40 pages • 1 hour read
Arshay CooperA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Cooper explains that the winter season for rowers is all about conditioning and working out, and Coach Jessica has been guiding the whole program alone since the fall. However, Alpart has hired a new coach by the name of Marc Mandel, who tells the team that he was a rower at Northwestern and he is there to bring up their erg scores, SAT scores, and GPAs and to help them get into a college or university if they want to continue rowing. Mandel also tells them that they will be going to Philadelphia again during spring break and that there is a 2,000-meter indoor racing championship in a few weeks they will be attending. Cooper is selected as Manley’s competitor for the indoor competition, where he hits 7 minutes and 15 seconds on the erg machine for first place. Afterward, Mandel tells him that he is good enough to be entered into the national indoor championships.
While his athletic career is taking off, Cooper’s romance with Grace seems to be falling apart, as she lets him know that she wants to remain only friends. Additionally, both Preston and Malcolm seem to be immersed in drug dealing, and Alvin is still rowing, but his ties with his brother keep him from breaking away from gang life. At another indoor event, hosted by USRowing, the governing body of the sport, Cooper lowers his 2,000 erg score to seven minutes flat and ends up ranked number one in the city and number 35 in the nation. Trying to earn some spending money for the trip to Philadelphia, Cooper asks his uncle if he can do some work for his uncle’s construction business and ends up meeting an older woman who happens to be Cooper’s father’s godmother. She is intent on getting Cooper in touch with his father, and he reluctantly agrees. In closing the chapter, Cooper explains that he has only met his father once but still agrees to meet with him and ends up feeling good about seeing him.
Mandel warns the team that the trip to Philadelphia will be for work, to prepare them for their big upcoming race in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This includes a daily schedule of waking up at 5:00 am to run hills, then rowing, then going to the university for lunch, and then going back to the boathouse to row again. After being on the water with Mandel for the first time during the trip, Cooper says, “[W]hen we’re rowing with Marc, we aren’t four individuals, we’re one, entirely in sync” (202). The week of training helps the team improve even more, and they receive compliments from the University of Pennsylvania crew team, who are all in disbelief that they are high school students. The morale and discipline of the team improves also, especially after Mandel severely chews them out when he catches them sleeping when they were supposed to be running.
Two weeks away from their Grand Rapids race, Cooper notices that they are finally being taken seriously and being respected, not only by classmates and coaches but also by competitors. He explains that at the end of every school year, the school hosts a large skating party. When Cooper attends the event, he runs into Preston, who tells Cooper that he is proud of all Cooper has done and wishes that he had stuck with crew, but he “got caught up in other interests” (213). This leads Cooper to think about how much his family life has changed since he began rowing. He argues that “[i]f [his] family can change, so can everyone else’s” (214). He also writes that he thinks people in his community “put limits on themselves and their neighbors,” but he refuses to live that way (214).
In April of 1999, the team arrives in Michigan to compete in their biggest race yet. Before they race, Mandel gives them a speech, saying, “You guys are the most creative, talented, strongest, funniest guys I know. Words can’t express how proud I am of you” (217). Cooper thinks to himself that none of them “ever said as much as hello to each other in the halls before rowing,” but now they are brothers (218). He sees them as “a symbol for what can be possible when unlikely gang rivals come together as one” and continues by saying “[i]t’s the most beautiful thing [he’s] ever seen” (218). As the race begins, they are flying and jump out to the lead. The moment is electric, and when Cooper glances to see that there are only 400 meters left, he loses focus for a split second and loses control of his oar, causing the entire team to have to recover. Despite leading for most of the race, they finish third, but Cooper feels awful because he “let everyone down” (220). Cooper ends the chapter by saying, “In crew you move ahead by looking in the opposite direction. I learned that it’s okay to look back, as long as you keep moving forward” (221).
In the Epilogue to A Most Beautiful Thing, Cooper writes about what has transpired in the years since high school: Mandel became a college rowing coach, Alvin started a successful moving company, Preston went to jail for a couple of years but later became a barber, Malcolm moved to Ohio and started a trucking company, Pookie G. got a job with United Healthcare, Coach Jessica became a full-time teacher at Manley, the Alparts moved to New York and had four kids, and his mother remarried and began running the same Victory Outreach Women’s Home that she herself had visited as a patient. Cooper writes that after high school, he dedicated a year of his life to working with children for AmeriCorps and later fulfilled his dream of becoming a successful chef. He also founded a rowing program for public schools in New York City and became a consultant for programs like it across the country.
Over the final three chapters, Cooper examines the team’s final season under its new coach, Marc Mandel. It soon becomes clear that he is no-nonsense, will work them much harder, and will make them much better, providing another clear example of the theme of The Transformative Power of Sports. Mandel becomes another mentor for Cooper because he sees Cooper’s potential and takes him to compete at indoor competitions over the winter. Chapter 13 revisits the issue of policing in their community when Cooper is pulled over near his home while riding with Alpart and his wife in their Mercedes, and it revisits the issue of violence when the team watches a fight from a school window. The issue of absentee parents also arises when Cooper happens to meet a woman who knows his father well and pushes the two of them to meet.
In the book’s closing chapter and Epilogue, all three of its primary themes are strengthened. In the weeks before leaving to compete in Michigan, Mandel makes the team take part in a project helping to relocate some rowing clubs from the lagoon to the Chicago River. While there, Cooper is approached by the crew team from St. Ignatius Loyola, the all-white private school team that defeated them so badly in their first race the previous year. Cooper’s teammates’ instinct is to rush to his defense, but it turns out that the St. Ignatius team comes over to show respect and formally introduce themselves. This incident reinforces the theme of the transformative power of sports. Cooper says, “I didn’t think we could get along with people who didn’t look like us but rowing changed that for me. Crew changed our mindset, lifestyle, work ethic, and, as Elliott says, ‘our bodies.’ This experience was never just about rowing. It was about bridging the water” (215-16).
When the team arrives in Michigan and prepares to race, Cooper points out that, as always, they “are the only black people there and they have mixed emotions about it. Some of the guys are focused and don’t get bothered anymore; the others say it still bothers them because there should be more of us here racing” (217). This reinforces the theme of The Importance of Diversity and Representation in Sports. In the Epilogue, the theme of the role of education and personal growth in overcoming adversity is emphasized as Cooper describes what he and his teammates have gone on to accomplish in the roughly two decades since their high school crew experience. He writes, “I can never thank Ken enough for throwing me into the water because the sport of crew changed my life” (225).