At the ski lodge, it doesn't turn out to be a very happy birthday for Mary Beth when she finds out that her parents are divorcing. She cooks up a scheme with the gang to try and get her parents to fall back in love.

Julie runs into her ex-boyfriend, Paul, at the lodge. She decides to tell Michael about him, but is convinced by Mary Beth to keep quiet. After finding out who Paul is on their own, Michael and Vince befriend him and try to keep him busy so that he can't chase after Julie. Meanwhile, Teddy, Danny, Kristy, and Coach Fuller rescue a millionaire out on the slopes. Since she's rich, they expect a reward and start spending before they actually receive any money.

New Coach, Mike Katowinski, replaces Coach Fuller - sadly the new team, which includes new team members Kenny 'Silk' Hayes, Rico Bosco, and Nick Hammer, isn't coming together so well. Julie notices that the new coach is treating her differently from the guys and is making her do less work, so she tries different methods of getting the coach to realize what he's doing. Also, Kristy gets a letter from Teddy saying that he and Vince are at the University of Southern Florida with Coach Fuller, Vince is dating Miss Florida Orange Juice, and that Danny is currently working on his stand-up at NYU!

Hammer meets a waitress at the Stadium named Taylor and tries to get her to attend the school's upcoming dance with him. After she continuosly turns him down, Hammer won't give up and follows her to a homeless shelter, where he thinks she's volunteering. He later finds out that her family is homeless and living in the shelter. The gang decide to try and help her father find a job and donate the money raised from the dance ticket sales to her family instead of buying new uniforms. However, when Hammer announces the change in plans for the money at the dance, students demand refunds, and Hammer accidentally lets it slip that Taylor's homeless and that's whose family the money is going to.

After being mugged in the parking lot of the Deering Plaza after work, Kristy gets nervous about being out alone. Not only does she take a self-defense class with Mary Beth and Julie, but she arms herself with pepper spray. However, after leaving work early and not waiting to walk out of the mall with Julie and Michael, Kristy mistakenly thinks Michael is a mugger and attacks him with her pepper spray. Meanwhile, Rico, Silk, and Hammer all try to get Coach Katowinski to use his extra Pacers ticket on one of them.

Rico starts smoking marijuana, which causes him to act goofier than usual. Not only does he start acting incrediby silly during serious situations, but he starts to play basketball horribly. The rest of the team cover for him at practice, but things get worse when Rico promises to fix the brakes on Hammer's motorcycle. He gets high instead and forgets his promise, causing Hammer to have an accident on his bike and end up at the hospital. Meanwhile, Michael, Mary Beth, and Kristy take Auto Shop hoping to get an easy 'A.' However, things go wrong when they install a new sound system into the teacher's car and end up locking Kristy inside the trunk.

After discovering that Kristy has a romantic interest in Hammer, Mary Beth tries to set the two up on a blind date. Hammer agrees to go on the date, but only because he thinks that Mary Beth is trying to set herself up with him. He's caught off guard when he finds that Kristy is his date for the evening and later tells Mary Beth that he's not interested in Kristy, but in her. Mary Beth agrees to go on a non-date with Hammer, planning on using the time to convince him that he likes Kristy. Things don't go the way she'd planned when Mary Beth finds out that she returns Hammer's feelings. However, at the same time, she doesn't want to hurt Kristy. Meanwhile, Coach Katowinski tries to organize a school dance with the help of the team.

The team makes it to the Tri-State final and travel to Texas for the game. At the hotel, Silk meets a beautiful girl named Rose. The trouble is, he sees her as she's getting out of a limo, giving him the impression that she must be pretty wealthy. Feeling like he has to meet her standards, Silk calls himself Kenneth Hayes III and pretends that Coach Katowinski's Presidential Suite is his own. However, he finds it hard to keep up with all of the lies that he's told Rose to make himself look better. Meanwhile, Kristy also finds a possible love interest at the hotel. She meets Antonio and thinking that he can only speak Spanish, tries her best to impress him with her not-so-great foreign language skills. However, Antonio neglects to tell Kristy that he's American and speaks English.

Julie needs to get a good grade on her upcoming math exam or be benched from playing. She aces her exam, thanks to Kristy who spent all of her extra time tutoring Julie. However, Kristy starts to feel jealous and underappreciated after everyone misses her decathalon because they're celebrating Julie's grade.

At camp, a new girl named Eve joins the gang, looking to be seen by college scouts. But while she's great at basketball and teams up with Julie, she's automatically jealous of Julie's ability to play. When Eve starts feeling threatened, she starts playing un-sportsmanlike tricks on Julie to keep her from playing in front of the scouts. Meanwhile, Rico, Hammer, Michael, and Silk try to catch whoever is stealing items from their bunk.

After getting a bad report card, Michael is afraid to tell his dad because he might not be allowed to play basketball anymore, even though the team's one game away from the playoffs. Michael becomes unbelievably frustrated and not only is his relationship with his father strained, but his attitude costs him his spot on the team. Meanwhile, Kristy and Mary Beth compete in a one-on-one basketball competition in order to win a car, straining their friendship.

Kristy takes the job of being the nurse's assistant at camp. When she makes a mistake treating Rico's bee sting, nearly killing him, she loses all of her confidence. However, when a tree falls on Michael's arm, she has to learn to trust herself again and help. Meanwhile, Julie and Mary Beth try to pull a prank on the guys and scare them.

The tornadoes head to the sate basketball championships, only to find that their first game is against the team with the best player in Indiana. Meanwhile, Mary Beth convinces Kristy to play in a pool tournament to win a team present for Coach, only to end up facing him in the finals.

The Deering team travel to New York after winning a trip. Hammer wants to look up his old girlfriend, Cindy, and Mary Beth instantly feels pangs of jealousy. She allows him to but reaches her limit when she finds out that Hammer's ex-girlfriend is a teen model, and a magazine wants Cindy and Hammer to pose as a couple for an upcoming magazine cover. The girls all crash a business party to spy on Hammer, watching him as he's with Cindy. When Mary Beth thinks she sees something going on between the two, she ends up ruining the party and getting Hammer fired. Meanwhile, Rico, Silk, and Michael get into a food fight at a Knicks game and decide to get revenge on the Knicks fan, only to find that he's a friend of Coach Katowinski's.

Mary Beth gets a job working as at a department store in the mall to come up with ideas for the teen department. But Mary Beth is shocked to find that her boss is not just using her ideas, but taking credit for them as well. Meanwhile, the Coach plays Santa Claus at the mall, with Rico, Silk, Hammer, and Michael as his elves. However, things go wrong for them when they end up in jail when the police are looking for thieves dressed similarly.

While in New York, Rico meets with his grandfather who wants to spend the holidays with him. However, Rico's embarrased by him and lies to him saying that the team has to go back to Indiana early and won't be around the city for the holidays. During the gang's Christmas Eve party, Rico feels too guilty and tells everyone what he did. They take the party on the road and search the subways trying to find Rico's grandfather at work.

After becoming the manager of Michael's band, Mary Beth tries to talk to a record executive. However, she finds that he's not willing to listen to anything that a female manager has to say. Meanwhile, the team thinks that Coach Katowinski might be leaving to take another job and come up with a plan to make him stay.

Julie starts dating an older guy named Jason. He continually encourages her to do more mature things, like stay out late on school nights. Because she's still a high school student and he's not, Julie feels like she can't say no because Jason will think that she's too much of a kid. While they attend a school dance together, Jason blows off the actual dance and ends up drinking in the hallway. When he's ready to leave and wants to drive Julie home, Kristy and Mary Beth don't think it's a good idea because he's been drinking. Julie goes anyway because she's afraid to say no. She and Jason end up getting into a car accident. Luckily, neither of them are hurt badly, but Julie injures her shoulder and can't play in Deering's game.

Eugene takes up an interest in skateboarding and starts to act like it's more important than basketball. After the Coach won't cut Eugene any breaks and allow him time for both sports, Eugene thinks about focusing solely on skateboarding.

Michael meets a man at a pickup basketball game and gets not only a loan from him, but a job as well. After Julie finds out that the man is a college recruiter, they're worried that Michael may have become ineligible to play basketball in college.

Julie and Antonio both love swing dancing and decide to enter a competition together. At first, Kristy and Michael are just annoyed that they can barely spend time with either of them. However, Mary Beth plants the idea that there may be more than dancing going on between the two. Meanwhile, Silk and Eugene work on setting up pranks to catch on video, so that they can make money by sending their tape to a funniest home videos television show.

Eugene and Silk both get jobs co-managing a new dance club. They're faced with a difficult decision when they find that a classmate and a great customer is dealing dope. Meanwhile, Kristy and Mary Beth decide to buy drugs from the dealer undercover in order to win spots on the newspaper.

Silk's dad is a police officer and as part of the job, he puts criminals behind bars. Silk starts to be terrorized by a vengeful criminal named Eric who was recently released from jail and has it out for Silk. After being confronted by Eric, Silk starts to get nervous about being alone without any defense, so he starts arming himself with a gun. During another confrontation with Eric, the gun accidentally goes off, nearly hitting Mary Beth, Michael, and Eugene.

After becoming lab partners with Syd, a grote (what teens from Deering call goths), Kristy tries to befriend her and close the gap between their cliques a little. As part of Kristy's plan to get to know some of the grotes a little better, she dresses up just like one, with the white makeup, black clothing, and piercings. She also tries to get Mary Beth and Julie to realize that other social groups aren't so different, but Kristy's other friends can't seem to make the effort to get to know them. However, while dressed up like a grote, Kristy and some of Syd's friends get beaten up by a pack of guys. Meanwhile, Eugene starts dating a college student after he lies to her and says that he's also attending college. However, he gets himself into a hard situation when she starts subbing at Deering.

Michael and Silk sign up for a Big Brother program in which they will spend time with a younger boy and be his mentors. The guys get assigned to a boy named Daniel, and he and Silk instantly bond. However, Silk has to leave early and doesn't have the chance meet Daniel's mother. Michael does and she mentions to him that she's glad Daniel got the right kind of Big Brothers- white males. Michael has no idea how to handle the situation, so he tells the rest of the team and they struggle with what to do in regards to Silk.