At the beginning of every semester, every sports season, every hiring, we know three things for sure:
“It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions,” said American poet Robert Bly.
My friend Gary Pritchard, whose coaching specialty is helping build unity on teams, sent this quote from Charles Dickens today. “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” Those words capture so much of what coaching should be about. The job of a leader is more than just giving orders […]
Yesterday I had the privilege of watching my grandson play in his first soccer game. He is four years old. What a wonderful day, full of moments to remember. One of the goalies was facing away from the field, content to play with the mesh of the net. When the game started, no one moved […]
Yesterday, Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox pitched a perfect game — only the 18th in the 133-year history of big-league baseball. This masterpiece added to lustre to a resume that seems to grow in stature every year. Buehrle pitched a no-hitter in 2007, won a World Series title, and was the winning pitcher […]
Richard Quick, legendary collegiate and Olympic swim coach, died earlier this month of cancer.
I had never heard of Quick, but anytime a coach is accomplished enough to have his obituary appear on the national wires, I want to know more . And everything you need to know about Quick comes from the way his former athletes describe him.
“We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.” — Eamon de Valera Years ago when sitting with baseball scouts at spring training games, I got a kick out of one of their habits. They held a stopwatch in one hand and, whether they were jotting down notes or chatting with the person next to […]