Book Review-I Will Have Vengeance By Maurizio De Giovanni

One of my favorite things to do to relax is to read a good mystery. I'm particular about how I read my mysteries. I look for books that are usually not too gruesome and not two violent. I usually pick up mysteries from other countries and in another time because I’m looking for the back story which would allow me to experience the thrill of delving into a different culture or getting to know a different country. I already follow murder mystery series that are set in Scotland, England, Italy, Spain, France ETC. I do a lot of homework in selecting a series and I try to find a mystery series that has a long list of books that I can follow. I read them in chronological order, as the author wrote them. I came upon this book by Mauricio Giovanni in Carmichael books in Louisville Ky. It is part of the World Noir Series from Europa Editions. They became famous for publishing the Elena Ferrante series. Came up on two or three of the Commissario Ricciardi series in Carmichaels, and I became intrigued by the premise of the series as well as the very different set of circumstances. I picked up two or three of the first books and I jumped right in. This first one sets the tone I think for the rest of the series. We are introduced to Commissario Ricciardi, his sidekick Brigadier Maionne, and his doting Tata Rosa. As with all good literature, the author takes a long time to introduce us to the main characters. Characters that will be continuously accompany us on their adventures throughout series. De Giovanni does a very good job of introducing us to them and he does so at a very leisurely pace. He is not really in a hurry to get this important but somewhat tedious task done quickly. He lets us get a feel for the characters. Of course there is a very distinguishing characteristic of the main protagonist, a distinguishing characteristic that makes him of interest and makes us dig deeper into the character and the murder mystery. This particular characteristic for this series is especially unnerving. The ability that Commissario Ricciardi has is phantasmagorical which makes takes this story into unchartered realms, especially for me. I'm not going to give it away here, because it's a big part of the pleasure of reading the book. De Giovanni does an excellent job of setting up the mystery. He sets the scenes he built things up nicely and he leads the reader along on an unusual ride. It is hard going at first, the initial reading of the early part of the book is awkward and somewhat uncomfortable for the reader. I think that was intentional because it forces us to face our own discomfort with respect to what the plot line is about, but as the story goes on it becomes more interesting, it eventually sucks us in as the story moves towards the middle. The slow and excruciating setup is part of the charm of the book, it makes the reader pay attention to everything that the author presents and makes us consider all of the possibilities. The story centers around the death of a famous tenor in the opera house in Naples during the Italian fascist period, Il Duce is mentioned casually throughout the book. It was a particularly gruesome death and the suspects are many. The usual premise of a murder mystery. The difference is how Commissario Ricciardi solves the mystery. He is meticulous and rational in how he attacks the problems, but he also employs his “gift” to help him. All along his journey to solving the crime, he is beset by his superior’s inability as well as his own emotional upheavals hidden under his placid demeanor. The story is a study in contrast of reason and irrationality. The ending was satisfactory, but the enjoyment of the book lies in the chase that De Giovanni takes us on. I already started second book.

Volleyball Coaching Life-But can you coach?

But can you coach?
You have graduated with a degree in exercise science, you got you masters in exercise Bioenergetics and were a GA in the weight room at State U working with a leader in the field, Benjamin J. Bicep. You have done three internships with professional teams. You have every certification offered so that you have more letters after your name that letters in the alphabet. You know the Krebs cycle forward and backward, you can tell me the how the fascicle length changes with each exercise.

Now what? It begs the question can you coach? Have you ever done any real coaching? Have you ever gotten your hands dirty? This is not some old man’s fantasy; this is what I am seeing today. Young men and women with no idea of what coaching is. How to coach people not numbers. How to organize to teach effectively. Coaching is not an industry; it is a profession. Where are the professionals? All the theory is important, but it is trumped by practice. Can you apply it to make the athlete better and give the athlete a good competitive experience?

From Vern Gambetta

This is yet another great post from coach Vern Gambetta. It is great food for thought because it goes to the crux of our raison d’etre.

Many coaches approach coaching as a technical practice rather than human interactions involving communications, empathy, and human understanding. The tail is wagging the dog in many instances. At the extremely basic level of coaching, it is all about teaching: teaching technique, teaching tactics and strategies, teaching mental preparation: teaching life, in all of its ambiguities and frustrating details. This is the part of coaching that does not come from books or webinars; yet, as Vern pointed out, this is where the state of coaching resides presently.

I didn't come from a technical coaching background, I came as an avid fan of my sports and a former player, a very bad former player at that, but I love the game. My career education was in engineering and that is where my career stood and that is educational background.

The volleyball was my escape from my graduate schoolwork, it was my escape from the rigors of a math and science dominant life. As I said I was a horrible player: I was either the second setter on the third team or the third setter on the second team for my university club team, I can't remember which; basically I was not good enough to play on the best team. I took it upon myself to better myself. My road to coaching came from my wanting to make myself play better and in the process, I got sucked into coaching and I've been hooked ever since.

My playing knowledge when I started coaching was minimal because I’d never played at a high level, and I never had a coach. We all just played the game and figured it out on our own. Of course, it took me a dozen years to figure out all the techniques that would work for me, and I would not say that they were orthodox techniques.

My coaching experience followed along the usual path of all beginning coaches. Since I was never formally taught, I became connoisseur of drills. I collected drills. I did not care what the drills accomplished I just wanted drills because I felt like I needed a crutch to fill the space of an hour or 90 minutes with drills to keep the players busy and these drills needed to be somewhat connected to volleyball. It never occurred to me to think about how I was benefiting my players. I figured that if I gave them enough drills that they would get better eventually. Effective or efficient practices never occurred to me. 90 minutes seemed to be a really long time.

I changed my worldview eventually because my team wasn't winning very much. My players got better but not as good as I had expected. Being a competitive Type A engineer made me question my knowledge and coaching, I sought out coaches I respected, I bought books, I watched videos, I  stole drills in piecemeal attempts to augment my volleyball coaching without actually understanding why. I wanted the extrinsic rewards and I coached for the glories of the wins and the recognition. Of course, the recognition in club volleyball was as significant in the over scheme as nothing.

I expanded my repertory to studying sports movement, it was applied mechanics from engineering, so I had some familiarity with the nomenclature. I dove into motor learning and I got into physical training, trying to improve my player’s agility, flexibility, quickness, and strength. I dove into volleyball statistics in order to get the edge, even though I knew from my engineering training that the descriptive statistics made all kinds of sense in sports but the inferential statistics made little sense since there were too many confounding factors in the sporting arena. Yet I persisted in chasing the ghosts of inference.  

I experimented with anything that were even tangentially related to volleyball; all done to make my players better. I fell into the trap that Vern talks about, I was distracted by the bells and whistles, and I took my eyes off the ball. Coaching became a spinning plates act where I had to worry about keeping all the plates going without understanding which plate matters the most.

The epiphany came when I sat one day and realized that I am friends with most of my players from five, ten, twenty years ago. I watched them grow up, go play in college, or not play in college. I witnessed them getting married, having their own children, and then jumping into the vast coaching pool themselves for the love of their children. Then it dawned on me: Coaching is more than all the sports science, statistics, technical knowledge, kinesiology, movement training, motor learning combined. All that means nothing unless you knew how to coach, unless you knew how to communicate to people. Communication has a broad meaning in this case because coaching communication means being empathetic when you need to be empathetic, to be blunt when you need to be blunt, to be able to speak to all of the athletes who are your responsibilities under all emotional conditions, both theirs and yours. Coaching is all the technical stuff AND the communications. As Vern stated, there is no substitute for coaching because you have to pull the amalgam of skills out of you back pocket at the drop of a hat in order to be effective.

My thesis advisor once imparted on me sage piece of advice. He said that it does not matter if you know a piece of information forwards, backwards, and sideways. The trick is to know that piece of information so well that you can spin it, flip it, twirl it, make that piece of information dance and sing in your mind and then have that information flow out of your mouth in as many ways as there are students, because our job as coaches is to make sure that understanding occurs, under different psychological circumstances and different with every single person. This ability is coaching, it comes from having done it so many times that you are able deal with many different circumstances and situations as well as understand all the technical details that Vern cites.

The tail is now wagging the dog, but we had been there before, we can recover from it. I am an example of that recovery.