Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

What a concept! Losers in letter jackets! I could show those small town jocks, those crown princes of athletics, just how much those jackets really meant!
Hi. I'm T.J. Jones, and while I love to play sports, I hate being told what to do, and that's what high school coaches do. I'd decided four years ago to go all the way through high school without one semester on any team, and I almost made it. What happened? Mr. Simet happened. He was my English teacher, one of the few folks on the faculty that I had any real respect for. In September of my senior year, he asked me for a favor. He didn't want to coach wrestling, and he'd have to unless he and I could come up with a swim team.
It sounded crazy — a swim team in a town that had only one pool, at the 24-hour health club, which wasn't even close to meeting the rules for a regulation pool, so we'd never have a home swim meet — we'd be on the road 100% of the time. I was going to turn him down — I mean, he's a great teacher and a great human being, but this was a BIG favor, when I saw something that gave me the perfect motivation.
Two of the bigger, meaner football players were hassling Chris for wearing his dead brother's letter jacket. Chris was brain-damaged, and everyone knew it, including these two lamebrains. Wearing Brian's jacket was the only way Chris could feel close to his brother. I chased them off, and then later that day, when I went by the health club and saw Chris swim with his beautiful, natural stroke, my plan burst into my head, fully formed and ready to put into play.
I'd create a swim team of the very guys the jocks hated, the ones they saw as losers, and then watch how those jocks felt when guys they'd spit on wore the same letter jackets they did! YES!
So who made the team? Chris, of course, Dan, the original multi-syllabic genius geek, Tay Roy, a bodybuilder who decided he'd rather swim, Jackie, who's so average that he's nearly invisible, Simon, who's 5'7" and almost 300 pounds, and Andy, who's terminally angry, has a major bad attitude, and walks with a limp that he's never explained. In other words, the team consisted of one real swimmer of color (I'm a mix, white/black/Japanese), two representatives from the top and bottom of the IQ curve, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a psycho. Would we succeed in yanking the chains of every jock and ex-jock in town, or go under for the last time?
Come to practice, take a ride on our team bus, and find out for yourself. We just might manage to surprise you-more than once!
(BookTalk by Joni Richards Bodart -from NoveList database)