High school sports can teach you a lot. It’s less about winning and losing and more about learning how to win and lose. It’s about learning what it means to be a good teammate; it’s about sacrifice, resilience, and foundational blocks that are used to build a well-rounded human being.

It’s about leadership and courage, and there may be no better example of that than the 1979 Mt. Lebanon High School football team.

And for Michael Eck (Mt. Lebanon Class of ‘80), it was about stepping up to protect a season he had worked his whole life for, which in turn, made a profound impact on the rest of his life. It gave him a line for his resume that proved to be a differentiator.

“I helped coach my high school football team.”

That bullet point, in a laundry list of them, was the item that people wanted to talk about. It was a conversation starter that opened doors and led Eck to Wall Street, where he enjoyed a 40+ year career as an investment banker.

“They didn’t care about school, Academic All-American, they didn’t care about any of that, they would ask about this one little bullet point on my resume.”

And over those 40 years, that bullet point, and this idea kept percolating.

“This is a story that, if told in a compelling way, could have the same kind of resonance as Friday Night Lights.”

That story unfolds in Eck’s first book, Strike Season, which recounts the remarkable journey of that Blue Devil team some 47 years ago. Two games into the season, the teachers’ union went on strike, as did the coaches. Presented with the realization of not being able to play, Eck and his co-captains took their leadership to a new level and decided that they would coach the team.

“We were policing ourselves, there were a lot more fights,” he said. “One of our stars rode his bike through the middle of a calisthenics drill!  Things happened that wouldn’t have had there been adult coaches on the field.”

Eck made the decision to pursue this book and put pen to paper, literally. He wrote the first draft over a six-month period with a pen on loose-leaf paper. It has been both a labor of love and a labor of tough love.

“My son (Connor) is a literary agent, so I had a bit of an inside track, but when I gave it to him, he rejected it,” Eck recalled. “He said ‘you have something here, but this isn’t it. Put down the pen, go interview teammates, coaches, teachers, anybody you can get from the board. You have to develop more character and more storylines.’”

What transpired next sent Eck on a journey, one that not only reconnected him with former teammates, but also helped him understand the complexities that the union faced. A perspective a high school star quarterback could only gain in hindsight.

“As a 16-year-old, I was concerned about myself, not necessarily about the coaches. I didn’t know what torment they were going through, especially Coach (Art) Walker.”

Much like a football season, the journey is what proved to be the most memorable and enjoyable part of the entire process.

“No question, reconnecting with guys, at this stage in my life, has been the most rewarding part of this experience. Even if I don’t sell a single book, I got a chance to reconnect with my teammates, coaches, teachers, and get a better perspective of this slice of history.”

Just as the game, and that season, gave so much to him, Eck is returning the favor. All proceeds of the book will go directly to his nonprofit, STEER for Student Athletes, which provides individualized mentorship to student athletes in grades 7 to 12.

Strike Season is available at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon.