Did you enjoy the Olympics? We did and were inspired to create a list of sports themed teen books that are available at your library. The books are grouped by type of sport.

Baseball

Playing the Field by Phil Bildner

When seventeen-year-old Darcy Miller pretends to be a lesbian in order to play on the boys' baseball team, she must learn to battle discrimination on every playing field.

Samurai Shortstop by Alan Gratz

While obtaining a Western education at a prestigious Japanese boarding school in 1890, sixteen-year-old Toyo also receives traditional samurai training which has profound effects on both his baseball game and his relationship with his father.

Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la Peña

Sixteen-year-old Danny searches for his identity amidst the confusion of being half-Mexican and half-white while spending a summer with his cousin and new friends on the baseball fields and back alleys of San Diego County, California.

Football

Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen

High school sophomore Danny excels at gymnastics but is bullied, like the rest of the gymnasts, by members of the football team, until an emotionally and physically scarred new student joins the football team and forms an unlikely friendship with Danny.

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's past and current problems.

Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris 

Future physician Kate Grable is horrified when her high school's football coach gives team members steroids, but the drugs turn players into zombies and Kate must find an antidote before the flesh-eating monsters get to her or her friends.

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.

Swimming

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher 

Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school's less popular students.

Swim the Fly by Don Calame 

Fifteen-year-old Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Coop and Sean, always set themselves a summertime goal. This year's? To see a real-live naked girl for the first time--quite a challenge, given that none of the guys has the nerve to even ask a girl out on a date. But catching a girl in the buff starts to look easy compared to Matt's other summertime aspiration: to swim the 100-yard butterfly (the hardest stroke known to God or man) as a way to impress Kelly West, the sizzling new star of the swim team

Soccer

Soccerland by Beth Choat

Two years after her mother's death of cancer, fourteen-year-old Flora leaves the family's Maine farm for Colorado's International Sports Academy, where fierce competition could end their dream of Flora playing for U.S. Soccer.

Weregirls by Petru Popescu 

When sixteen-year-old Lily and her friends Nikki, Arielle, and Grazia start up a girl's soccer club at their South Pasadena high school and name their team The Weregirls, they soon discover some unusual things about themselves as they become drawn into the age-old struggle between good and evil.

Boxing

Fighting Ruben Wolfe by Markus Zusak

Partly because of their family's poor finances and partly to prove themselves, brothers Ruben and Cameron take jobs as fighters and find themselves reacting very differently in the boxing ring.

The Contender by Robert Lipsyte

A Harlem high school dropout escapes from a gang of punks into a boxing gym, where he learns that being a contender is hard and often discouraging work, but that you don't know anything until you try.

Running

Runner by Carl Deuker

Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk.

Crossing Jordan by Adrian Fogelin

Twelve-year-old Cass meets her new African-American neighbor, Jemmie, and despite their families' prejudices, they build a strong friendship around their mutual talent for running and a pact to read Jane Eyre.

The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.
 

Fencing

Pulling Princes by Tyne O'Connell

Hoping to become more popular at her English boarding school, fifteen-year-old Californian Calypso Kelly invents a fake boyfriend, until she realizes that her wit and skill at fencing may be enough to attract the attention of a real-life prince.

Steel by Carrie Vaughn

When Jill, a competitive high school fencer, goes with her family on vacation to the Bahamas, she's magically transported to an early-eighteenth-century pirate ship in the middle of the ocean.

Hockey

Tiger threat by Sigmund Brouwer

Hockey is Ray Hockaday's life. He has dreams of the NHL - serious dreams. Known for playing smart, he's the center for the Medicine Hat Tigers. Unfortunately his new coach seems to know his secret. Ray is scared. The brutal, physical side of hockey terrifies him, but according to the coach it's all part of the game and he better show he can handle it.

Cracking the Ice by Dave Hendrickson

In 1968, when fourteen-year-old Jessie Stackhouse wins a hockey scholarship to an elite New Hampshire boarding school, it seems the only thing standing between him and his dream of one day being the second African American to play in the National Hockey League is the bigotry of the coach, some students, and townspeople.
 

Wrestling

Pinned by Alfred C. Martino.

Dealing with family problems, girls, and their own competitive natures, high school seniors Ivan Korske and Bobby Zane face each other in the final match of the New Jersey State Wrestling Championship.
 

Addicted to Her by Janet Nichols Lynch.

After falling obsessively in love, high school wrestler Rafael Montoya must choose between a reckless young woman and responsibilities to his family and future.