Appreciation-I have come to praise John Kessel

Much unlike Marc Anthony.

As the news spread about our friend John Kessel’s sudden and unexpected retirement from USA Volleyball, the global world of volleyball was put in shock. The suddenness with which he was retired and the unceremonious way the news of his departure was released was, to say the least, disconcerting. Incredibly, it is John, ever the optimist, who has turned cheerleader for his friends, and reassured us into celebrating his future path because he is just that kind of person.

I shall hold true to my intent in this essay and be positive about our friend’s retirement. He certainly deserves to go sit by the lake in Bison Peak Lodge at Puma Hill with a line in the water and peacefully enjoying his retirement life. Although I must say that I get a chuckle out of the vision of John being tranquil and just sitting. The man is incapable of leisure.

My friendship with John started many years ago. I actually first saw John but did not actually meet John at the time. It was on the volleyball court of course; he was playing for the Denver Comets of the International Volleyball Association. I was sitting in the stands, a 17-year-old fat kid being astounded by the game and by the athleticism, wanting desperately to play like those who were playing in front of me. Over time John and I have talked about this and we both would marvel at the serendipity of both of us being in the same space at the same time.

The actual first time we met was many years later, I was a gradual student and I had started playing pickup volleyball as a diversion from engineering. I was not very good at the game, I wanted to get better. I saw a brochure for Gold Medal players clinic. This is not the Gold Medal Squared clinics, this is way before that time. Gold Medal Clinics targeted volleyball player wannabes who would sign up for a weekend of training and playing. The staff is usually stellar, consisting of a lot of college coaches and former players. I decided to go, paid for it on a gradual student salary.

It was well worth it, and it was also a fortuitous decision, because I was coached by John, and he was, in my humble opinion, the best coach for a short fat wannabe volleyball player.  He was very patient; he appreciated the love of the game from our unruly lot. It was in Dallas TX, a bunch middle aged guys on this court.  John ran us through some drills, he got us to play some games. Indeed, this is the first time that I became acquainted with the drill morbidly named “The Pit”. It was John who administered the beating that was The Pit to me. Afterwards we were all sweaty as the air conditioning was terrible and John had put us all through a workout. We were hot, hungry, and thirsty. This being Dallas, we hit the closest decent Tex-Mex place we can find. This is where we made the connection about the Comets. Many margaritas later, we were still talking about it. As a side note, that was also the night I discovered that John Kessel is the guy who has a bottomless stomach. The Tex-Mex food was great and plentiful and he just kept eating and eating and eating. You need to realize that as a fat Chinese guy who could put away food by his own right, watching the skinny older guy out eat him was not just shocking but unprecedented. The respect grew from there.

We kept in touch after that, exchanging occasional emails and I added him to my annual letter list. After I figured out that I was too old, too short, and too fat to do anything near proficiency with volleyball, even though I love playing pickup, I became happily sidetracked into coaching. Coaching became an addiction. I initially started learning about coaching because I wanted to be better as a player, but my playing got to the point where I reached my saturation point.  You just can't outrun your own genetics, lack of height, and an overabundance of weight; this was when I got in contact with John.  We have had many happy conversations over much food and libations. He was never too busy to answer my emails or answer my phone calls. He always made time. He also added me to his glorious email list, it was like gold.  The volume of emails was intense and the topics were broad ranging, he would occasionally throw in things that he was just trying out. I got better as a coach by the proximity to his broad base of knowledge. He surprised me with his generosity of time and attention, he challenged me in my thinking regarding the status quo. Ask the question: Why? Enough times and people will run out of answers. He encouraged me to look for my own answers, even though I was not trained in sports, coaching, kinesthetics, psychology, or any of the related areas. My first step towards being a generalist.

I would say that my two top volleyball mentors never actually mentored me. They led by example and I learned from watching them lead. I watched John coaching the coaches as I watched my other mentor, Teri Clemens, coach her Bears, as I lived in Saint Louis during her dominance of Division Three volleyball.

One of my most favorite volleyball coaching memories was when the Gateway Region sponsored a CAP clinic for both CAP I and CAP II. It was at Nerinx Hall high school in Webster Groves Mo. John Kessel and Teri Clemens made up of two thirds of the cadre, a happy convergence of fortuity. It was an incredible experience of learning. They made us think, learn, and laugh our asses off . Between John and Teri we had no chance of getting bored, or taking ourselves seriously. That was probably the best coaching clinic atmosphere I have ever been in. It was also meaningful for me for the obvious reasons.

As I was coaching club volleyball, I'd see John occasionally at the qualifiers, Junior Nationals, and the AVCA convention. We would talk and catch up, but I always knew that this time together with my friends was precious. We exchanged ideas and good reads and grew our knowledge. I also had a hard time catching up with the John’s very catholic taste in interesting topics. I believe that he is the first polymath that I had come to know personally.

In 2013, I became an administrator in the super top secret group known as Volleyball Coaches and Trainers, the brainchild of Sir Brian Swenty.  John and I became administrators for this volleyball coaches’ group, so we got even more interaction. It is a tribute to John that even though he had a very definite philosophy, and idea of what learning and coaching should be, he rarely forced his viewpoint on anyone in the group. Even amongst the 14 administrators. John didn't say much amongst us but whatever he said whenever he said it we all listened, because he said what he meant and he meant what he said. We are all great fans of the man and his incredible work promoting, teaching, and learning about the sport that we all shared.

One of our most pleasurable traditions is that we, the administrators for VCT, would try to get together at the AVCA convention for at least one meal, so that we could all catch up. Much alcohol and much large slabs of beef were consumed. As always, John would impress us with his incredible bottomless stomach.

We, all 14 administrators, all felt connected to USA Volleyball through John’s affiliation because John was the perfect ambassador for the sport of volleyball worldwide.

Which bring me to this point in time.

John can now live his life as he sees fit. His children: Cody and Mac, both of whom I have met and have become friends with, are magnificent people, they are a tribute to John as a loving and inspired parent. I have also met his lovely wife Lilly at The USA volleyball banquet in 2019 where John received the Frier award, the highest award that is given by USA Volleyball. They are a well-matched pair. It was astounding to see the outpouring of love and respect for John during the USAV banquet, a fitting honor for the work that he's done for promoting volleyball worldwide. John has the inimitable ability to teach and learn while going from the smallest enclaves of volleyball all over the world to the largest stage for volleyball: the Olympics, without ever losing his enthusiasm, generosity, and patience.

We all expected the expression of gratitude and love shown in the VCT thread honoring John. We knew he is beloved because that is how we all felt about him.

I wish him the best of luck.  I know that he will not disappear from my life or from volleyball, partly because John is a great friend and partly because I won’t let him. He is stuck with me whether he likes it or not.

I hope to visit Bison Peak Lodge at Puma Point in the future. Enjoy John and Lilly’s space and ethos of their project. This is from a guy who thinks roughing it is a night without the remote.

Enjoy John. You deserve it.

Observations-Sincerity

In this time of chaos and rage surrounding the murder of George Floyd, we are seeing something unusual happening. What were once forbidden topics, institutional racism and Black Lives Matter have rapidly become a regular part of public discussions. As a result of that normalization of those topics, we have seen many companies and organizations putting out statements in support of Black Lives Matter, in support of racial equality, and in support of the protests against institutionalized racism. While it is heartening to see that these major institutions and corporations who have traditionally been against any kind of protest and against property destruction come out in favor of the present Black Lives Matter protests, you can’t help but wonder about their sincerity. I cannot know their intents but at the same time my cynical side makes me wonder why are they coalescing around racial equality? Is it the gruesomeness of the video of George Floyd getting suffocated under the knee of Derek Chauvin? Is it possible that we have gone past our collective moral tipping point regarding inequality and racial discrimination? Has corporate America decided that enough is enough? Or are they still playing the cynical public relations game? How can we honestly believe that this radical turnabout from their historical response is sincere?

 The statements and proclamations from institutions and companies are professionally written and crafted in the usual PR way. In fact, they are so professional and risk averse that the statements comes off as trite and soulless.  They hit the major points in a cursory fashion in order to explicitly tell you what they think you want to hear. As I am reading a small sample of these public statements, none of the proclamations have excited me and made me sit up and take notice. Given the lackluster and passionless wordsmithing, the question is: do I believe them? Can I or should I take their statements at face value? Since I have developed into a cynical guy in my old age, I try to determine their sincerity.

 I am seeing if I can detect any amount of sincerity behind those blandly polished words. I am wondering if they are real sentiments, felt deeply in the soul of those purportedly behind the written word or are they mere meaningless gestures, unfeeling and procedural. There are two examples that happened recently in conjunction with the protests that also deserves to be put under the microscope and scrutinized.

The first is the Drew Bree’s apology for his initial video regarding the protests. He had mistaken the purpose of Colin Kaepernick’s act of protest, taking a knee. He unequivocally condemned the act because he believed that it was an act to dishonor the military and the flag: the mythology propagated by the right-wing propaganda machine, which completely ignored the fact that Kaepernick was advised by a former Green Beret, Nate Boyer, to kneel during the national anthem rather than sit on the bench. It seems incredible that Drew Brees, an NFL veteran in a league that is 70% black, could still believe the right-wing propaganda after working, sweating, and toiling with Black men. Either he was being disingenuous as he was playing with these Black men, or he had never discussed the situation with the men that he is supposed to lead. Which is what made me question his sincerity when he immediately apologized for his earlier assertion. The mea culpa came quickly, after a number of sports figures condemned his assertion, in the most emotional and unsparing manners possible. His Saints teammates were brutal in their reply to him, which I suspect may have played a major role in his reversal. So, was Brees sincere in declaring that he is now “woke” and knows better? Or is it because he wants to win, and he knew his chances for winning were disintegrating fast? Or was he looking at his legacy in professional sports? He has always had a great reputation for being a man of integrity and a speaker of truth. He has surely blown that reputation to smithereens in one short video and the apology for that video.

The other example is Roger Goodell’s video statement to the world, admitting that he and the NFL had erred irrevocably when they banned the players kneeling for the national anthem in the aftermath of the Kaepernick protest. It only took him four years to realize that he was in the wrong. Four. Freaking. Years.  He oversees the richest most profitable sports league in north America. The man is responsible for the direction of the league, and it took him four years to admit that he was wrong. I wonder how the owners and television executives feel about Goodell’s lightning fast response. I wonder if they care. I am sure they do not.

Why the turnaround for Goodell? His case is not the same as Brees’ because the time between the initial action and then the reversal was four years. Brees’ case can be directly and quickly attributed to the potential PR disaster. Can Goodell be accused of the same mercenary motivation? The answer is probably. Opportunism and mercenary intentions are always good motivators for those who are weak, even though Goodell had the perfect excuse, he can just do nothing. If he did nothing, and said nothing, no one would have noticed because that was the norm that everyone expected from NFL. Was he making the statement to placate 70% of his workforce? He did not care about them when he banned kneeling, why should he care now?

It all comes down to sincerity. Were the companies sincere when their PR hacks put out the vanilla statements? Was Brees sincere when he made his initial statement? Or was he sincere when he walked it back a day later? Was Goodell sincere when he condemned racial protest? Or was he sincere when he apologized from making his initial mistake, four years in the making.

I cannot say whether any one of them are sincere. I can not read into their hearts and minds to discern truthfulness. I do have my opinions, but they are my opinions and not proven truths. So the questions remain out there. Were they sincere or not?

The answer lies in the long-term actions by everyone who have been doubted. If you are going to talk the walk, they better walk the walk. They cannot just throw their vanilla statements out there and expect it to stick, that time disappeared years ago. They can not just throw money at the problem, although money does help. They must revisit their institutional policies and reinvent them to correct the inequalities that are present in the rules, it does not matter if they are intentional or not. It is time to even the playing field, it is time to eradicate the system of hereditary and racial privilege.

Corporations, Brees and Goodell need to man up, to do as they had promised, to show their sincerity. Not just this week or month or year, but for the rest of their lives.

Sincerity is hard to fake because sincerity has to real.

By the way, this is what a real statement should read like. From the USA Women’s Volleyball NT. No dancing, no weasel words. Straight up declaration.

Say their names: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin….

USA Women’s Volleyball stands for these names and many more. We stand with the families who are grieving over the loss of a son, a daughter, a spouse, a mother, a father, but most importantly a loved one. We stand for Black lives whose civil liberties have been obstructed by systems of institutionalized racism and who have brutally suffered at the hands of police violence. Freedom and Liberty are rights entitled to all American citizens and it is time to talk about why our Black citizens don’t have them. Enough is enough. It’s time for us to grow and change as a nation. We stand, we support, and we will be that change.