Lacrosse occupies a small shelf in sports publishing, and this audiobook takes up more of it than almost any single title, running fourteen hours and forty-five minutes. Frank Kelly III reads his own account of a spiritual awakening that arrived in the middle of practice on a cold February afternoon, when he was a twenty-year-old sophomore playing college lacrosse, and of everything the sport carried him toward afterward. It is a memoir, a ministry history and a travelogue at once, and knowing which of the three you came for matters more here than it usually does.
Geography, Not Chronology, Organizes This Memoir
Geography is the organizing device, and it works far better than a chronology would have. The book moves from a very small field in a suburban Baltimore backyard to a famed collegiate turf field in Ithaca, New York, then out to the grass of the Vail Valley, the outback fields of Australia, the Olympic fields of Lake Placid, the red dirt of Africa, the fields nestled in the historic hills of Israel, and finally back to inner-city Baltimore. Each stop carries its own story, its own set of people, and its own version of the question the book keeps asking about which doors are worth walking through.
One January 2025 response puts the appeal well, describing a book that transcends its focus on lacrosse and calling the sport "a vehicle for building character, fostering community, and staying true to one's values." That is an accurate summary of the pitch, and also a warning. Listeners who want match reports, tactical detail or the mechanics of building a program will find those things present but subordinated, because the arc being traced is a faith arc with a stick and a net in it rather than a sports story with religion attached at the edges.
Ministry supplies the spine here, not the garnish. Kelly built FCA Lacrosse, described here as the lacrosse-specific ministry of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, into an international operation, and the book's stated purpose is teaching listeners how to discern the doors the Creator opens and develop the faith to walk through them one at a time. That is stated plainly in the description, so nobody should feel ambushed, but it does mean the fourteen hours belong to a devotional tradition as much as to sports publishing.
Loved Listening to Frank, Himself, Read His Own Work
Hearing an author read a memoir of his own faith changes what the material is, and one February 2025 response says so directly, opening on having "Loved listening to Frank, himself, read his own work." That single line is the only account of this recording anywhere on the page. It settles the question of whether the self-reading suits the material, at least for one listener, without telling you anything about pace, breath control or how the recording handles the emotional passages, so treat it as an endorsement of the choice rather than of the execution.
Warmth and humor carry more of the load than the subject matter suggests. The description promises stories that are warm, funny and at times painful, and the structure supports that mix, because a book built out of separate fields can move from a comic recruiting story to a hard one without needing a transition. Long-form memoir usually earns its length through accumulation rather than incident, and this one has enough distinct settings that the accumulation rarely stalls.
An earlier note filed in January 2024 lists what a lacrosse listener actually gets: stories that begin as a student at Cornell playing for a coach the response calls legendary, then move through running a business, building out FCA, the effort to bring lacrosse to the Olympic Games, and a trip to Uganda to kick-start programs there. That is a specific and unusual career, and the same response captures the register exactly when it describes Kelly "giving his relatable testimony" all along the way.
Half the Title Has Gone Missing From This Page
Read the review column with its provenance in mind. Three of the five written responses disclose a personal or organizational relationship with the author: one reports picking the book up "before joining the Kelly organization to learn about Frank as a person and leader," another states plainly "I have known Frank since I was 14 years old," and a November 2024 entry opens with the Kelly family having come into that writer's life four years earlier. Nothing improper about any of it on a self-published memoir sold largely to its own community, but a 4.9 out of 57 ratings reads differently once you know where some of it comes from.
Half the title has gone missing from this page. The description gives the full one, Influence and The Creator's Game: My Story and Stories of Family, Faith and Lacrosse, while the listing stops at the first half, and the March 2025 response shortens it further to The Creators Game without the apostrophe. Anyone searching on the subtitle, which is the part that actually says what the book contains, will have trouble finding this edition, and the shelf placement under memoirs with a Sports tag does not fill the gap.
Buyers also receive a companion PDF, and the page never says what is in it. On a memoir spanning eight or nine locations across a career, that file could hold photographs, rosters, maps or nothing much at all, and the buyer has no way to find out first. Fourteen hours and forty-five minutes is also a long commitment for a self-published sports memoir, longer than most commercially published ones, so a sample matters more here than usual.
Come for the Testimony and the Geography
Families inside the sport, coaches, and anyone connected to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes will recognize the world immediately and probably know some of the names. It also suits listeners who like ministry memoirs with concrete institutional detail attached, since the book documents how a small program became an international one rather than simply asserting that it did. Anybody in the Baltimore lacrosse ecosystem, or who came up through a college program with a lacrosse tradition, gets an extra layer.
If the sport means nothing to you and the faith framing means less, fourteen hours of fields will play as a travelogue with the interesting parts happening off camera. The same goes for listeners who want a critical account of how sports ministries operate, since this is a participant's telling and makes no attempt at distance. Come for the testimony and the geography, or do not come at all, because the book is not hiding what it is.
In Brief
- Performance: A self-read memoir at fourteen hours and forty-five minutes, which is a long stretch to spend inside a single speaking voice.
- What it covers: Faith and sport, lacrosse's global spread, family legacy, mentorship, calling.
- Feel: Warm, testimonial, unhurried.
- Our call: Excellent for the lacrosse and ministry community it was written for, a hard sell outside it.
Is Influence and The Creator's Game a sports book or a religious one?
Both, with faith carrying the structure. The lacrosse content is real and detailed, covering programs from suburban Baltimore to Uganda, but the arc runs from a spiritual awakening at practice to building a ministry. Listeners who want tactics or match narrative will find them subordinated to testimony throughout.
Does the audiobook include the PDF mentioned in the description?
Yes. The listing states that an accompanying PDF becomes available in your library alongside the audio when you purchase the title. What the file actually contains is never specified, so photographs, rosters or maps are all possibilities, and buyers get no chance to inspect it beforehand.
Why does the listing title differ from the one in the description?
The page carries only the first half. The full title runs Influence and The Creator's Game: My Story and Stories of Family, Faith and Lacrosse, and the subtitle is the part naming family, faith and the sport. Searching on those words may not surface this edition at all.
How reliable is the 4.9 rating on this audiobook?
Treat it carefully. Only five written responses are visible under 57 ratings, and three of those five disclose a personal or organizational connection to the author. That is ordinary for a self-published memoir sold to its own community, but it makes the average a weaker guide than the number suggests.
