Mitchell Goosen is a California teenager who loves to surf and rollerblade. When his zoologist parents are given a grant to work in Australia, they can't take Mitchell so they send him to Cincinnati, Ohio to stay with his aunt, uncle, and cousin Wiley--who will be his roommate for the next six months. At his new school Mitchell gets on the bad side of the high-school hockey players, so he and Wiley endure weeks of torture from them. Until they all must learn to get along and team up to beat the Central High School rivals in a competition down the Devil's Backbone.