

The Spirit of the Game
a graphic novel by Kathy Dobson

The Spirit of the Game is a middle grade graphic novel about a fourteen-year-old girl who joins her school's ultimate frisbee team as they vie for the state championship. Upon completion, it will be about 200 pages with full-color illustrations.

With her sister at college and her best friend busy with honors classes and extracurriculars, Kyla starts her freshman year feeling adrift. So when some upperclassmen invite her to join their newly formed ultimate frisbee team, Kyla goes all in. What she finds is kinship with a quirky but strong group of girls: there’s nurturing Angela, determined Tish, intense Mags, snarky Whitney, agreeable Sadie, talented Vanessa, effervescent Nicki and eccentric Lena. With their inexperienced but wise coach Ms. Watson, the team sets out to win the state championship. But first, they must overcome teammate drama, scheduling conflicts, boy trouble, knee injuries, and, of course, the weather. On their journey, the girls learn not only how to throw in the wind and catch in the rain, but also how to empower themselves and lift each other up, and in the end, they discover what “the spirit of the game” really means.
Kathy Dobson played ultimate frisbee for over 10 years, first in college, for MIT, and then for the Boston-area women's team Brute Squad, which she co-founded. She was selected as an alternate for Team USA, which won the world championships at the 2009 World Games. Currently, she lives in upstate New York with her husband and three children.
Kathy creates her illustrations digitally using Procreate and designed the font using the app Calligraphr.