The Pride of the Panthers

Gil Gibbs is a middle-school hockey player of promising talent. In his hometown of Port Royal, Maine, Gil's teammates have always been his best friends, and as a youth league player, his father has always been his coach. He loves his town and the people in it, but when Gil has an opportunity to play for the elite Price School in New Hampshire, he finds that he must change some aspects of his game in order to keep his spot; and more importantly, he faces ethical dilemmas that test the limitations of his understanding of right and wrong. Gil's adaptation to the New England prep school scene is a faltering one, but ultimately he begins to find his niche. Then, with a successful season in the making, and a budding friendship with Rocky, the team's captain, Gil catches his mysterious and charismatic new buddy in the act of academic cheating, in which he is also implicated. Although Gil has little control over the events that follow this disaster, he learns that he must look inward to seek the values that matter most to him and can carry him through a critical time in his young life. The Pride of the Panthers is the story of a boy's journey to an unknown place, where his potential friends and rivals are equally veiled in shadow, but the lure of the hockey arena, glowing like a great jewel, is irresistible for a young athlete, for at this level, the action on the ice, described here in vivid detail, is thrilling. In this short novel for young readers, Gil Gibbs wrestles with questions that are complicated by his competitiveness and ambition: Should he sacrifice his own morals, to any degree, in order to gain an edge in the hockey hotbed which is the Price School for Boys? How can he sustain his loyalty to his working-class family and his childhood friends in the face of his high-powered new peer group? And finally, where should he draw the line between his love for a game and his faithfulness to the clear-cut morals that have been ingrained in him by the place he loves the most? Gil must work hard - perhaps even harder than he has ever had to work in any hockey practice - to find the answers.