Last week 50-year-old Phil Michelson won the PGA Championship, one of golf’s four major tournaments. In the process, he became the oldest golfer in history to win a major. Putting the age aside, Michelson is one of the all-time great golfers. He has won forty-five tournaments in total, including winning six major championships. Going into…
In sport, failure comes with the territory. I’ve always have believed that I learned more from failure than from success. In my first USA U-18 competition at the FIVB World Championships, we finished a less than glorious 14th out of 16 teams. Yikes, a massive fail! To be kind, this was a learning experience! The…
Very few would debate the importance of repetition in the process of learning a skill. However, repetition in and by itself is not the key. The nature of the repetition is relevant to the learning process. Mindless repetition does not foster improvement. Repetition without thought merely confuses activity with getting something accomplished. The video below…
I read an article in the Wall Street Journal today about the preponderance of cheating in American school systems. Texas A&M University had a 50% increase in cheating allegations in the fall from a year earlier. A university official said one incident involving 193 students self-reporting academic misconduct to receive lighter punishment after faculty members…
I guess this is a better late than never piece about the recently completed NCAA Women’s Division 1 Volleyball Championships. I wish to extend a sincere tip of the hat to all the coaches and players that were in the Omaha “bubble.” I’m confident that the challenges were numerous. The biggest challenge might have been…
Supposedly the youth of the country have shrinking attention spans. At least, that is what we are led to believe. The Associated Press came out with a statistic stating that the average attention span in 1998 was twelve minutes. Unfortunately, that figure shrunk to five minutes in 2008. How they arrived at this figure is…
In recent years the term “Growth Mindset” was the new doctrine you couldn’t escape. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. A growth mindset is a very positive attribute worthy of pursuit. However, there is a difference between being able to define a growth mindset and putting this positive mindset into action. I only…
Should I feel clueless to American pop culture if I admit that I’ve never seen NBC’s The Voice before? My research staff (myself) has indicated the show has been on the scene for 20 seasons. Have I missed anything? The show came on my radar as I read a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.…
Like most in the volleyball community, my watching of collegiate matches is restricted to my television or computer. I want to be measured with my comments because I’m not in the gym during games, and I’m most definitely not in the practice facility daily. This spring season is not one without multiple obstacles. The practice…
Given the circumstances of the past year, attending a baseball game has not been an option. So instead of watching baseball, I’ve been reading about baseball. Although other sports are gaining, baseball is still the most analyzed game around. Basketball and football are also joining the sabermetric revolution; however, both sports pale compared to baseball’s…