The South Orange River (S.O.R.) School is big on sports and famous for not losing a game all season. That all changes when the school insists that some seventh-grader non-jocks form a soccer team. The new team is sure that losing their first game 32-0 will put an end to their athletic adventure, but no such luck. Their parents insist they try harder. The whole school cheers them on, and they finally score . . . for the other team. And only the eleven members of the S.O.R. Losers team know the secret of their outstanding “success.”

Behind the Book

Avi writes:

As noted in the entry for Bright Shadow, I am often asked “How long does it take you to write a book?” The answer is, about a year. But it can vary. A lot. SOR Losers took me one day to write. It has never happened before, or since, and I don’t think it’s likely to happen again. How did it happen in this book? When I was in high school I played on our school soccer team. I was goalie. We were terrible. How terrible? We never won a game. My own kids—who had become good soccer players—loved to hear how bad their dad—me—was. So I told them many a story about how we always managed to lose. They thought it very funny.

One day I decided to write it all up as a novel. Since I had—in a way—practiced telling the tale of our terrible team so often, it just flowed out, game by game—in one day.