It's been a year now, and the pain Ben Pietrak feels over the way his high school wrestling career ended just won't go away. During an aimless year in college he has an idea; what's to stop him from finding his way back into a high school lineup to atone for his mistake?First he must overcome an ethical dilemma. After some moral acrobatics he deludes himself into believing he was cheated out of an extra season on the varsity.Once back in high school he realizes that he has returned to a place of missed opportunities. He resists the self-imposed rigid social order and is rewarded in ways he never expected. Eventually he meets Judy, a student who he would never have had anything to do with the first time in high school. His success on the mat is tempered by a growing realization that his rationalization was flawed, but by then it's too late to turn back.Ben's moral and romantic difficulties converge with his struggle for wrestling vindication in Atlantic City at the New Jersey Wrestling Championships.How can he end up with everything he wants: redemption, integrity, and the girl?
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Throwback
Author(s)
Publisher
Genre(s)
Age Range
12+
Release Date
December 10, 2004
ISBN
0595340067
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Editor reviews
2 reviews
Wrestling with fate
(Updated: June 24, 2026)
Overall rating
4.0
Plot
4.0
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I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. I'm not a huge fan of wrestling (the real kind&though I'm even less of a fan of the professional fake stuff) and I don't know much about it (well, I didn't, but I'll get to that later). The only wrestling I've ever seen is a couple of Olympic matches on TV. But Throwback isn't just about one boy-man's quest for wrestling success, it's also a growing up story and a love story.
Let me start from the beginning. Ben's senior year in high school culminated in a missed chance in his wrestling career and he's felt cheated ever since, even though it was mostly his own fault. At age nineteen, he comes up with a plan to go back to high school to reclaim his wrestling glory. His friend tries to talk him out of it, warning (perhaps prophetically) him about how difficult it will be to walk away once you've gone back. But Ben decides to do it anyway. He's carrying too much regret around not too.
So he comes up with a new identity and a plan and inserts himself into high school in New Jersey, far away from his home base of North Carolina. He joins the wrestling team and tries to keep a low profile, but that becomes harder the more successful he is on the team. It also becomes harder once he meets and befriends Judy, a girl that he never would have given a second glance to his first time around in high school.
In fact, he's taking his second chance in a whole different direction than his first one. From the perspective of a college kid, he now knows that the cliques that seemed so all-important then really don't mean anything and that some of the most interesting people are the ones in the shadows. The funny thing about all of this, for me, is that he constantly berates himself for taking advantage of 'kids' with his worldly manhood self-confidence. But, from the perspective of a 30-something year-old, at nineteen, Ben is really still just a kid himself. Sure, he's more mature than the high school kids, but he's still got a lot to learn.
Readers follow him onto the mat for move-by-move action. I thought these scenes would tire me out, but they were quick enough and interesting enough to keep a non-wrestler intrigued. I'm sure wrestling fans would eat them up.
The relationship with Judy progresses along with his wrestling prowess, but with many stops and starts along the way and a jealous boyfriend and over-protective (and rude) father. Everything culminates at the finals, but I won't give any more details away. The ending was a little bittersweet for me and I would have done some things differently, as it opened up many more questions than it answered. But, all in all, the book was a very satisfying read.
I recommend this book for ages 12 and up and especially for wrestling fans. The love story doesn't get in the way of the action, so even teenage boys allergic to romance will find themselves barreling through the book.
Let me start from the beginning. Ben's senior year in high school culminated in a missed chance in his wrestling career and he's felt cheated ever since, even though it was mostly his own fault. At age nineteen, he comes up with a plan to go back to high school to reclaim his wrestling glory. His friend tries to talk him out of it, warning (perhaps prophetically) him about how difficult it will be to walk away once you've gone back. But Ben decides to do it anyway. He's carrying too much regret around not too.
So he comes up with a new identity and a plan and inserts himself into high school in New Jersey, far away from his home base of North Carolina. He joins the wrestling team and tries to keep a low profile, but that becomes harder the more successful he is on the team. It also becomes harder once he meets and befriends Judy, a girl that he never would have given a second glance to his first time around in high school.
In fact, he's taking his second chance in a whole different direction than his first one. From the perspective of a college kid, he now knows that the cliques that seemed so all-important then really don't mean anything and that some of the most interesting people are the ones in the shadows. The funny thing about all of this, for me, is that he constantly berates himself for taking advantage of 'kids' with his worldly manhood self-confidence. But, from the perspective of a 30-something year-old, at nineteen, Ben is really still just a kid himself. Sure, he's more mature than the high school kids, but he's still got a lot to learn.
Readers follow him onto the mat for move-by-move action. I thought these scenes would tire me out, but they were quick enough and interesting enough to keep a non-wrestler intrigued. I'm sure wrestling fans would eat them up.
The relationship with Judy progresses along with his wrestling prowess, but with many stops and starts along the way and a jealous boyfriend and over-protective (and rude) father. Everything culminates at the finals, but I won't give any more details away. The ending was a little bittersweet for me and I would have done some things differently, as it opened up many more questions than it answered. But, all in all, the book was a very satisfying read.
I recommend this book for ages 12 and up and especially for wrestling fans. The love story doesn't get in the way of the action, so even teenage boys allergic to romance will find themselves barreling through the book.
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Throw it back!
(Updated: June 24, 2026)
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1.0
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Reader reviewed by bookworm9
Ben is still dissatisfied with the end of his high school wrestling career even after a year of college, so at the age of nineteen he moves from North Carolina to New Jersey, forging a new identity as a high school junior so he can wrestle again. He's successful on the mat, but his footing is more shaky when it comes to love. After falling for an honor student, Judy, who always shows up for his matches, he's placed in the middle as Judy battles with her parents over whom she should date. Who knew returning to high school could be so tough?
Conifer has an interesting premise, but goes absolutely nowhere with it. The plot (if it can be called that) is no more complicated than I've described it, yet it drags on for 243 pages of pointless descriptions, trivial details, and an ultimatelt pointless ending. Readers are never given sufficient explanation as to why Ben would go to such much trouble just to wrestle again, and other aspects of the story are similarly weak. Ben's reaction to his new school is too overblown, as it seems doubtful that either schools or Ben would have changed so much in the less-than-two-years he's been gone that he would be talking about "back in my day." Ben sporadically confesses to feeling guilty for wrestling younger guys while living as a fraud, yet this guilt is never explored and is apparently easily pushed aside. And although Ben takes offense to the "jock" stereotype, he has no plans or goals beyond the wrestling season and obviously is in no rush to grow up or have a career, since he rewound his life to begin with.
This book was boring and, considering the conclusion and the fact that so many interesting psychological points were never explored, pointless. The characters were cardboard cut outs who evoke no sympathy, and the relationship between Ben and Judy never deviates enough from the usual jock meets brain stereotype to be intriguing. As for the wrestling scenes, which dominate the book, they may be "technically realistic" as Conifer claims, but they're too technical; readers receive blow-by-blow accounts of each match which quickly becomes tedious. Ben wins some and loses some, and in the end it doesn't really seem to matter.
The whole book could use heavy editing, both to pare down Conifer's dense prose and redundant telling, and to fix some technical aspects like misuse and lack of commas and semi-colons, the "annoying" and unnecessary overuse of quotation marks, and the fact that numbers are never spelled out, even when they should be. This was a tedious and amateurish book that even wrestling fans shouldn't bother with.
Ben is still dissatisfied with the end of his high school wrestling career even after a year of college, so at the age of nineteen he moves from North Carolina to New Jersey, forging a new identity as a high school junior so he can wrestle again. He's successful on the mat, but his footing is more shaky when it comes to love. After falling for an honor student, Judy, who always shows up for his matches, he's placed in the middle as Judy battles with her parents over whom she should date. Who knew returning to high school could be so tough?
Conifer has an interesting premise, but goes absolutely nowhere with it. The plot (if it can be called that) is no more complicated than I've described it, yet it drags on for 243 pages of pointless descriptions, trivial details, and an ultimatelt pointless ending. Readers are never given sufficient explanation as to why Ben would go to such much trouble just to wrestle again, and other aspects of the story are similarly weak. Ben's reaction to his new school is too overblown, as it seems doubtful that either schools or Ben would have changed so much in the less-than-two-years he's been gone that he would be talking about "back in my day." Ben sporadically confesses to feeling guilty for wrestling younger guys while living as a fraud, yet this guilt is never explored and is apparently easily pushed aside. And although Ben takes offense to the "jock" stereotype, he has no plans or goals beyond the wrestling season and obviously is in no rush to grow up or have a career, since he rewound his life to begin with.
This book was boring and, considering the conclusion and the fact that so many interesting psychological points were never explored, pointless. The characters were cardboard cut outs who evoke no sympathy, and the relationship between Ben and Judy never deviates enough from the usual jock meets brain stereotype to be intriguing. As for the wrestling scenes, which dominate the book, they may be "technically realistic" as Conifer claims, but they're too technical; readers receive blow-by-blow accounts of each match which quickly becomes tedious. Ben wins some and loses some, and in the end it doesn't really seem to matter.
The whole book could use heavy editing, both to pare down Conifer's dense prose and redundant telling, and to fix some technical aspects like misuse and lack of commas and semi-colons, the "annoying" and unnecessary overuse of quotation marks, and the fact that numbers are never spelled out, even when they should be. This was a tedious and amateurish book that even wrestling fans shouldn't bother with.
G
Guest
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