First, I'd like to thank everyone who has purchased The Chosen Few, a fictional account of my senior year at St. Joseph's High School seminary, and posted a review on Amazon. In addition, for those of you who downloaded the Kindle ebook, some formatting problems from the .pdf of the Indesign file we used were corrected and the book is back up on Amazon.
One comment I noticed from a few readers is that they thought the high school soccer scenes in the novel were distracting or frustrating because they wanted to get back to the main storyline. So why did I include them in the book? Students who attended St. Joe's during the late 1960s to mid-1970s know the answer: soccer was THE sport at the school, and the teams were extremely successful even as the number of students dwindled to about 120 boys by 1971. Too small to field a football team or compete at a high level in other major sports such as baseball and basketball, the school developed a sports identity in the South Bay that revolved around soccer. In fact, the team managed to win 21 games and take home the consolation (3rd place) trophy in the CCS playoffs that same year. Looking back, that season represented quite an accomplishment when the pool of athletes to fill all the different sports teams numbered only around 60 boys.
Simply stated, soccer became part of the fabric of the school and was a huge part of my senior year. As a result, I felt I could not adequately describe the culture and flavor of the seminary at that time without including something that many of us lived and breathed from October to March, and continued to play during spring intramural season after baseball ended.
Please feel free to post comments or ask questions, and thank you again for taking the time to read The Chosen Few.