Sport as Suitor: The Presence and Disruption of Romance Tropes in Young Adult Sports Fiction

Abstract

In our current moment, sport and romance are uniting in the creation of YA sports fiction titles that are flooding the market and enjoying widespread popularity. Despite this exciting intersection between sport and romance in the world of fiction for young people, little research has been conducted on the realities and possibilities of the genre. This paper employs inductive thematic analysis to explore answers to the question: How does sport function across three current, contemporary, high-quality YA sport romances? Findings reveal how, within each text, the protagonist’s relationship with sport is initially represented as a romance trope that is, at best, idealized, and at worst, dangerous. This is followed by the introduction of a fellow teen who foments romantic interest in the protagonist, and serving as an unwitting rival, reveals the flaws and failings of the initial sporting suitor. The protagonist, now under the spell of a new love, is forced and enabled to see, confront, and redefine their relationship with sport. This paper is important in the way it invites purposeful consideration of sport and romance and their intersections in young adult literature at a time when YA sport romances abound but scholarly examination of the genre is just beginning to emerge.

1. Introduction

Within the field of young adult (YA) literature, there is a long-standing presence of YA romance novels. A sub-genre of adult popular romance and YA literature with a focus on adolescent love stories (Allen 2020), YA romance gained traction in the mid-1900s, with stories of teenage love devoid of sex, and gained increasing popularity in the 1980s, with successful series like Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley amassing significant numbers of readers and marketing interest (Cart 2010; Nilsen and Donelson 2001; A. Pattee 2011). The field also reflects a well-established tradition of YA sports fiction, and the availability of sports stories for youth is growing quickly and steadily. Popular book sellers, like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, have a designated category for popular stories of sport, and book-centered periodicals regularly feature recommended sports books for young people. In our current moment, sport and romance are uniting in the creation of sports fiction titles that are flooding the market and enjoying widespread popularity (Kitchin 2026; Simon 2024; Symons 2025). While this shift has capitalized on the interest of adult readers, particularly those seeking hockey romances, YA sports romances are now highlighted explicitly on recommended lists published by outlets like Goodreads. Despite this exciting intersection between sport and romance in the world of fiction for young people, little research has been conducted on the realities and possibilities of the genre.

A rich body of scholarship on young adult romance exists, with scholars examining such topics as the historical conservatism of the genre (e.g., Nilsen and Donelson 2001); ideological constructions and representations of gender, including masculinity (e.g., Clasen 2017; Potter 2021); explorations of desire and sexuality (e.g., Gillis and Simpson 2015; Seifert 2015; Wilson 2017), particularly adolescent feminine desire (Taylor 2014); and feminist possibilities (e.g., Aubrey et al. 2018; Parks 2023). Scholarship has broadened to include examinations of queerness in young adult romance, particularly how YA romance novels can reinscribe heteronormativity by assuming that monogamous coupling is the desired outcome for LGBTQ youth (Crisp 2009); how romantic tropes can problematize consent, limit queer possibilities, and potentially limit readers’ abilities to explore their own feelings about sex, sexuality, and romantic relationships (Caravaggio 2025); and how representations of bisexual characters forward essentialized views of bisexuality that offer bisexual teen readers little hope for acceptance or understanding (Spencer 2022). Conversely, young adult romance can serve to extend conventions of homosexual representation found in “traditional” gay-themed young adult literature and gay pornography to depict a distinctly utopian world of sexual liberation (A. S. Pattee 2008) and subvert heteronormative expectations and challenge the view that romance must be by nature conservative (Manter and Francis 2017). Additional scholarly attention to race and culture is evident in examinations of how YA romances sometimes rely on predictable tropes to manage, rather than challenge, assumptions about Asian American identity (De Jesús 2001); serve as both didactic warnings against sexual activity and spaces for questioning existing taboos (Inggs 2009); and interrogate fictional presentations of a Black asexual politic (Miles 2019). Additional recent scholarship includes work that examines how romance can surface across text types, including fanfiction (Moore and Hare 2025), and the treatment of sexual violence and rape culture in young adult romance novels (Palmer 2026).

A similarly rich body of scholarship exists relative to young adult sports fiction. Some scholars have examined constructions of gender and race in fictional representations of athletes (Glenn and King-Watkins 2020; Griffin 1985; Kriegh and Kane 1997; Kane and Pearce 2002; Mason 2014), while others have supported claims of sex bias and class-as-race ideologies in YA sports literature (Riestra-Camacho 2020). Still others have explored the presence of ideologies in sports fiction for young readers and the potential impact of these ideological assumptions on readers. Whiteside et al. (2013), for example, invited consideration of how discourses of empowerment in YA sports fiction obscure how girls are directed toward an ideology of sport that undermines their ability to experience sports on their own terms. This same theme is evidenced in Heinecken’s (2015) criticism of post-feminism as a frame of literary analysis and argument that presentations of female achievement in female-only realms suggests that because women have won the battle for equality there is no need to challenge masculine hegemony. Similar limits were identified in textual analyses conducted by Glenn and King-Watkins (2019, 2020), who build upon this latter work to examine how protagonists navigate girlhood identities when participating on historically male teams. Findings suggest that, as the fictional women athletes move into male-dominated spaces, they must reconceptualize their identities within either/or binaries that not only reaffirm gendered expectations but ignore the complicated multiplicity of identities and their associated privileges and oppressions. They struggle to navigate the culture of power (i.e., the male world of sport) successfully because they are unable to avoid internalizing the perspectives of those in positions of power. Related scholarship has also looked at the intersection of gender, race, and the athletic body. Heinecken’s (2019) examination of the Black ballerina in children’s fiction evidences how these titles both position Black ballerinas as agentic figures and as ascribing to respectability politics to fit into the world of professional ballet. More recent work in sports fiction examines titles set in non-US contexts, including India (Abish and Selvam 2025) and France (Grycan 2025), and those that feature non-competitive sporting spaces (Glenn 2023) and alternative sports, such as roller derby (Su 2025).

Scholarly attention to romance in sports fiction exists but tends to center the experiences of adults or new adults/college readers (ages 28–29) (e.g., Mulvey and Teo 2025) rather than young adults or adolescent readers. When romance emerges in the analysis of young adult texts, it is rarely the central focus. In an analysis of the YA novel Furia (Méndez 2020), for example, Glenn (2024) argues that the protagonist’s engagement with and dedication to sport invite complication of assumptions about love, particularly cultural narratives that position girls and women as bound by devotion. In the fight to maintain her athletic self despite cultural pressures to do otherwise, the central protagonist initially diminishes her non-sporting identity; there does not seem to be space for a united self across two worlds. However, when she realizes that she does not want to separate the parts that make her who she is (daughter, sister, captain, girlfriend), she understands that a rejection of cultural expectation altogether would be disingenuous. While the analysis reveals how sport provides a way for the protagonist to reconcile dual elements of the self when they conflict with culture, including the part of the self that desires an amorous relationship, the explicit entanglement of sport and romance remains less explored.

This paper is important in the way it invites purposeful consideration of sport and romance and their intersections in young adult literature at a time when YA sport romances abound but scholarly examination of the genre is just beginning to emerge. To that end, the paper employs inductive thematic analysis to explore answers to the question: How does sport function across three current, contemporary, high-quality YA sport romances?

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Text Selection

In line with the research question that guides this paper, selected texts feature stories that explore the intersection of sport and romance explicitly. To generate a manageable and intentional text set, inclusion required that selected texts be categorized as contemporary fiction (to provide a timely view of sport and romance in fiction), be published in 2025 (to examine current trends), be designated as sports romance titles (to ensure the centrality of both sport and romance), and meet a standard of high quality (and thus be more likely to be purchased and read in library and school spaces). To meet this final criterion, selected texts received at least one starred review across the primary trade journals in the field, which include Booklist, Horn Book, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. Starred reviews reflect the highest honor a book can receive in a professional trade review; starred titles are those that stand out among others. Starred review data were drawn from LaGarde and Hickson (n.d.), whose online spreadsheet tracks the most notable books published in a given year.

The text selection process involved perusal of the full spreadsheet for 2025 (approximately 471 titles with an age-level designation that included grades 9, 10, 11, and/or 12) and identification of starred titles, which were then cross-checked with Amazon to ensure that they were contemporary sports romance titles. Three novels met the full selection criteria. Leave It on the Track, by Fisher (2025), earned one starred review from Publishers Weekly. Run Like a Girl, by Egbe (2025), earned one starred review from Kirkus, and Cope Field, by Simpson (2025), earned one starred review from Kirkus.

2.2. Data Analysis

Consistent with my work as a literary theorist, the examination of these titles drew upon inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006). This allowed me to identify particular moments in each text (codes) that reflected shared ideas across the three texts (themes) in response to my research question. Although it is impossible to code data in an epistemological vacuum, this methodology is data-driven and “not wedded to any pre-existing theoretical framework” (Braun and Clarke 2006, p. 81). Given that the role of sport in romance fiction for young people has been underexplored, this approach allowed me to analyze the data with an intentionally open mind to identify emergent themes.

Relative to process, each title was read multiple times, at first to become familiar with the story itself and then to engage in reiterative analysis. Analysis began by reading each text to identify passages that evidence explicit mention of sport, romance, and interactions between the two. Using an online highlighter (for ebooks) or sticky notes (for print books), these passages were noted and then copied or transcribed into a Word document. I then engaged in a process of open coding by (re)reading the passages and capturing my thinking in the form of marginal notes. Examples of initial codes that emerged through this work included but were not limited to: protagonists’ struggles/tensions with sport, influence of adults in connection with sport, roles of romantic partners, romance tropes, and shifts in thinking/action in connection with sport. I then looked across these codes and the associated passages to determine which were supported deeply by textual evidence across the three titles and collapsed these into themes that reflect the big ideas common to the text set and in alignment with my research question. Some codes or concepts were discarded because they were not well-substantiated across the three titles (e.g., evidence to suggest that parent–child relationships influenced romantic expectations and actions did not exist across all three titles). The resulting themes are evidenced in the exploration of each title below.

3. Results

In this section, I explore the themes that emerged from the analysis and offer answers to my research question: How does sport function across three current, contemporary, high quality YA sport romances? I argue that, within each text, the protagonist’s relationship with sport is initially represented as a romance trope that is, at best, idealized, and at worst, dangerous. This is followed by the introduction of a fellow teen who foments romantic interest in the protagonist, and serving as an unwitting rival, reveals the flaws and failings of the initial sporting suitor. The protagonist, now under the spell of a new love, is forced and enabled to see, confront, and redefine their relationship with sport.

3.1. Hipchecking Prince Charming

In Leave It on the Track (Fisher 2025), sixteen-year-old Morgan, a queer teen, relocates from Moab, Utah, to Portland, Oregon, to live with her estranged sister. In Morgan’s story, sport, namely roller derby, initially takes the form of Prince Charming, swooping in unannounced to try and save her from the grief resulting from the death of her two fathers in a fire at a local roller rink, as well as challenges to physical recovery following smoke inhalation. Morgan’s sister, Eden, introduces her to roller derby in hopes of giving her an emotional outlet and sense of community as she works through her sadness. Morgan reluctantly agrees to give it a try and is at first smitten by this new relationship. In her first visit to the indoor track where she sees roller derby skaters in action, she is in awe, thinking to herself, “I’ve spent practically my whole life at the roller rink in Utah, but I’ve never seen skating like this. Some of them move like Olympic weightlifters on wheels, slamming a shoulder or a hip into someone else so hard that they go sliding across the track. Some are like water, threading themselves easily between the other skaters and ducking out of hits impossibly fast” (p. 29). As she begins participation in the sport, it seems to provide the joy, satisfaction, and sense of possibility she has been missing. In the shower following a brutal practice that results in bruises, deep lumps, and tender spots, Morgan inventories the damage: “My muscles are sore, but a satisfying sore. I worked for this. These are wounds and scrapes I can learn to control… I move my hands up my own shoulders and let my fingers rest on my collarbone, thumbs on either side of the trach scar I’ve never touched. I close my eyes, take a breath, and move one thumb along the curve of the scar, feeling each ridge and bump. Maybe I can learn to control this one, too” (pp. 131–32).

Despite the bliss that roller derby provides, Morgan’s grief festers, manifesting in repeated panic attacks. When she receives a text from one of her dad’s best friends who checks in to see how she is doing, she is unable to breathe. As she describes in the moment, “I try to take a breath, but my lungs are constricted again, like I can’t pull in enough air to satisfy them. I try again, but it just makes my breath faster. My trach scar feels thick and heavy on my neck, like a leech I can’t pull off, exposed to everyone. My vision tunnels as I stare at the text, thumb shaking” (p. 143). The same panic returns before Morgan’s first roller derby bout in front of a large audience and again during a tournament bout, when Eden chooses not to play Morgan, who refuses to accept the decision. Morgan insists, but Eden persists, and the sisters have a locker room argument that leaves them both saying things they regret. Morgan decides that Eden does not want her around and flees, catching a train back to Moab and finding herself on the stoop of her childhood home, now for sale, and eventually at the site of the burned-out roller rink where she breaks down emotionally. She explains, “The gravity of it hits me then. I had Dads, then I didn’t. I had the rink, then I didn’t. I had Eden and Mercury and Carmen and Powerhouse and the Hot Shots and roller derby. And now I don’t… My fingers slide down the chain link as I go down on my knees into the ground, the tears coming” (pp. 285–86). Roller derby provides an important distraction from the loss of her fathers and the life they had together, but it is insufficient in replacing them or addressing Morgan’s underlying feelings.

Morgan’s relationship with sport is influenced by her relationship with Mercury, her Korean American roller derby teammate, whose arrival in Morgan’s life brings a different romantic element into the story, one that competes with the affections of roller derby. Morgan finds Mercury talented and beautiful, and their flirtatious interactions on the track reveal physical attraction. Morgan cares that Mercury thinks she is a good skater, someone who can play jammer, a notoriously challenging position, and she is thrilled when Morgan gives her a jersey and tells her that she is part of the team. Similar to roller derby, Mercury offers Morgan joy, satisfaction, and a sense of possibility. In a particularly intimate moment, Morgan tells Mercury that she thinks she is done wearing the scarf she regularly dons to hide her trach scar. Later that night, Morgan recalls what happened next: “I doze off, half sleeping, half thinking about Mercury’s touch on my face, the way her lips parted and her eyes softened as her thumb almost touched my scar. No revulsion, no morbid curiosity, just… softness” (p. 153).

And yet, Morgan’s relationship with Mercury offers Morgan something more, something that roller derby alone cannot: the emotional tools to grieve and heal. When Morgan experiences the panic attack in response to the text from her father’s best friend, Mercury not only names the experience for what it is but gives Morgan the tools to work through it, holding her hand and telling her to identify and name five things she can see, four things she can touch, two things she can smell, and one thing she can taste, a strategy Morgan’s counselor later affirms as excellent. When Morgan’s panic emerges before her first roller derby bout, Mercury goes to her in the locker room and reminds her that she is in control, that “it’s up to [her] to skate” (p. 198), empowering Morgan to take action. When Morgan struggles to perform on the track and begins to doubt herself, eye contact with Mercury sends “sudden calm” radiating through her (p. 202). Most significantly, when Morgan runs away and experiences her lowest low outside the burnt-out roller rink in Moab, Mercury comes for her, explaining, “I didn’t come here to get our third jammer back. I came here for you. To bring you home” (p. 288).

Roller derby allows Morgan space away from her sadness, but Mercury gives Morgan a new source of happiness—and a redefined view of sport itself. After Morgan allows Mercury to drive her back to Portland, the roller derby team earns a hard-fought third-place tournament finish. Despite the noise of the celebration—the announcer, the crowd—Morgan centers on what is now most important, realizing, “Mercury is there, laughing through the tears streaking through the glitter on her face. I pull her toward me, and I kiss her, not caring about the sweat or the glitter or the screams around us, not caring that our helmets clunk together and both of us are shaking. All that matters is that I’m here, and I feel alive” (p. 314). At its fullest, roller derby is both a sport and more than a sport; it is connection and community and belonging.

3.2. Championing a Forbidden Love

At the outset of Run Like a Girl (Egbe 2025), sport is positioned as the central object of high school junior Dera Edwards’ devoted affection. As she explains, “[r]unning track wasn’t just a hobby to me; it was the one thing I unequivocally excelled in. My [former] coach had regularly talked me up, claiming I could make it to Nationals or Worlds. Even the Olympics. My mouth went dry whenever I thought of the O-word and how badly I wanted to make it there” (p. 25). Given financial hardships faced by her mother, Dera moves in with her estranged Nigerian father, a wealthy surgeon who lives in a predominantly white suburb of Dallas, and attends a well-funded school, but one that no longer hosts a girls’ track team. When she learns this news, Dera is devastated, “her stomach curling in anxious knots” (p. 88), out of fear that this reality will necessarily result in a breakup with the sport she loves so much. However, her passion prevails, and after conversations with counselors and coaches, and pointed reference to Title IX, Dera secures approval to train with the boys’ team and keep her love alive.

Dera’s relationship with sport is complicated by her relationship with her father. Dera has spent her formative years living with her mother and thus knows little about her father. She assumes that he neither likes her nor cares about her, saying, “My parents hated each other, and my dad likely hated me” (p. 10). He had “already canceled his daughter subscription” (p. 13), failing to remember her birthday year after year. Given her father’s persistent lack of interest in her life, Dera is frustrated but not entirely surprised to learn that he disapproves of sport as her suitor, believing that participation on the team is neither essential nor appropriate. He tells her that her plan to earn college scholarships through sport is unnecessary, as he has the funds to cover tuition (pp. 56–57). When he learns that she will train with the boys’ team, he expresses his disapproval, telling her, “This isn’t appropriate, Chidera. A young lady shouldn’t be gallivanting around in that sort of environment” (p. 97). Dera persists in her committed relationship with sport despite her father’s opposition, hoping that she can convince him to value something that she holds dear—and perhaps come to value her, too. She recommits herself fully to her sport, to not “just running but competing. Winning” (p. 166). She will prove her love for sport to her father in hopes that he might love her.

Although their relationship is fraught from the start, with time, Dera’s father, with the encouragement of his new girlfriend, makes some effort to understand her passion. He buys her a new pair of running shoes in anticipation of the state qualifying meet, telling her, “I wanted to do something nice, to let you know that I only ever want the best for you” (p. 798). Beyond this financial offering, he agrees to attend her meet to finally see her do the thing that holds such a central place in her heart. These actions, signaling her father’s growing approval of Dera’s relationship with sport, however, become tenuous when, at a family dinner following the competition, Dera learns that her father, when making the decision to abandon the family, told Dera’s mother that their relationship and Dera were both mistakes. Dera’s assumptions that he did not and does not really care about her are affirmed. While Dera is hopeful that she is wrong and that her father will attend her final meet the next day, she scans the stands and finds him absent. She finishes a successful race but feels a deep disappointment: “I felt claps on my back and the happy jostles from my teammates. But satisfaction didn’t course through me. Accomplishment didn’t swell in my chest or lift my chin skyward. I felt nothing. No, that wasn’t true. Beneath the lack of adrenaline, I felt sadness. It pressed so hard against me, it almost drove me to my knees. I needed to escape it” (p. 501). Her father’s persistent unwillingness to accept her love of sport detracts from her ability to love it herself.

In contrast to Dera’s father, Gael Garcia, her Afro-Latino teammate and eventual romantic interest, positions and celebrates Dera as an athlete from the start and regularly thereafter, recognizing and affirming her love for sport. At a scrimmage meet early in the season, for example, a member of another boys’ team questions Dera’s right to participate, telling her, “But the girls’ scrimmage was last week. You can’t just come here and–” (p. 148). Before he can finish, Gael steps to Dera’s side, puts his arm onto her shoulder, and with a frosted stare, tells the naysayer, “She’s one of us” (p. 148). After the encounter, Dera asks Gael if he meant it, to which he replies, “Well, yeah. I’ve seen how hard you work in practice. I don’t doubt that after today, the coaches will make you an official member of the team. You’re talented” (p. 149). Gael respects sport as a worthy rival in his relationship with Dera. He is clearly attracted to her, shows concern for her when she expresses nerves before a meet, and reveals his vulnerability about his challenging relationship with his own father in ways that create intimate connection and grounds for a romantic relationship, but he does not aim to outwit, conquer or deny the sport that Dera loves. He understands that she will not (and should not) compromise her passion for sport as she opens herself to something new.

Beyond supporting her athletic identity, Gael also supports Dera in redefining her relationship with sport, helping her rethink her need for paternal validation. When Dera, overcome with sadness over her father’s absence, runs away from the track following her race, Gael finds her and tells her, “I’m not going to leave you like this” (p. 501). She responds, “I’m used to people abandoning me” (p. 501), giving him permission to walk away. But Gael, unlike Dera’s father, asks her to walk with him instead. Dera reveals to Gael the sadness and loss she feels in this moment, explaining, “I just started to think that things would be different. That maybe I could get him to like me. I should’ve known better. But I need to talk to him; I need to sort this out once and for all—now.” Gael affirms her sadness but reminds her about the meet and her passion for track, telling her, “You’ve gotta finish, Dera. It’s your dream,” assuring her that even if her father is not there, her friends, her mom, and her teammates are. “You’ve got me, too,” he adds (p. 506). Dera realizes that Gael genuinely supports her and has been standing beside her for months and that “while trusting people’s words had been a bit scary for me due to my past with Dad, Gael had more than shown me that he meant everything he said, that he actually cared about me” (p. 524). Hand in hand, Dera and Gael return to the stadium so Dera can finish what she started—but this time with the recognition that she does not need her father’s approval to love her sport.

3.3. Ejecting the Abuser

In Cope Field (Simpson 2025), sport initially represents an abusive partner, physically and emotionally harming Crawford, a white high school student growing up in a small town in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Crawford, a talented baseball player, refers to the indoor practice space his father built behind the house as the “Baseball Dungeon” (p. 23) and views baseball solely as an avenue for winning, impressing the scouts, and being offered a professional contract right out of high school. When describing his relationship with baseball, Crawford explains, “[B]aseball is as intertwined with my being as my own skin. To imagine never playing baseball again is to imagine pulling out my own guts.” But when asked, “Does baseball make you happy?”, Crawford calls this a trick question and chooses not to answer (p. 100). Crawford’s complicated relationship with sport is inexorably tied to his father’s own athletic experiences, his abusive behavior toward Crawford and Crawford’s younger brother, and the singular outcome of performance he holds for his sons. Crawford’s initial relationship with baseball (rather than the sport itself) is harmful given how it is influenced by his father’s history and expectations. A former Major League Baseball pitcher, Hunter Cope is known widely and appreciatively as “the boy from the backwoods of Arkansas who made it through to The League” (p. 11). Across town, Pops is revered and celebrated, and the assumption is that Crawford will follow in his footsteps, winning the state championship, “[j]ust like we did when Hunter was slinging for us” (p. 15).

His father strives to make Crawford tough and talented, but his methods are deeply problematic and place dangerous demands on Crawford. After over 50 pitches and a less than perfect performance on the mound, Pops demands that Crawford return to the Baseball Dungeon and throw one hundred more pitches, despite the daily maximum pitch count of 100 in a high school game, a rule put in place to minimize overuse and permanent damage. Crawford feels obligated to obey his father and suffers pain as a result: “I sling another, pain firing electric all the way to the tips of my fingers, leaving them numb. The ball flies straight through the strike zone and smacks the backstop. I double over, holding my arm” (p. 116). Crawford’s participation in his father’s version of baseball results in physical injury—and has come with emotional injury for several years. Crawford remembers, for example, a little league game when he was eight years old. Feeling an uncontained excitement to score, Crawford failed to tag up at third base on a fly ball. After he was called out, Pops started yelling, “[s]lobber flying from this mouth like a rabid pit bull,” and Crawford started crying, “because I was small. And he was red-hot angry” (p. 51). In response, Pops yelled, “Get this crybaby off the field” (p. 51). Although the memory upsets Crawford, he justifies his father’s behavior, claiming, “He did it because he loves me. Because he expects the best out of me. Because he knows that I can do better than all the other kids. And if I had made excuses about how it’s just little league, then in a few years, I’d be saying it’s just high school ball, and that kinda attitude cannot be in the mind of a professional baseball player” (p. 51).

Hannah, a local, white, punk rock-loving non-athlete, serves as both a romantic rival and foil to baseball, disrupting Crawford’s abusive relationship with sport by compromising his athletic performance. In a conversation with his young brother, Sutton, Crawford reveals that he thinks about Hannah often—and regularly during baseball. Sutton, incredulous, asks, “You mean to tell me this girl is on your mind so much you can’t practice right?” (p. 92). After she attends one game, he hopes he will see her again. At a game in which the team is down two runs, Crawford’s coach looks to him to turn things around. But Crawford looks to the stands. When he realizes Hannah’s absence, he hurls several pitches at Luis, his catcher, noting, “[A]ll of them popping off my fingers wrong. Flying wild. Or with not enough heat” (p. 110). Even though his singular attention should be on this moment in the game—and the consequences of a poor performance are significant to his future and his father—Crawford cannot shake his thoughts of Hannah. He says, “There is a quiet place I go when I am about to pitch. A silent meadow in my head. Tune out the noise. Tune out the distraction. Focus. Only this time, there’s Hannah in that meadow. There is Hannah every time I close my eyes” (p. 112). The result is a wild pitch followed by another that leads to a home run by the opposing team. Crawford cannot be with Hannah and be successful in playing his sport in line with his father’s pursuits. And by extension, Crawford cannot have Hannah unless he confronts his father’s abuse, which is intricately bound up with his relationship with sport. When Crawford makes the decision to speak his truth, it is Hannah’s voice he hears. He describes the moment before he reveals his father’s actions to the community: “Everything in my head is buzzing, saying, This was a mistake. You should not have done this. But another voice is there, too. Whispering beneath the buzz. Speak your truth. I say it in my head over and over again. Say it until it’s the only voice I can hear… I close my eyes. I picture her. Our foreheads touching in my truck. The driving rain. Her saying to me, Tell somebody. Even if you can’t tell me. Tell somebody. Okay, Hannah. Okay” (p. 214).

In connection with these disruptions, Hannah helps Crawford redefine his relationship with sport to reflect his own vision as opposed to the one forwarded by his father. Hannah does not like Crawford because of his skill in baseball and tells him explicitly, “I like talking to you, Crawford. That’s all I need from you. I don’t need you to win baseball games… I just need you to listen to me when I talk. And I need you to reciprocate” (p. 89). When he talks with Hannah about baseball, Crawford finds himself saying “the realest things he’s said in his entire life” (p. 100). Hannah reaffirms his willingness to open up, telling him that he makes baseball “sound beautiful. Like a poem” (p. 100). Hannah helps Crawford see that he is more than an athlete, a pawn of his father, or a savior for his team. As the teens get to know one another better in connection with a shared service project to fix up an old baseball diamond for the community, she tells him, “I never thought I’d like being around a baseball boy so much.” He responds, “There’s a lot more to me than baseball,” to which she says, “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say to you.” (p. 140). These initial seeds sprout and grow when Crawford’s father is arrested, resulting in healthier and happier constructions of sport. Crawford realizes that there is fun to be had in baseball, that “The one thing I forgot about baseball is the whole point… This game has been pressed into me like a hundred thousand stones. In the world of Hunter Cope, fun was never the point. But I am starting to realize something about Pops… He got it wrong. He got a whole hell of a lot wrong” (p. 199). Near the novel’s conclusion, given a strong win record over the season, Crawford’s baseball team continues to move forward toward the state championship. Crawford simultaneously continues to feel the pressure to win. But this time, he approaches his sporting journey differently, saying, “I try and not dwell on it. Because I still have games to win. Pitches to throw. Teammates to not let down. But bad news: It’s impossible to tune out. Maybe being a good pitcher is not about tuning out the world. Maybe it’s doing what needs to be done regardless of what else is going on. Maybe that’s everything. Work. Relationships. Life. You show up. You sling pitches. You win. You lose. You keep showing up” (p. 220). This new approach allows Crawford to let go of the unhealthy responsibilities he has shouldered. Before the big game, he takes time to engage with what he believes is essential, Hannah: “I kiss her. Because damn right, I kiss her. Coach is yelling behind me. The whole stadium waiting for this thing to start. Wacky organ music blaring. The smell of popcorn. Hot dogs. The entire afternoon hanging on the prospect of baseball. But me? I got more important things” (p. 249).

4. Discussion

Across these titles, romance tropes are present, as expected within the romance genre, but manifest in unconventional ways. Sport itself takes on the role of suitor, with each title offering a distinct representation of the beloved. The archetypal resemblance of roller derby to Prince Charming in Leave It on the Track offers an idealized solution to Morgan’s grief. Roller derby comes into her life unexpectedly, sweeps her off her feet, and provides an attractive, exciting, and alluring distraction from the hurt that comes with loss and recovery. The characterization of track as a forbidden love in Run Like a Girl positions sport as an opponent to Dera’s father in the quest for Dera’s attention. Track, although deemed unacceptable by her father, has made a successful play for Dera’s heart; continued pursuit of sport, however, asks her to risk losing any chance of earning her father’s validation. The representation of baseball as the abuser in Cope Field parallels the abuse that Crawford experiences at the hands of his father. Baseball, like his father, is controlling, violent, and coercive, and Crawford returns again and again to play the game despite the harm it brings.

Sport as suitor in these three forms, however, fails to provide the protagonists what they need to heal and grow as young people, a coming-of-age element common to young adult literature more broadly. Across titles, these suitors are supplanted in the protagonists’ lives by the arrival and influence of a romantic peer who offers something more. Albeit fun, Morgan’s initial relationship with roller derby cannot help her address her deeply seated emotions. That requires the love and patient support of Mercury. Dera’s attempts to negotiate relationships with track and her father prove futile. It is Gael who helps her see that she does not need her father’s approval to love track and to feel loved. Crawford’s persistent willingness to serve baseball in ways that hurt him is disrupted only through Hannah’s persistent belief in him and encouragement to use his voice to speak up. Although these initial suitors step (or are thrust) aside, sport does not disappear from the protagonists’ lives. Instead, their relationships with sport are redefined in ways that extend well beyond romance tropes. Morgan hipchecks Prince Charming, bumping him aside to allow for discovery and celebration of the communal experience of roller derby that fuels her heart in essential ways. Dera rejects her father’s authority and champions track, eliminating the opposition and embracing her sport, ultimately giving herself permission to choose what (and who) she loves. Crawford ejects his father’s version of baseball from the park, rekindling his joyful love of the sport and refusing to allow it to consume him in the face of other interests.

Such redefinitions of the protagonists’ relationships with sport—from those constrained by trope to those that honor the unique needs of the protagonists—suggest both disruption and complexity that perhaps extend the possibility and potential of romance in sports fiction. Romances, including sports romances, regularly draw upon familiar conventions and constructions to frame the stories they tell (Caravaggio 2025; De Jesús 2001). Readers might encounter a ‘rivals to lovers’ tale that brings together two athletes from opposing teams who, despite intense competition and associated antagonism, fall in love. Or readers might experience a ‘brother’s best friend’ book, in which the protagonist falls for the team’s star player, who also happens to be the sibling of the protagonist’s best friend. These tropes (and others) abound in romance fiction and create for readers a sense of predictability and comfort that love will win in the end, an essential element of romance.

The titles analyzed here seem to accomplish the same romantic goal in a different way. Although love wins, rather than leaning into romance tropes to develop recognizable patterns and plots for readers, these YA sport romances rewrite the expected to reveal something that feels more organic, more genuine somehow. This is not to say that sports romances that more closely follow the formula are inherently less engaging or valuable. It is notable, however, that despite the rush of YA sports romances currently available to readers (Kitchin 2026; Simon 2024; Symons 2025), only three met the criterion of quality used in this study, having received at least one starred review. Perhaps more typical stories of sport and romance enjoy greater marketability but fail to catch the eyes of reviewers. It is important to note, however, that these titles run the risk of reaffirming romantic coupling as normative and necessary for the protagonists’ development and advance saving narratives that reinscribe assumptions about the need for rescue in a romantic relationship. In order to redefine their relationship with sport to reflect something more positive, the protagonists must enter into a romantic relationship, one that allows their partner to help them see and pursue sport in a new way; this shift can only be accomplished through the support of this romantic other. Although innovative and progressive in many ways, the novels remain instantiated in potentially troubling elements of more traditional romance literature.

5. Conclusions

Given scarce scholarship on the intersection of romance and sport in young adult fiction in a time when such titles are widely and increasingly available, this paper opens a conversation about the possible affordances and limitations of the genre. It demonstrates how a set of contemporary, recently published, high-quality YA texts evidences both the presence and disruption of romance tropes that invite new ways of conceptualizing relationships with sport, suggesting how the infusion of romance conventions within sporting spaces can provide a potential contribution unique to YA sports romances. Such a contribution feels particularly important for youth readers who are likely newer at navigating romantic relationships than adults readers of sports romance more generally. Further scholarship might extend this work through examination of differing text sets, including sport romance titles written and published in the pulp fiction tradition, or with particular lenses of analysis in place (e.g., representations of gender, race, and/or class in YA sports romance; portrayals of adult figures, including coaches, parents, and others in YA sports romance; or ideological assumptions about whether romance and sport are compatible). Romantic relationships and sporting experiences are regular features in the lives of many adolescents. Envisioning and analyzing how these come together in fiction can provide readers stories that resonate, educate, and inspire.