Playing for Keeps, by Jennifer Dugan

June is baseball prodigy.  When the expectation was that she'd graduate over to softball, she stuck with the boys and has become one of the best pitchers in the league instead.  She and her father (who himself was once a rising star in the Minors) aim for her to go all the way, get a scholarship, and eventually play in the pros.  

Ivy gave up playing when she was young, but she never lost her love of sport; she just found a new way to express it -- by officiating games.  Just as June has laser focused on her pitching skills, Ivy has dedicated herself to the dream of one day becoming one of the few women to ever ref for the NFL.  Now, if she could get her parents on board with the dream!  But they want her to go to college and study something practical.

Girls with dreams of making it big, but who fall in love with each other instead.  For Ivy, this is disastrous as referees can't date players, so they have to keep everything hush hush.  For June, things are worse as she not only has the relationship to keep secret, she also is having physical problems with her throwing arm that are getting harder and harder to hide.

With all that going on, there is plenty of action to move this story, but the real high drama comes from the fiery romance itself.  Neither June nor Ivy are particularly emotionally mature and theirs is a romance that is more often off than on.  That provides plenty of opportunity for fights and counsel with BFFs (whom neither girl pays much attention to).  But I found them hard to digest and relate to (and even hard to differentiate from each other).  I liked the story well enough, but the characters simply didn't interest me.  That made the novel a slow read.