So I'm in the middle of running tournaments at Lincoln Land. My players and I do a great job of running things smoothly--from concessions to getting band aids for players to officiating and line judging. I demand excellence and they have come through. Our tournaments are BAR NONE the best summer tournaments in the state, maybe the Midwest.
So today, when we were done, I got a chance to spend some time with the USAV High Performance materials since I'm heading to Las Vegas Monday to work with the Future Select athletes. (It's a nice link and generally correct stuff....)
My brain hurts from it--in a good way. I need to learn about 100 pages of material, from terms to drills to other procedures, and I realized today (on my third go-through of everything)--I'm clueless. I don't know this stuff to the point of mastering it or the point where I am comfortable running it. And you know what? That's a scary thing to me--especially as I enter my 25th year involved with volleyball.
25 years and to be sitting, studying material and get that moment of "My God, I'm totally lost and clueless"--it's a humbling feeling. Scary. Because I know rationally that I DO know a ton of volleyball (otherwise, why would they select me to do this in the first place). It's intimidating to see the work in this and the attention to detail--more than I can do for my program, though sadly the US national program has more resources available than I do at LLCC....
Things will be fine--it was only a moment of panic. I won't be in charge because I'm new to their system. They expect me to learn as we go--and they'll expect more next year if I am selected to assist again. So I WILL be fine.
But it got me thinking--there's always a bigger fish in the sea, someone who is better or knows more. Right now, the US is a volleyball powerhouse, a rival to Brazil at the very top of the sport. There's much further to fall than there is to rise. It would be easy for US volleyball to rest on its laurels and enjoy being a top dog. But that's not how it works.
The people on top of USA Volleyball's administration--they're looking for ways to improve themselves, the coaching, the philosophy, how they deal with athletes--everything. And they put just as much attention into the 10yr olds as they do the 18yr olds, the lower skilled players as well as the ones destined for international tournaments? Why? Why not focus on the top 10-12 in an age group? Because a rising tide lifts all boats, that's why.
They are constantly looking to improve the system, improve the coaching--a constant process that I now get to be part of. The US staff are looking for ways to continue winning, aware of the difficulties involved--but even at the top, those coaches STILL strive to improve themselves.
So I'll be fine--and I'll come back a better coach, and I'll help make those 32 kids better volleyball players, and I'll come home to LLCC and help my players and my club coaches and players grow within the game, and those 32 athletes will go home and do likewise--they'll share with their teammates, push them to get better, and bit by bit, inch by inch, the tide will rise and we'll improve volleyball across America!
Friday, July 25, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
20 years ago, this week...NOT a good day (but with a good ending)
Twenty years ago was my last season involved with Ohio State volleyball and working as a D-1 coach (though I didn't know that would be the case...) For OSU, that was a great season--led by a solid group of seniors, OSU won 35, won the Big Ten, and reached the Final Four....I still have my Final Four ring.
Now, to be clear--I love Jim Stone. He is a great mentor, a good friend, and has been since I started out there back in '92. This isn't about him--I remained loyal to the OSU program until he retired. I still root for the men's volleyball team because I feel Pete Hanson and Tim Embaugh are good people running a classy program--but that's the extent of my loyalty to that school.
You see, twenty years ago this week, the academic side of Ohio State tossed me out. If you're reading this, you probably know me. I'm not an idiot. I'm a decent writer and frankly, I'm a pretty damned good teacher--whether it is English, History, or even Psychology. No offense to anyone, but I've never met a better U.S. history teacher. I need to go a little further with this--in terms of writing, I've done some novels, some articles, and even presentations. I've written historical games.
This is NOT to go "Oh, wow, Jim, you are so wonderful...." I merely want to show some credentials.
Because it was this week that Allan Millett, Joan Cashin, and James Bartholomew, my PhD committee, unanimously failed me on my doctoral exams. The funny thing is--Millett, my advisor, told me that was going to happen in advance. Twice actually.
The second time was in December of 93. He said "If you don't quit working with the volleyball team, you won't pass your exams no matter what you do."
Professors have no rights on my free time. If I turn in 'A' quality work (my GPA was 3.85, so yes, I was turning in 'A' work), then if I want to spend my time from 2-5 calculating hitting percentages, serve-receive numbers, and entering freeballs into drills--that's my business, right? I wasn't skipping class or anything else.
Nope. I was naïve. Life doesn't work that way. I knew it from the first question I was asked. My fields were Tokugawa Japan, US Military, and Modern US History, so the first question I was asked--discuss the difference in opinion between Churchill and Atlee related to British efforts against Japan. Hmmmm...Tokugawa Japan is gone by the 1800s and Churchill/Atlee aren't American. Great....I didn't study the right things.
After the smoke cleared, I was told I knew little about history and that my writing was so deficient that I offered no hope of passing an advanced degree (never mind that I already held an M.A. in Composition/Writing)
When it was done, I called Stone. He said he wanted to have a beer to celebrate....but I'd told him if I was more than 60 minutes late, the news would be bad. It was 90 minutes. He was stunned that they did it. I think at the time he felt guilty--somehow partially responsible. He wasn't. It was absolutely my choice and because of my time in his program, I'd make the same choice again for what I learned on that court. Probably good he met me--in those hours, I learned to empathize with those stories of grad students going on shooting binges. I thought about it--I can't lie.
Hard to believe that was 20 years ago.
But it ended well. I realized that day that I need to teach--in a classroom or a gym. I don't want to be a bully picking on grad students because I was picked on myself when I was a student. History is NOT about memorizing little nuggets of trivia. It's about critical thinking, it's about applying the past to the present, about knowledge of other cultures and times. History can bring others to life if taught well.
Yes, it ended well. I moved back 'home' (because it wasn't quite home yet) to my wife pregnant with our first child and here, I had the chance to teach for a few colleges, coach at Satan's School for Girls and Boys and now Lincoln Land. I've helped 100+ young people succeed in college or found them scholarships--I've seen them grow into doctors, accountants, moms, dads, state troopers, combat medics, writers, artists. None of that would have been possible without Millett's ego driving me away.
That choice helped make me a better person--because it made me know how it felt to be incredibly bullied--I learned the difference between instructing and teaching.
Without their decision--I don't get 4+ novels published, start Jolly Roger Games, coach volleyball at a high level (or get to work with USA High Performance). No Jolly Roger--no trip to see the Scorpions in concert in Germany, no meeting guys like Alan Moon, Richard Launius, Jason Matthews.
Yeah, this is all a rant, disjointed. But seriously...life is not easy. It WILL suck from time to time. But it is how we deal with the adversity that determines who we are, who we become. I survived it.
And still got to teach history AND coach volleyball.
(Now if I could just remember all the seniors off that '94 team....Laura, Jenny, Carrie, Gabi...Tricia(?)....sigh, the memory fades a little down the road.
Now, to be clear--I love Jim Stone. He is a great mentor, a good friend, and has been since I started out there back in '92. This isn't about him--I remained loyal to the OSU program until he retired. I still root for the men's volleyball team because I feel Pete Hanson and Tim Embaugh are good people running a classy program--but that's the extent of my loyalty to that school.
You see, twenty years ago this week, the academic side of Ohio State tossed me out. If you're reading this, you probably know me. I'm not an idiot. I'm a decent writer and frankly, I'm a pretty damned good teacher--whether it is English, History, or even Psychology. No offense to anyone, but I've never met a better U.S. history teacher. I need to go a little further with this--in terms of writing, I've done some novels, some articles, and even presentations. I've written historical games.
This is NOT to go "Oh, wow, Jim, you are so wonderful...." I merely want to show some credentials.
Because it was this week that Allan Millett, Joan Cashin, and James Bartholomew, my PhD committee, unanimously failed me on my doctoral exams. The funny thing is--Millett, my advisor, told me that was going to happen in advance. Twice actually.
The second time was in December of 93. He said "If you don't quit working with the volleyball team, you won't pass your exams no matter what you do."
Professors have no rights on my free time. If I turn in 'A' quality work (my GPA was 3.85, so yes, I was turning in 'A' work), then if I want to spend my time from 2-5 calculating hitting percentages, serve-receive numbers, and entering freeballs into drills--that's my business, right? I wasn't skipping class or anything else.
Nope. I was naïve. Life doesn't work that way. I knew it from the first question I was asked. My fields were Tokugawa Japan, US Military, and Modern US History, so the first question I was asked--discuss the difference in opinion between Churchill and Atlee related to British efforts against Japan. Hmmmm...Tokugawa Japan is gone by the 1800s and Churchill/Atlee aren't American. Great....I didn't study the right things.
After the smoke cleared, I was told I knew little about history and that my writing was so deficient that I offered no hope of passing an advanced degree (never mind that I already held an M.A. in Composition/Writing)
When it was done, I called Stone. He said he wanted to have a beer to celebrate....but I'd told him if I was more than 60 minutes late, the news would be bad. It was 90 minutes. He was stunned that they did it. I think at the time he felt guilty--somehow partially responsible. He wasn't. It was absolutely my choice and because of my time in his program, I'd make the same choice again for what I learned on that court. Probably good he met me--in those hours, I learned to empathize with those stories of grad students going on shooting binges. I thought about it--I can't lie.
Hard to believe that was 20 years ago.
But it ended well. I realized that day that I need to teach--in a classroom or a gym. I don't want to be a bully picking on grad students because I was picked on myself when I was a student. History is NOT about memorizing little nuggets of trivia. It's about critical thinking, it's about applying the past to the present, about knowledge of other cultures and times. History can bring others to life if taught well.
Yes, it ended well. I moved back 'home' (because it wasn't quite home yet) to my wife pregnant with our first child and here, I had the chance to teach for a few colleges, coach at Satan's School for Girls and Boys and now Lincoln Land. I've helped 100+ young people succeed in college or found them scholarships--I've seen them grow into doctors, accountants, moms, dads, state troopers, combat medics, writers, artists. None of that would have been possible without Millett's ego driving me away.
That choice helped make me a better person--because it made me know how it felt to be incredibly bullied--I learned the difference between instructing and teaching.
Without their decision--I don't get 4+ novels published, start Jolly Roger Games, coach volleyball at a high level (or get to work with USA High Performance). No Jolly Roger--no trip to see the Scorpions in concert in Germany, no meeting guys like Alan Moon, Richard Launius, Jason Matthews.
Yeah, this is all a rant, disjointed. But seriously...life is not easy. It WILL suck from time to time. But it is how we deal with the adversity that determines who we are, who we become. I survived it.
And still got to teach history AND coach volleyball.
(Now if I could just remember all the seniors off that '94 team....Laura, Jenny, Carrie, Gabi...Tricia(?)....sigh, the memory fades a little down the road.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Sing a Song...or at least read some lyrics....
You have to sing this either like you're Frank Sinatra or Judy Collins. Except between you and the NSA, it's a secret. I promise.
My government's rich
It doesn't play
fair.
Me here at a desk in
DC
You're over there
So where are my drones?
Isn't it great?
The polls all approve
We keep blowing things up
Before the targets can move...
Where are the drones?
Send in the drones.
Send in the drones.
So many targets to seek and destroy
seeing explosions and feeling the joy.
Making speeches on TV with my usual
flair
Sure of my lines
But nobody cares...
Don't you love
farce?
Our government to
fear
Trade freedom for a
moment of security
But we are sincere..
So where are the
drones?
Send in the drones
Oh dear God, now
they're here!
Weren't we rich?
Weren't we secure?
Giving it all up for
power impure
So where are my
drones?
I need some more
drones...
Don't worry, don't
fear....
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Thought of someone today...
I was talking with someone about a relative of theirs who died recently, and mentioned that as long as the deceased are remembered in some fashion, according to African theologies, the dead aren't really dead.
So today, I took the Mustang to a car shop for pricing on a paint job, etc--and this became important. Heritage Classic Cars is next to a truck stop in Effingham, and for some reason, that got me thinking about Ken Irion.
Ken was a friend I met during college. I met him through Jeff Arnold, if I remember right--sometimes with friends, it seems they were always there, always will be.... We became pretty decent friends while he was in Helser Hall at Iowa State. After his sophomore year, Ken moved out and in to Koinonia, a Christian home owned by the Methodist Church across from Friley. Church and being active within it was important to Ken.
In any event, I got to thinking of him because of the truck stop. Ken was from Bettendorf and for a night out, his parents and he would go out to the I-80 Truck Stop restaurant (which IS good food) and seeing a truck stop restaurant triggered my thoughts.
Ken started as a science and engineering major, but changed to English. It wasn't that he couldn't do the math (failed Engineering students usually become business majors anyways), but there was something missing for him, so he spent his next year studying as an English major, except he was a semester behind with the English degree requirements. But that was when things changed, going into the spring of 1989
Ken figured out that he wasn't interested in the degree and he decided to quit school--fifteen credits away from graduating. Instead, he decided he wanted to help people, so he volunteered to do missionary work abroad. That volunteering led him to the Ukraine, helping with food and relief after Chernobyl, a nuclear meltdown three years earlier--before the end of the Cold War.
Ken went to Kiev--Ukraine's biggest city. Some of the stats afterward showed that casualties from Chernobyl (volunteers helping to clean up, etc) afterwards totaled maybe 0.2% of those who helped. But somehow, the extra radiation in the area four years on, was enough to trigger thyroid cancer--apparently, if you are predisposed to thyroid cancer, the iodine-131, etc released by Chernobyl causes your chance of malignant cancer to skyrocket.
And that's what got Ken. I figure he ignored it initially--must've been a flu causing a sore throat or just sleeping on it wrong causing neck pain. But if it's malignant, that gives it time to spread. Ken died over there in the Ukraine. He's buried there--likely because of the radiation. I have no idea if his parents ever got to go visit the site or anything like that. I sent a sympathy card to his parents, but what more can you do after that?
Ken was a good guy with a good heart. ...it's funny how sometimes days or even years can fly by and then memories return that are vivid as if you saw the person only minutes ago.
So today, I took the Mustang to a car shop for pricing on a paint job, etc--and this became important. Heritage Classic Cars is next to a truck stop in Effingham, and for some reason, that got me thinking about Ken Irion.
Ken was a friend I met during college. I met him through Jeff Arnold, if I remember right--sometimes with friends, it seems they were always there, always will be.... We became pretty decent friends while he was in Helser Hall at Iowa State. After his sophomore year, Ken moved out and in to Koinonia, a Christian home owned by the Methodist Church across from Friley. Church and being active within it was important to Ken.
In any event, I got to thinking of him because of the truck stop. Ken was from Bettendorf and for a night out, his parents and he would go out to the I-80 Truck Stop restaurant (which IS good food) and seeing a truck stop restaurant triggered my thoughts.
Ken started as a science and engineering major, but changed to English. It wasn't that he couldn't do the math (failed Engineering students usually become business majors anyways), but there was something missing for him, so he spent his next year studying as an English major, except he was a semester behind with the English degree requirements. But that was when things changed, going into the spring of 1989
Ken figured out that he wasn't interested in the degree and he decided to quit school--fifteen credits away from graduating. Instead, he decided he wanted to help people, so he volunteered to do missionary work abroad. That volunteering led him to the Ukraine, helping with food and relief after Chernobyl, a nuclear meltdown three years earlier--before the end of the Cold War.
Ken went to Kiev--Ukraine's biggest city. Some of the stats afterward showed that casualties from Chernobyl (volunteers helping to clean up, etc) afterwards totaled maybe 0.2% of those who helped. But somehow, the extra radiation in the area four years on, was enough to trigger thyroid cancer--apparently, if you are predisposed to thyroid cancer, the iodine-131, etc released by Chernobyl causes your chance of malignant cancer to skyrocket.
And that's what got Ken. I figure he ignored it initially--must've been a flu causing a sore throat or just sleeping on it wrong causing neck pain. But if it's malignant, that gives it time to spread. Ken died over there in the Ukraine. He's buried there--likely because of the radiation. I have no idea if his parents ever got to go visit the site or anything like that. I sent a sympathy card to his parents, but what more can you do after that?
Ken was a good guy with a good heart. ...it's funny how sometimes days or even years can fly by and then memories return that are vivid as if you saw the person only minutes ago.
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