The Report Card

Just a quick blog today. I read The Report Card by Andrew Clements last night. I'd enjoyed Frindle and The Landry News, and I thought the iffy reviews for Report Card were some sort of Clements backlash.
They weren't. Well, not entirely.
While I saw the validity of the reviewers' comments, I saw a huge plot hole that Clements had overlooked. Nora is an excellent soccer player because she is so smart - fair enough. The ability to see where everyone is on the field can't be taught and is invaluable (see Woodsie's success in Bruce Brooks' underrated Wolfbay Wings series). The plot hole is this: why didn't anyone notice her success? On the soccer field, she made no attempt to hide her talent. It seems improbable that her parents (who latch onto her academic ability so quickly) wouldn't have pushed her in soccer. No travel team, at least? And why doesn't Nora see that athletics have an equal ability to divide people and make them feel inferior ("'m on varsity, and you're not").
I'm not convinced (as was one witty person, who hasn't even read Frindle) that this was a cheap rip-off of Frindle. I think that Frindle had a more manageable problem - introducing a word into the language, as opposed to changing the educational environment at a school.
I enjoyed the book - I just thought that Clements could have done better with this idea.