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USAV to Host Junior Forums at AVCA Convention
USA Volleyball will conduct several Junior Forums at the AVCA Annual Convention set for Dec. 16-19 at Tampa, Fla. Read More
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John Kessel - Turning Five Medals in …
Greetings Volleyball Family - The tremendous success of our teams in Beijing, including the Paralympic Sitting Women's team winning a silver medal last month, now opens this chance to share ideas with everyone on growing our sport together. This weekend, the Youth & Junior Olympic Volleyball… Read More
John Kessel - IMPACT and Clinic Thoughts
Having just done three IMPACT Webinars and a clinic for the Columbia Empire Region, including watching Saturday nite's 6A Oregon State Championships Showdown between Jesuit and West Linn...some core thoughts come to mind with what I am sharing, and want to pass along to all.
My Top 3… Read More
John Kessel - Capitalization Rates, …
One of the first things that came out of our USOC conference for me was to hear from Dr. K Anders Ericsson that Malcom Gladwell was coming out with a new book. Sure enough, I went online and ordered Outliers, due out in a week. It will go along side his other GREAT reads titled – Tipping… Read More
John Kessel - Passion, Burnout and Teaching
I just watched a very powerful ESPN Outside the Lines story on a very special athlete, Elena Della Donne. I strongly urge all Junior Olympic volleyball directors and coaches to watch it, as well as read the story. It has three important threads woven together – burn… Read More
John Kessel - HP Clinic Lessons Shared
So we are in the fourth day of this year's USA Volleyball High Performance Coaches' Clinic and CAP I,II, III sessions here at the Olympic Training Center. Hugh McCutcheon, Tom Hogan and Peter Vint headline a group of our sport's most passionate people in presenting ideas to teach… Read More
John Kessel - The Leave a Ball Behin …
Today I packed up some volleyballs to send to the deserving programs of the Special Olympics in Jamaica and to coach Wiyaka Chasing Hawk, who is making volleyball happen for kids on the reservation at the Cheyenne River Project in Eagle Butte, S.D.
These donated balls came from the USA… Read More
John Kessel - A Coaching Challenge and Reality
Just back from Milwaukee where over 60 coaches shared two full days of a CAP course. I got up at 3 am to catch a 6 am NW flight there and spent a very interesting part of Friday with the Badger Region Board of Directors and Junior Leaders, sharing ideas on growing the game…
Jenny… Read More
John Kessel - More Street Volleyball Please
Hanging out at this year's NCAA Volleyball Championships in chilly Omaha, Neb., one cannot help but be warmed by the wonderful hospitality of the Cornhusker Nation and Great Plains members. Wednesday night, thanks to Sue Mailhot, commissioner of this region &ndash - which leads all 40… Read More
John Kessel - Growing the Game in Oklahoma
Today's must read is by none other than Malcom Gladwell again - an excellent new article in the New Yorker on effective teaching and "predicting" success that you can access it
John Kessel - USOC Seminar on Develo …
Starting tomorrow, a USOC Seminar I have been looking forward to for months, is finally happening. Take a look at this schedule! For those who have taken IMPACT, the names Schmidt and Ericsson have been seen for over 20 years throughout the motor skill section of the manual. The title… Read More
How We Make Decisions
Most of you reading my work over the years understand the importance I place on improving the most important skill in our sport – reading. As in reading the opponent, anticipating, judging what is going on etc. Stu Sherman took me back over 20 years ago to when his brother Craig, on his way… Read More
How to Make Coaches Great
One of the sites I frequent often is posting new videos this week, as the TED conference for 2009 is happening right now. Yesterday I was talking with Andy Pai from our Coaching Education Program department, and realized he did not know of this website, which I share at every CAP, IMPACT ,… Read More
The Art of Strategy
One of the things that I find fascinating is the "volleyball canyon" regarding the mental game. To read about more of these gaps between what the game itself contains, and what coaches train in practice,
To Sit or Stand During Matches?
This week I got an email from a coach, who asked a great question - sit or stand during match play? Bill, a coach in GEVA, and Peter, from the USOC who I collaborate a lot with on the science of volleyball, have kindly said I can use our email discussion in today's blog, so here goes:… Read More
The Tragedy of the Commons
I am starting with a look back into an article that remains timely in this day and age, Garret Hardin's 1968 piece called "The Tragedy of the Commons." Many decades ago, I graduated from Colorado College with a degree focusing on bionomics. My thesis," Towards a Resourced… Read More
National Conversations on Good Coaching
Almost a year ago, Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA ), a Stanford University-based non-profit organization dedicated to transforming youth sports and USAV Affiliated Organization, joined with USA Volleyball and seven other of the nation's top youth sports groups -… Read More
The Talent Code – Deep Practice, Ign …
Sorry for the long break in postings - with two kids in teen sports (volleyball and lacrosse) both in state playoffs and finals almost upon us (and proms, who can forget THAT cultural right of passage...) and getting ready for the important USA Volleyball annual meetings, time to free range think… Read More
The Loser's Club
The Loser's Club and Playing Blind
One of the things about YouTube is the way contests I would never have had the chance to "see" are now things I can enjoy and learn from. The clip below by a blind piano contestant, who just made the top 12 of this year's Van Cliburn, share today… Read More
Olympism and the New White House Off …
The White House yesterday announced the forming of the Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sports office. I sent out news of this last night to some friends and leaders with the correct phrasing in my opinion of the new formation of the Youth, Paralympic and Olympic Sports office. More than a few… Read More
Tennis Anyone?
Warming up on the beach with your partner has two very powerful messages that indoor players and coaches need to listen to so that more kids find success earlier in the challenges of our sport.
First is the tradition/culture of Dig/Pass-set-hit to warm up with.… Read More
Father's Day and Volleyball
My father was my role model in countless ways, and I have done my best raising my kids as a single dad to follow in his World War II veteran footsteps. Fly Fishing, backpacking, skiing, and more, my kids have also done. It may also come as no surprise that both my kids love to play… Read More
Volleyball and Fly Fishing
I got a new Orvis Helios 3wt recently. Made from the same carbon fiber they use on the Apache helicopters, it is feather light at 1.75 ounces total, and strong as heck, for casting into the afternoon winds along my favorite little streams. The science of technology amazes me, yet in our sport it… Read More
Joy in Volleyball
Today, the USA Junior Olympic Boys' Volleyball Championships…
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Beachroots Volleyball in Vanuatu
I have come back to where my grandfather, father and a guy named James Michener once travelled and worked. My grandfather John Fitzgerald, based out of the Tahiti, fighting to eradicate the dreaded Elephantiasis disease from all the thousands of islands, for the World Health… Read More
More Volleyball From Vanuatu
Espiritu Santo...Wrecks to Rainforest -- Vanuatu, Discover untouched seclusion and beauty...that is what Carte de Luganville - the map of this town says.... To see and do here? World class diving, SS President Coolidge, Million Dollar Point, pristine coral reefs...game fishing....adventure… Read More
Landslide
What do Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins, Dixie Chicks, The Dance, and Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac all have in common? Whether acapella, acoustic guitar, solo piano, or more - each have sung the powerful song "Landslide" in a beautiful way, and those songs I have been playing over and over on my… Read More
Back to My Iowa Grassroots
I have come back to the place that my coaching of coach's journey really began, to a land where nighthawks cry at dusk. Indeed, the 17 year cicadas are now on their third generation since those times, and still vibrate out their amazingly loud ascending and descending song from… Read More
Paralympic Sports Clubs & Military Sports Programs
I traveled some this summer doing mostly weekend clinics around the USA primarily for coaches and PE teachers at the youth level. I journeyed from Lander, Wyoming, to Long Island, New York, and places like Phoenix for the newly relocated Volleyball Festival, and Atlanta for the Boy’s Jr.… Read More
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Sharing Volleyball in Vanuatu
John Kessel has been an FIVB Level IV Coa… View Gallery
