Beyond The Goalposts:
Junior Year
In Edna, Texas, football is more than a game.
For Matt Garrett, it is the thing everyone sees first. He is the junior captain of the Edna Cowboys, a talented linebacker, wingback, and kicker with the confidence, reputation, and swagger of a small-town superstar.
But the image Matt shows the world is not the whole story.
Behind the Friday night lights, Matt is carrying the pressure of a team, a town, and a future he is not sure he can hold together. He wants to win. He wants to protect his friends. He wants to help his senior teammates get noticed. And more than anything, he is terrified of finding out who he is if football is not enough.
As the season pushes him harder, Matt keeps hiding the pain, the fear, and the cracks beneath the surface.
Book One in the Beyond the Goalposts Series
Start with the season that made Matt Garrett a legend,
and nearly broke him in the process.
Amber Brown, the head cheerleader, is one of the few people who begins to notice.
While everyone else sees Matt’s charm and confidence, Amber starts seeing the quiet moments no one talks about. The sacrifices. The kindness. The damage he tries to cover. And in her blue spiral notebook, she begins recording the difference between the boy everyone watches and the one almost no one really sees.
Beyond the Goalposts: Junior Year is a young adult coming-of-age story about small-town football, friendship, pressure, first love, loyalty, and the cost of trying to be everything for everyone.
Read Chapter One
"As an athlete, the dream to play college ball and do something bigger, especially growing up in the hood, I was able to accomplish that. I love the small-town feel." - Marisol M.
A 1980s Texas Football Coming-of-Age Novel
Beyond the Goalposts: Junior Year is a young adult sports fiction novel set in a small Texas town where Friday night football, school rumors, friendship, pressure, and first love all collide.
If you enjoy stories like Friday Night Lights, coming-of-age football books, small-town high school drama, or character-driven YA fiction about athletes carrying the pressure of a whole town, Matt Garrett’s junior season is where the story begins.
This is a book about the burdened golden boy, the pressure of being the player everyone counts on, and the girl who starts seeing the truth behind the performance.