Who's In?

Or any weight, or forget the weight loss and improve your health and fitness. I had the pleasure to work with two cool women, who are also fitness experts and writers/presenters, to create a 12-week plan for regaining or improving fitness while dropping some of the pounds leftover from a pregnancy (even if the blessed event was long ago).

Deborah Bohn and Amy Cotta guide you through 12 weeks of “assignments” for your diet, your exercise, and your attitude. They say success is tougher if you don’t work on all three together. They bring a great sisterly and realistic approach to the project, understanding the challenges of limited time, money, or energy that plague most women. Their program and the style of their message brings you to the realization that although they offer 12 weeks of suggested workouts (with videos) and diet tips and advice, what they’re really setting you up for is a life of healthier choices. Not perfection, and not deprivation (one article is called “Hooray for Pizza, Beer, and Chocolate”), but a sustainable, informed way of living.

There are probably other things out there in this line, but this is a charming antidote to tabloid headlines and shouting adverts for the latest nutrition/diet “breakthrough,” or … even … NPR conversations on yo-yo dieting (not the name of a Chinese musician).

Here’s a link to the index page of the website where the Lose the Baby Weight Challenge lives. But as it’s a bit out of chronological order, here’s an overview of the 12 weeks, with links to the weekly content. Check it out.

Check out friend Mary's blog, 50 Eggs. She posts about the recent New York Times article on the Chinese rowing program (China is going full-tilt after sports that offer multiple medals). Featured prominently is Igor Grinko, a former Soviet, then former U.S. sculling coach now a head coach in China. Many of my former rowing teammates rowed under him when he was coaching U.S. national team sculling prospects in Occoquan, Virginia, starting a couple of years before the 1992 Olympiad. It was a somewhat uncomfortable fit all round, but he was a coach with proven success, and there were high hopes here.

Mary has some personal experience with Igor. And she respectfully pulls no punches. He replies! Fascinating! 

What do you think? Is China doping its athletes? Did the Easties do it back in the day?  

Interesting article in the Boston Globe recently, called When Men Coach Women. (Recently being a relative thing in this slow-moving blog: two weeks ago.) It was, unsurprisingly, inconclusive.

Which is perhaps just the point. I’ve had a lot of coaches myself, well, at least 21 (counting everyone from a 6th grade gymnastics coach on forward), with seven of those being women. I’ve had a few that were really exceptional, a couple of losers, and a range in between. I can’t say the sex of the coach had much to do with where they fit in that range.

However, the Globe story was written as though there were an issue. It talked mostly of college teams, and maybe in that scenario there’s some special dynamic? There was a quote I thought was really great, from the Dartmouth women’s ice hockey coach, Mark Hudak:

I firmly believe that men and women can coach men and women. Unfortunately, our society and culture has made it seem more appropriate for men to coach men, but I think it's because it's always been that way.

 

The Globe totally failed to follow up on this in the way I had hoped. What about the question of women coaching men?

One sees it so rarely past the junior high school level. Dear old Google comes up with very little: a couple of cases from the early 2000s about women being hired by the ABA or NBA development teams, largely as publicity stunts. A sexual discrimination lawsuit. I know of one case myself, where my friend Linda coaches men’s rowing at Harvard. The Globe even quoted her boss in its story, but didn’t mention this twist. Perhaps the editor killed such a reference as scope creep. That does happen. The quote from Harvard’s rowing chief was good though, and classic for the man known for not being loquacious:

Harvard men's heavyweight crew coach Harry Parker, who directed the U.S. eight to a bronze medal at the inaugural Olympic women's regatta in 1976, was asked about the difference. The women, he mused, were "slightly more punctual." 

 

Anyway, the article mentioned that 58 percent of NCAA coaches of women now were men, and implied that that was an increase, attributing it to the growth of women’s sports meaning higher paid positions for women’s team coaches, meaning men would then deign to do it. But the story didn’t offer figures from the past on collegiate teams. I’m curious…. I would have guessed there would have always been more men coaching at that level, and that what would be noteworthy would be an increase in women, at least at the head coach level. But I don’t have the stats. Or the wherewithal to dig them up. Alas.

So, in conclusion, what? I did say that Globe article was inconclusive, right? I’ll just say thanks to Lisa, Andy, Steve, and Elizabeth, some of the best coaches I’ve had.

My brother-in-law once removed (my brother’s wife’s brother) wrote an op-ed that was published in the Gainesville Sun recently. He makes the interesting observation that we often suspend the criminal code inside the confines of an athletic competition, and maybe that's not good. In short, if hotheads (or dimwits) brawl on the basketball court, perhaps they should be charged with assault and battery and treated like you or I would if we did such a thing on the street, and not just given a six-week vacation in which to work on their abs and celebrity endorsements. Maybe that would set an example that would make them chill. Not a bad point. I suppose some of the tolerance for the violence comes out of western sports’ gladiatorial past. There is some unspoken suspension of real world for the special rules of the ring. But, indeed, there are children watching, and what they’re learning isn’t, “It’s all right to punch someone who bumps into you,” but, “It’s all right to punch someone if you’re a valuable celebrity.” I’m glad Bobby wrote the piece; it’s easy for bad sportsmanship to become ho-hum, and it shouldn’t. He didn’t say in the article, and maybe it goes without saying, but he’s a lawyer himself.

On a different but not-too-different topic, I heard an intriguing piece on Marketplace this evening on my way to basketball practice. It was about big money sports and so-called student athletes. Everyone decries scholarship athletes getting wined and dined and otherwise materially spoiled by boosters or whoever it is that gets cars for them or apartments for their mothers or whatever all it is. (Again, here’s a state of things that’s probably bad, but not as bad as global warming, the war in Iraq, or the absence of a walk button at the crosswalk between my two work buildings, so if we have to triage the things we get up in arms about, this one doesn’t occupy my mind all that often. But still…) This commentator, Dwayne Ballen, took a different tack: If sports is such monstrously big business that head coaches of, well, just say, college football teams playing in a “national championship” (quotes to acknowledge BCS critics) make more than $2 million per annum, shouldn’t the players who do the real work get a little something out of it? He suggests setting up trusts for them that they can’t access till they graduate. Or if they don’t graduate, until they’re 30 years old (aaaancient to a college kid). And they can get more if they get good grades. I think it’s a very good idea. Not everyone goes on to huge salaries in professional sports, though they alter their lives to pursue it. If they’re the revenue producers for these big schools, yeah, why not give them a tiny slice of the pie?

Meanwhile, climate change continues apace. Temps in the 70s in Massachusetts this past weekend. Which was January 6 and 7, if you weren't paying attention. Now, while balmy air on a jacketless day feels undeniably pleasant to one’s body, if you think about it at all, it’s quite disturbing to the mind. It makes me sad how little anyone thinks about it at all. The reliably idiotic local news was all delirious about it in a giggly way, interviewing people dining out on the street in downtown Boston. Hello? Think about the polar bears, could you? If you like this so well, move to Georgia or something. Some of us want to ski! And keep the slate-colored juncos coming back. And to quit plucking ticks off the dogs in the midst of the freaking winter.

 

You notice I didn’t say “fantasy camp.” If you want to hob-nob for a few days with Michael Jordan (for $17,500), with Mike Krzyzweski (for $10,000), or with Rick Barry (for $2,195—yeah, well, Rick Barry), or other basketball names of variously faded glories, they’re out there. By the copywriting in the promos, it’s unclear whether women are welcome at these camps. Don’t know what they’d do if you signed up with a gender neutral name and then just showed up….

But, you’ve gotta ask, at thousands per day are you paying for good coaching, or the brush with fame? I would love to find a sponsor to send me to all of these camps for comparison’s sake. See how they stack up instructionally as well as in their openness to the female camper.

I think I’m qualified because I’m kind of opinionated. I’m fundamentally sound (so I’m told). I’m used to playing with mostly guys. And I have a superb benchmark for an adult basketball camp.

I recently came back from attending the Never Too Late Basketball Camp in Lakeside, Michigan (less than two hours’ drive from Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan). There’s something cleansing and invigorating about so much basketball packed into a few days, temporarily replacing the other worries and minutiae that clutter the mind. A really great coach to player ratio means lots of attention to your progress. And while these coaches may not be regulars on ESPN Classic, they know their stuff.

I have to admit, I’ve been to this camp a few times. A couple of years ago, before I had this blog, I wrote about it, in hopes of selling the story to some Lake Michigan area lifestyle magazine or something--anything really. Guess I didn’t find the right outlet, so I’ll fish the document out and post it in here. Might as well get some use out of it, no? Even though, written as a compact (sort of) article, and not a rambling blog, it sounds…what is it? Affected? Too studied? Just bad? My apologies if so.

(I’ve annotated it with some updated information.)

You Need a Coach

NEWS FLASH: I am not going to be invited to the next WNBA tryout. Nor will I be recruited to any Division I, II, or III college program. Or even make my high school varsity team.

Why? Because I am 42 years old.

But I’ve got the hoops jones of any promising 13 year-old, so even though all signs point to its being too late, I try to ignore them. I only started playing ten years ago, so in my basketball life, I am a mere youth, right? I just know I want to play hard and often, develop my game all I can before I really slow down, so that when, I mean, if that happens, I’ll actually have some skill to fall back on. It’s hard, though, to do that by yourself, or in weekly pickup games with all their quirky personalities and bad habits.

Given all that, I was naturally attracted to the notion (as well as the name) of Never Too Late Basketball Camps and the organization’s weekend-long intensive playing clinic for adults. It was downright irresistible. So I signed up.

And after 11 hours of hoops over the course of 36, I was glad I did. This isn't your touch-the-celebrity fantasy camp kind of thing. This was a "citizens'" gig, with high-school has-beens, city league wannabes, and earnest students of the game pushing themselves on the court like any Five Star campers.

There were more than a dozen of us campers, aged 23-53. What made otherwise sane adults want to leave home and hearth behind to spend a weekend doing the kind of drills you might remember from gym class...and then some? Plain old love of the game.

Specifically, for example, Liz, a 32 year-old elementary school teacher, said she wanted to become more of an offensive threat in her Chicago league games. Terry, a 46 year-old tax attorney also from the Chicago area, took up basketball when his kids started to play, and he didn’t know what they were talking about. He’s been to a few NTL camps and returned to refresh his skills. Johnny, a grad student from Ohio, back for his second NTL camp, wanted to get a better grip on where to go on the court during a game. Arthur, a lawyer from New Jersey, went to spend a weekend hanging out and playing hoops with his college buddy John, a Chicago area engineer, and his high school buddy Lloyd, a professor and musician. You see?

Whatever we went for, what we all got was a hoops-lovers getaway: A weekend of play-eat-sleep in a charming spot. (We stayed at The Lakeside Inn in Michigan’s Harbor Country, and played at nearby River Valley High School.) That in itself would have been fabulous, even if we were just playing pickup at both ends of the day. But added to it was the incalculable thrill of the learning curve—just the opposite of a roller coaster, with the ride up the uphill slope bringing immense satisfaction. That we owed to our own efforts, of course, and particularly to the coaching staff.

These may not be household names, but they are the real deal: Steve Bzomowski, former Division I player, Harvard University coach, and scout for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Greg Tonagel, former NCAA starter and student-coach with the Valparaiso Crusaders, and [now, since 2005] current head coach of the Indiana Wesleyan University Wildcats. Not to mention coach of the year in his conference. They were joined [in 2005 and 2006] by Tonagel’s brother Joel, an earnest and talented point guard, with an enviable comfort in coaching people twice his age.

As for what makes a good coach, I could say knowledge, a perceptive eye, and the ability to communicate and motivate. Or I could describe Bzomowski, a tornado of energy and sly wit, who can both describe and demonstrate the moves he’s teaching with equal artistry. The founder of Never Too Late, he is a master of breaking down complex processes into learnable skills. “I don’t think anybody has broken down the lay-up as far as I have,” Bzomowski said in a reflective moment, and it’s true. He’s got it down to the molecular level: Where to put your feet, how to grip the ball, how the last dribble should sound, what to aim at, where to look…. He can get a total novice shooting sweet lay-ups in half an hour—I saw it happen.

At camp’s first practice on Friday night we all warmed up a little diffidently, working hard at making the moves we’ve kind of got look smooth while trying to absorb the barrage of information being fired at us. First of all, the rules of engagement: Respect each other’s physical and emotional safety. Then a high-speed fusillade of essentials about how to best execute a lay-up, where to go after you’ve passed a ball, how to get a good spin on your chest pass, what a good screen looks like and where to set it.

Definite overload for the group still trying to learn each other’s names, but as the weekend progressed you could see it as part of a grand scheme for imparting as much hoops knowledge as possible. Like dumping all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the table before going back to turn them over, sort them out and start to make sense of them.

We campers had to repair to the Red Arrow Road House afterward to cool our brains.

These coaches are what every athlete (and every learner of anything) needs. They’re demanding, utterly focused on the present, ready to drive you hard and make you laugh. A dash of goofiness puts the intensity in perspective. While teaching defensive concepts, Bzomowski emphasized keeping an eye on the ball. “Never turn to follow. Instead look back to see.” He said it again for good measure. “Never turn to follow. Instead look back to see.” And hearing the Emily Dickinson rhythm of his statement, he broke into song: “I love playing defense. Defense is for me!” The more laconic Tonagel had some poetry for learning defense too: “You reach? I teach.”

They do know how to teach. Bzomowski is the king of analogies, able to make lightning quick comparisons between basketball and other possibly more familiar activities, especially other sports. He alluded to football, baseball, swimming, gymnastics, track, bowling, horseracing, even Monopoly (“You’ve got to value the post. It’s Boardwalk and Park Place”) and chess (“Hey, don’t just stand there like you’re waiting for a bus. Be ready. Bend your knees. All athletes bend their knees. Even chess players”).

You know, that made people laugh, and that loosened them up enough to actually bend their knees!

Anyone involved in pedagogy can tell you laughter is an unmatched medium for learning. Both Bzomowski’s and Tonagel’s styles—though quite different—put humor to good use. In imparting their basketball wisdom, Bzomowski’s exciting alacrity and Tonagel’s calm intensity brought out chuckles and developed cumulative in-jokes that united the diverse group.

“Wait. Stop, Tamika,” Bzomowski said to a player bringing the ball upcourt and trying to get a play started in too much of a hurry. “You’re the point guard. It’s like being the pitcher. If you’re a pitcher, are you going to throw your fastball before the shortstop’s in place? You know? You’re Pedro Martinez and you start winging that thing while Garciaparra’s still walking to his spot?” [OK, see, I wrote it in 2004!] That helped make clear what shouldn’t happen.

And revealed Never Too Late’s Boston origins. The Larry Bird allusions were frequent, and became the source of amusement. But between Bzomowski’s and Tonagel’s experiences playing, coaching, and studying the game, they could back up any point with an anecdote or comment from coaches or players from the last 40 years. Though a quarter-century apart in age, the two coaches speak the same language—that of walking basketball encyclopediae, with personal experience. Tonagel can tell you what it’s like to play against Carmelo Anthony. Bzomowski what it’s like to play with Charlie Yelverton. (Or to coach Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan—no kidding.)

By Sunday, as we said our goodbyes and see-you-next-years (because camp will return there next spring, in case you missed it this time…) on the Lakeside Inn porch, we hated to go. Beat as we were, we wished there was more. “Steve, if you ever have a five-day camp, sign me up,” said Liz, and others of us nodded. We were heading to our cars exhausted, instructed, and completely inspired for the play ahead.

What I discovered at camp, besides a sharper between-the-legs dribble, was that no matter how long you've been driving around in the same old gear, you can shift, you can make a change, you can learn something, even get better. You just need a catalyst, and the best kind is a coach.

###

For another look at what a Never Too Late camp is like, check out the coverage it got in Fast Company magazine a few years back.

I watched last night’s exciting NCAA women’s final hoops match-up of Duke and Maryland with a friend who has been a basketball coach at college and other levels himself.

When it looked like Maryland was about to finally close the gap he said with a sudden realization, “I think Duke’s being outcoached.” We had both noticed Maryland coach Brenda Frese’s animation and smiling enthusiasm in the second half, which Maryland started with a 10 point deficit and then fell further behind. “I bet she’s trying to get them to loosen up,” he’d said. And it sure looked like it. While Duke’s Gail Goestenkors wasn’t sitting idly by, she looked more grim as the game proceeded, and less dynamic. Duke’s players appeared to talk to each other on the bench during time-outs while Maryland players were in group huddles. And it sure looked like Frese’s attitude worked, as Maryland came from down 13 to stay within 0-4 points for many long minutes. “Big comebacks take a lot out of you,” my friend observed warily. And there’s the psychological danger for players of feeling that, once having caught up, they had done their job.

The players on both sides were great, making it a fun game to watch (far more engaging than the men’s final, for example). You can read all the details in many sports pages. Maryland got a little lucky, too, with some pretty ill-considered shots actually falling in.

“I hope she can keep that up for the overtime,” he added, when regulation ended in a tie. Meaning the coach, not any of the players. And again it looked like she did. Later she was quoted as saying, “Overtime is their time; I didn’t say anything.” We wondered what she had said during halftime, because, well, we were watching in a bar and without sound…. Checking out SportsCenter later, we heard the lockerroom recording of her saying, “I know you all have 20 more minutes of great basketball in you. I just came down the hall and heard them—you know what they’re doing? Celebrating. They’re celebrating.”

Perfect, said my friend.