Welcome to the website for Thatcher Heldring. I am the author of Toby Wheeler: Eighth Grade Benchwarmer, a middle-grade basketball novel available from Random House on August 14, 2007.

For as long as I’d been playing basketball, all I’d ever wanted to be was a gym rat. I was just happy playing the game. All the other stuff - coaches, practices, and drills - got in the way. Take my best friend, JJ. When varsity basketball practices started Monday, his sorry butt would be stuck in the school gym five days a week until January, while I was living free, playing pickup ball at our local rec center. Sure, there were those nights when JJ would bring the house down with a game-winner and I would get just a little jealous because I wasn’t there on the court with him. But that was how it always had been, and far as I knew, that was how it would be. I was the gym rat and he was the star.