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WORK TITLE: The Rebounders
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1990?
WEBSITE: https://www.amandaottaway.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1990.
EDUCATION:Davidson College, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Courthouse News, Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn courts reporter. International Women’s Media Foundation, reporting fellow; Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Washington, DC, on staff; Girls Write Now mentor, 2017-18.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Washington City Paper, VICE, the Nation, espnW, Charlotte Magazine, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. has contributed poetry to several anthologies.
SIDELIGHTS
Amanda Ottaway is a journalist. She graduated from North Carolina’s Davidson College, where she was on a full scholarship for women’s basketball. Ottaway has contributed articles to a number of periodicals, including Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Washington City Paper, VICE, the Nation, espnW, Charlotte Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and has also contributed poetry to several anthologies. From 2017 to 2018, Ottaway served as Girls Write Now mentor. She is a reporting fellow for International Women’s Media Foundation and has also worked at Washington, DC’s Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Ottaway published her first book, The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey, in 2018. The memoir covers her experience as a player in college basketball’s Division I and offers a portrait of many of the issues she and her teammates faced. Ottaway discusses team recruitment, practice routines, intrateam rivalries and competition, as well as other concerns, such as body image and eating disorders. Ottaway also covers the social side of college sports, including the partying and drug use. Ottaway also looks into the hypocrisy of male coaches in women’s basketball but no obvious examples of the reverse scenario.
In an interview in SB Nation, Ottaway explained her writing process for this book. She recalled: “It was hard work and also the most fun I’ve ever had working. I read a lot about the history of women’s basketball, at Davidson in particular. College archivist Jan Blodgett helped me so much with the research; librarians are the best! Then I spent five weeks driving around the country interviewing my teammates where they live now, puzzling together our memories of our college experience. I kept a pretty regular 9-6ish writing schedule every day, six or seven days a week, for the year I wrote the manuscript.”
Booklist contributor Wes Lukowsky called Ottawan a “fine writer.” Lukowsky claimed that she shows “both compassion and insight throughout this story of one woman’s coming-of-age as an athlete.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly opined that “Ottaway is certainly an affable and trustworthy guide but readers will be left wanting more.” In a review in the Sport in American History website, Murry Nelson commented that “this is hardly a book that will add much to sport history, but it is an enjoyable account of women working hard at Division I basketball and one ends the book happy to have shared Ottaway’s journey.” Nelson called Ottaway “an easy writer to read.” Writing in Christian Science Monitor, Ross Atkin claimed that it is “told from an interesting perspective.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Ottaway, Amanda, The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2018.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2018, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Rebounders, p. 10.
Christian Science Monitor, March 22, 2018, Ross Atkin, review of The Rebounders.
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of The Rebounders, p. 76.
ONLINE
Amanda Ottaway website, https://www.amandaottaway.com (June 20, 2018).
SB Nation, https://www.downthedrive.com/ (March 5, 2018), Clayton Trutor, “Conversations with Clayton: Amanda Ottaway.”
Sport in American History, https://ussporthistory.com/ (June 2, 2018), Murry Nelson, review of The Rebounders.
ABOUT
Amanda Ottaway is an author and journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Washington City Paper, VICE, The Nation, espnW, Charlotte Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and a few poetry anthologies. She is an International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) reporting fellow and a 2017-2018 Girls Write Now mentor. She is currently the Brooklyn courts reporter, covering the Eastern District of New York, for Courthouse News. Previously she worked at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C.
Amanda grew up in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and received her Bachelor’s degree in English from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. She attended Davidson on a full scholarship for women’s basketball.
Her first book, The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey, is out now from the University of Nebraska Press. She is represented by literary agent Laurie Abkemeier of DeFiore and Company.
Amanda lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Conversations with Clayton: Amanda Ottaway
Author of The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey.
By Clayton Trutor Mar 5, 2018, 8:15am EST
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Photo by Jason O'Brien/Getty Images
For this week’s edition of “Conversations with Clayton,” I interviewed Amanda Ottaway, author of a fantastic new memoir entitled The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey.
The book describes Ottaway’s experiences as an average Division I women’s college basketball player in the 21st century. She played at Davidson College and has since become an accomplished and widely-published journalist.
In our interview, Ottaway and I discuss her writing process for the book, relocating from Pennsylvania to the South for college, and her all-time starting five, which includes a well-known Davidson alum with whom she would play pickup basketball.
Clayton Trutor (CT): When did it first strike you that you wanted to write about your experiences as a Division 1 college basketball player?
Amanda Ottaway (AO): During the recruiting process I couldn’t find much reading material on what I was experiencing, even though I knew I wasn’t alone. So all through college I kept notes on the experience, but the idea of writing a book about it was kind of an abstract dream at that point. Every time I called my parents in college to talk about basketball they’d say, “Write it down and put it in your book someday.” So I took that seriously. A few years later, thanks to a Davidson dad and mentor named Robert Strauss, I stumbled into an opportunity to put a proposal together, and that momentum got everything going.
CT: Can you describe the process of writing The Rebounders?
AO: It was hard work and also the most fun I’ve ever had working. I read a lot about the history of women’s basketball, at Davidson in particular. College archivist Jan Blodgett helped me so much with the research; librarians are the best! Then I spent five weeks driving around the country interviewing my teammates where they live now, puzzling together our memories of our college experience. I kept a pretty regular 9-6ish writing schedule every day, six or seven days a week, for the year I wrote the manuscript. I had already written a proposal and planned the structure, so from there it was just one chapter at a time.
CT: Did you read any memoirs that had a particular influence on your approach to writing the book?
AO: Memoirs get a lot of flak, but I have always loved them. Kate Fagan’s The Reappearing Act, another book written by a former Division I women’s basketball player, was the kind of voice I was going for in mine -- like you’re telling stories over beers or pizza. A friend bought me Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir one year for Christmas and it’s been my memoir bible ever since. Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle has been a favorite for years. In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais isn’t quite a memoir, but it’s a seminal work in the women’s basketball genre and I have loved it for more than half my life.(I really like women writers.) Others I didn’t get into until later: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez.
CT: You grew up in Pennsylvania but attended college in North Carolina. What surprised you the most about living in North Carolina?
AO: I found southerners’ approach to snowstorms pretty hilarious. I remember during my freshman year watching a bulldozer try to plow I-77. Also, Cheerwine is not alcohol.
CT: As a journalist, you’ve written about a wide range of topics. Do you find writing about sports more or less challenging than other topics that you’ve covered?
AO: There’s always something going on that’s deeper than sports, so when I write about sports I’m generally trying to use it as a lens through which to view another story. Some athletes, unfortunately, inflict violence on women; other athletes survive it. They fight for racial justice, for gender and LGBTQ equity. There are complex team and coach and economic power dynamics, there are body image issues and brain injuries with serious consequences. Patriotism, nationalism, capitalism. There are athletes playing through grief and injuries and pregnancy and poverty and all these human experiences. When people complain that politics should stay out of sports -- I think that’s a really privileged argument. Sports have always been political, and I believe it’s more important than ever to pay attention.
CT: Who would be your starting five of favorite basketball players of all time?
AO: Great question. Babe Didrikson, who played in the first half of the 20th century. Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Pat Summitt, all goddesses. And Stephen Curry because he wouldn’t be a ballhog like most dudes who play with women.
CT: Where are your favorite places to watch a basketball game?
AO: Davidson, of course. Saint Francis University. Saint John Fisher College. The Hollidaysburg YMCA and Hollidaysburg High School. Anywhere any of my brothers or my dad are playing.
CT: You had the opportunity to play a game against the Cincinnati Bearcats. Can you describe that experience?
AO: We took a really, really long bus ride from North Carolina and got creamed by both Xavier and Cincinnati. You can read more in Chapter 4!
CT: When you hear the word “Cincinnati,” you think ___________.
AO: I have cousins in the Cincinnati suburbs and Covington, Kentucky whom I adore, so I think about them.
CT: What advice would you give to someone who is considering writing a book.
AO: Find other folks who have written books and listen to them speak, ask them specific questions. Find an agent if you can -- that person is your biggest advocate and your guiding light in the weird, crazy publishing world. Surround yourself with books (and people) you love and admire. Sometimes, when you’re making stuff, you’re focused so hard on pushing work out of you that you forget to take it in, so make time to read!
Amanda Ottaway’s The Rebounders is available now and you must go buy it immediately.
Follow Amanda Ottaway on Twitter as well: @amandaottaway
While you’re at it, follow me too: @ClaytonTrutor
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Print Marked Items
The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball
Journey
West Lukowsky
Booklist.
114.14 (Mar. 15, 2018): p10.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Rebounders: A Division | Basketball Journey.
By Amanda Ottaway.
Mar. 2018. 304p. Univ. of Nebraska, $29.95 (9780803296848). 796.323092.
Ottaway attended Davidson College in North Carolina on a basketball scholarship and is now a journalist in
New York. This is a fascinating memoir precisely because she was not a star player, which gives her
account of playing in college basketball's highest level (Division I) a perspective different from that of most
athletes' memoirs. Her reflections on the college game aren't always flattering to others (she has changed the
names of all her teammates and coaches in deference to their privacy). Among the issues explored are
recruitment, body images and eating disorders, practice routines, intrateam rivalries, and the competitive
atmosphere that permeates every aspect of the players' lives. She also delves into the social life of the
Division I athlete: parties, drinking, and drug use. There's plenty of inside basketball, too, along with
thoughtful reflection on the basketball conundrum that has men coaching women at all levels, but women
rarely if ever coaching men. Ottaway is a fine writer who exhibits both compassion and insight throughout
this story of one woman's coming-of-age as an athlete. Strongly recommended.--Wes Lukowsky
YA: This revealing account of the life of a college basketball player has much to say to teen athletes of all
genders. WL.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Lukowsky, West. "The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2018, p. 10.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533094376/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5db0a4e0. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533094376
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The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball
Journey
Publishers Weekly.
265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p76.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey
Amanda Ottaway. Univ. of Nebraska, $29.95
(304p) ISBN 978-0-8032-9684-8
In this charming though uneven memoir, Ottaway recalls her four years as a scholarship player, beginning
in 2008, on Davidson College's women's basketball team. She shares stories of her emotional and physical
toil during the season, dealing with a coaching staff that breeds discord ("I believed that coach Katz loved
us in her way. I just didn't think she knew how to show us ... her competitiveness came off as plain old
hurtful"), stressing over her meager playing time, and realizing that she and her teammates are simply
university "merchandise." Ottaway relishes details--a strength coach boasts calves as "wide as cereal
boxes"--and her description of the financial burden families face when a player gets injured is eye-opening.
Throughout, she includes stories of her former teammates alongside those of her own struggles, a technique
that works to varying degrees: while it offers glimpses into the broader world of college sports, it distracts
from the narrative. Ottaway is certainly an affable and trustworthy guide but readers will be left wanting
more. Agent: Laurie Ahkemeier, DeFioreandCo. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 76. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839829/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e1d6a864. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839829
Review of The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey
lindsaypieper / 3 days ago
Ottaway, Amanda, The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2018. 288 pages, Epilogue, Notes, and Bibliography. $29.95 paperback.
Reviewed by Murry Nelson
Here is a volume that is very familiar, but uniquely that of the author. Amanda Ottaway played DI basketball on a full scholarship for Davidson College and shares her story in The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey. Anyone who has played basketball in high school or college will find her account of the drills, practices, and games familiar, but, of course, it is singular since it is her experience chronicled. From the recruiting process, which is nicely discussed weighing institutions, locations, and coaches, to playing (or sitting on the bench) for her coaches, this is an entertaining, very fast read. One identifies with Ottoway’s frustration as she works to get off the bench and is finally rewarded with significant playing time midway through her senior year.
Rebounders
University of Nebraska Press, 2018
Another unique aspect of her “Division I journey” is playing at Davidson, one of the smallest colleges in Division I and one that emphasizes academics first. This provides another factor in both the recruitment of athletes and the goals of the players, which will not include professional aspirations. Ottaway, early on nicknamed “Otto” by her first coach, Beth Katz, an acolyte of Pat Summitt, describes her other activities besides basketball, which include poetry slams and other in-depth writing as part of her English major and subsequent career in journalism.
Much of the book is a description of college life, the drinking, secretive and not so much; the partying; class attendance; cramming or exams; dating; counseling friends and teammates as a mentor and just growing up.
The road trips and how tough those can be on the players, physically and emotionally are well described. But she also describes how rewarding it was when the team could overcome all that to win on the road, often before very small crowds, but sometimes a particularly raucous audience at a few Southern Conference schools.
Ottaway’s analyses of player strengths and coaching decisions are insightful, despite her being so self-interested in the latter and her perplexed feelings when she cannot impress her coaches enough to increase her playing time. One begins to cheer for her as the book proceeds and when she does make big contributions to the team’s success, one is glad for her just rewards.
Unfortunately, like four years of college, it all goes by so quickly, as Ottaway is an easy writer to read and enjoy. This is hardly a book that will add much to sport history, but it is an enjoyable account of women working hard at Division I basketball and one ends the book happy to have shared Ottaway’s journey.
Murry Nelson is a Professor Emeritus of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the history of basketball, and he is the author of The National Basketball League: A History, 1935–1949 (2009), Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League (2013), and Big Ten Basketball, 1943-1972 (2016).
9 sports books for spring
By Ross Atkin MARCH 22, 2018
Here are excerpts from seven new books about sports.
previous next
7. ‘The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey,’ by Amanda Ottaway
About video adsView Caption
“The Rebounders” is a feminist coming-of-age story told from an interesting perspective: that of a college basketball player, Amanda Ottaway, at a middle-of-the-pack Division I school – in this case Davidson College in North Carolina. Her story is representative of the majority of scholarship athletes who play in the shadows of the really big-time programs. An English major who’s gone on to a journalism career, she describes her recruitment, the practice sessions, the school demands, the road trips, and the sisterhood of playing mostly outside the limelight.
Here’s an excerpt from The Rebounders:
“Because everything was always provided for us on road trips, most of us didn’t even bring our wallets. There was no need. For planes we needed our IDs, but we never needed any money. Everything, from food to lodging to transport, was always covered. So even if we found a way to buy our own food – if we sneaked out to try to find a restaurant or grocery store within walking distance in Charleston – we wouldn’t be able to pay for it. Washing our own uniforms and practice gear would be tricky simply because nobody had change for the hotel washers and dryers. We were lucky Jenni’s parents were around to donate some cash to the cause.
“On this trip, thankfully, Ashley had brought a credit card. The team quietly gathered in her hotel room, sprawled on the beds and the floor, and listened, practically drooling, as Ashley ordered a stack of pizzas. We would all owe her money later, but for now we at least had a snack.”