14 Weeks

Award-winning sportswriter Richard Dunn goes deep inside the huddle, sidelines and team dinners, and years later interviewing every starter, in an extraordinary view of high school football in Newport Beach, Calif. “14 Weeks” was 14 years in the making from its inception to publication, and dazzles with quips and insights. But really it’s about people, relationships and trusting each other, as each winning week of the Sailors’ season is chronicled in the school’s first CIF championship in 1994.

The author broke bread with the players, cried with the coaches and was allowed access to the Sailors’ locker room before, at halftime and after Newport Harbor High’s CIF Southern Section championship game, in which the school won its first CIF title in 64 years of varsity football. Since the team was untested, unproven and undersized, it is billed as the most improbable High School Football Season in History as the Sailors were unbeaten, untied and unbelievable.