Skyline: One Season, One Team, One City

San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Keown here takes us through a basketball season at Oakland's predominantly black Skyline High School, a school of 1900 students located in the city with the highest crime rate in California. Skyline is headed by Shawn Donlea, a 28-year-old white coach, who, we see, learns as much about people as he does about basketball while he challenges his players to succeed on and off the court. His team consists of the likes of Will Blackwell, a star football player, who must protect his body and his mind as the college recruiters swarm around him; David Storm, a lefthanded guard who's the team's only white player, as gritty off the court as he is on it; Jason Wright, a religious kid capable of winning an athletic scholarship to college, whose mother puts his education ahead of basketball; and Calvin Wilson, a burly football player who could steal a car as quick as he could a basketball. Keown, whose book is as much about urban life as sports, finds hope for the players as many of them go on to further their educations. This is a disturbing look at a school where a teacher like coach Donlea is the exception in an apathetic, bureaucratic system. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Apr.)