Each member of the South Orange River seventh-grade soccer team has qualities of excellence, but not on the soccer field.

Sister Bear wants to be on the soccer team but the coach says that she is too small so he makes her team manager. But she gets tired of this and starts kicking things in anger. The coach notices what a good kicker she is and decides to put her on the team after all.

Children form teams, build a pitch, and play a joyous game of soccer, in a book with English and Creole (as spoken in Saint Lucia) vocabulary words.

"Owen loves soccer, but isn't the best at playing it. After a particularly disastrous day on the field, Owen is benched. He is feeling so low that he doesn't notice the ball rolling away from him until it's too late. In his effort to get it back, he discovers that he has more skills than he realizes"--

"Albert, a 7th grader, is abducted by aliens who recruit him to play Star Striker for their interplanetary soccer team, but it isn't until after he agrees that he discovers that someone or something is trying to kill him"--

A California earthquake is just the first in a series of chain of events that shakes Devin's confidence: she fails a test in a subject she knows well, her crush seems to have his attention on another girl, and worst of all, her soccer game is off, so now Devin, the girl who usually inspires confidence in her friends and teammates, will have to turn to them for support.

Although she is a very good soccer player, Sister Bear is not allowed to try out for the team until she is bigger, and so she signs up to be the team manager in hopes of proving herself to the coach.

In the weeks leading up to the state championship, Devin and the Kicks have many distractions, including a contest with the boys team to see who can get more fans to watch their games.

The path to victory starts on the sidelines, in this fast-paced new middle grade series from #1 New York Times bestselling sport writing powerhouse John Feinstein. Twelve-year-old Jeff Michaels, son of a Philadelphia TV sports reporter, is just learning to play soccer on the new sixth-grade team at his middle school. Andrea Carillo has fought her way onto the squad, but the coach doesn't think girls should play with boys, so she's riding the bench...

"Devin and the rest of the team must figure out who is trying to sabotage them before the playoffs start"--