football camp hazing incident
goes horribly wrong, will anyone break ranks to expose the truth of what
happened on Raiders Night?
Author bio: A longtime sports columnist for the New York Times, Robert Lipsyte had never
been athletic as a kid, preferring to read book. He became a copyboy at the Times and fell in love with writing
about sports. Known for writing with a political edge, he was one of the first
people to champion a young Muhammed Ali.
Deeply
critical of what he calls “SportsWorld,” a twisted, ridiculously competitive
realm of bullies who take sports too seriously, Lipsyte brings those concerns
about the bullying nature of jock culture to his writing. He has been called
the master of YA sports writing for his many books, including Raiders Night and The Contender.
Genre: Realistic Fiction.
Curriculum Ties: You could use excerpts of this book for a
unit on sports and doping. This could also be used in a psychology class to
discuss morality and going with the crowd.
Booktalking Ideas: Focus on the hazing issue. What happens
when everybody sees and no one will tell?
Talk about the Penn State cover-up and the relentless focus
on winning.
Discuss the rebel aspect. Would you do the right thing if
you knew that your whole world would be destroyed?
Talk about the portrait of the world – the doping, reverence
of sports stars.
Reading Level/Interest Age: 15+
Challenge Issues: Graphic sexual assault, sexual situations
and references, drug abuse.
Challenge Response: This book is definitely intense and
there is no way to discuss it without talking about the rape. I would definitely
talk about the fact that this book is a critique, and discuss the ripped from
the headlines parallels to real life events. Be familiar with the content of
the book and the passages that might be considered offensive. Keep positive
reviews on hand (Publishers Weekly
gave it a starred review and School Library Journal called it
“important”). One argument that
can be made for the book is that there is clearly something wrong with
competitive sports and it won’t be fixed unless we acknowledge the problem.
Why Included: I had heard that this was an important novel
that works well with struggling readers who are interested in sports.
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