Robert Lipsyte

From the PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW

Robert Lipsyte. HarperTempest, $15.99 (240p) ISBN 0-06-059946-4
Lipsyte's (The Contender) latest sports drama is a riveting and chilling look inside contemporary high school football, starring captain and wide receiver Matt Rydek. Matt's intense focus on winning a scholarship is driven in equal measure by his love of the game and his desire to escape from his maniacal father. As the novel opens, the local gym owner injects a syringe of "all-pro cocktail" into Matt's buttocks. Steroids use, however, is not the most frightening aspect of the book. The real action begins during the last week of football camp, before the start of the season. Nearmont High's coaches are excited by the arrival of Chris Marin, a talented sophomore transfer student. Less thrilled is Matt's co-captain, Ramp, a brutish homophobe, whose starting position Chris could win. On the last night of camp, the traditional hazing turns into a sexual assault, which all the seniors witness. The adults, fearing scandal, hear rumors but adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, mirroring their stance on steroid use. As co-captain, Matt knows he would risk everything—his friends, his senior season, his future, if he goes to authorities. Lipsyte exposes the underbelly of high school sports—where racism, drug use, misogyny and bullying are shrugged off so long as the team wins. Matt has a soul-crushing choice to make and Lipsyte's careful rendering of the world in which Matt moves gives his story an awful and terrifying ring of truth. Ages 14-up.

I LOVE THIS FROM RICHIE'S PICKS

After staying up until 3 AM the night before last, totally caught up in reading Robert Lipsyte's RAIDERS NIGHT, I slept a few hours and then sat down at the laptop. My first inclination was to find more about anabolic steroids and Vicodin, the two drugs being used regularly by Matt Rydeck, the Nearmont high school senior around whom the story revolves. I then proceeded to dig up some information about California's recently enacted rules on training coaches who work in high school athletic programs -- rules enacted as the result of widespread use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances by high school athletes.
But where my information gathering ultimately led me was to an exploration of hazing and ritual and the necessity of devising bonding rituals that really create community.
Central to the plot of RAIDERS NIGHT, and to what the title refers, is the final night of Nearmont High's football training camp and the "bonding" ritual inflicted each year by the senior players upon the new guys. The ritual portrayed in the story is homophobic in nature. Sadly, so I've been told, this is not an unusual attitude or occurrence in the real world.
What is unusual is that the ritual in Lipsyte's story gets out of hand when Ramp, the team Neanderthal and co-captain, graphically abuses the young transfer hotshot whose substantial talent threatens to significantly reduce Ramp's own playing time during the coming season.
Matt Rydeck is the other co-captain and the real story here involves Captain Matt's relationships and behavior in regard to his chemical intake, his teammates, his girlfriends, his parents, his developmentally disabled older brother and, of course, his abused teammate.
In SPEAK, the Michael Printz Honor book with the vital message about looking out for the welfare of all the members of one's school community, readers at first don't know what has happened to Melinda to make her call the cops, but gradually they come to learn the facts when she finally begins to let herself remember. In RAIDERS NIGHT, we see what happens to Chris (the transfer student) but don't have any idea about Chris's subsequent thoughts and behavior during the extended period of time when Matt is too confused and too caught up in the rest of his drug, girl, and parent-crazed life to do or say anything about what has befallen the kid whom he, as co-captain, should have been protecting from the Neanderthal.
As a reader of RAIDERS NIGHT, one might be tempted to blame Matt's behavior on his father's being such an a-hole -- which he truly is. But, hey, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who could spend an hour or two spewing about how so many of my own bad habits are the result of my father's misparenting or setting a bad example. The bottom line, as Matt eventually figures out, is that you are dealt what you are dealt, and the measure of a young man is who he decides he is going to be and what he decides he is going to stand for, irrespective of the influence exerted by parents (or peers).
We do need to be talking about behavior and attitudes of adults is in terms of the rituals in the lives of adolescents. We don't want to do away with rituals. What is needed instead is for adults to ensure that bonding rituals and rites of passage are positive and inclusive to the benefit of the entire group, team, or community.
RAIDERS NIGHT is one hell of a story. I'd never before read any of Robert Lipsyte's YA fiction, but am now feeling lots of admiration for the members of the Margaret Edwards Award committee who were responsible for voting Lipsyte that honor a few years ago. You can bet I'll be reading more of his books. And, no doubt, people will be hearing me speak more about RAIDERS NIGHT, both in upcoming presentations, and when the time rolls around to debate the best books of 2006.
Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com