How failure and imagination transformed J.K. Rowling’s life to Harry Potter.
“Failure is the stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me… I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized.”
“It is impossible to life without failing at something unless you lived so cautiously, you might as well not have lived at all. You fail by default.”
“Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.”
“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won.”
Volleyball’s Wizard of Westwood will be calling it quits
Al Scates is in his 50th year of coaching UCLA, with 19 NCAA titles and more than two dozen Olympians as his legacy.
By Helene Elliott, LA Times
January 19, 2012, 5:00 p.m.
Photographs cover almost every inch of wall space in Al Scates’ office, a gallery of faces forever young. Books, plaques and keepsakes from his travels cover his desk and crowd the ledge beneath a window framing the view he has enjoyed for 50 years.
Bravo to USA Volleyball for taking a grassroots approach to building a semi-professional volleyball league in the United States. This is a magnificent business plan to achieve sustained successful, profitability, and a build a fan base through current players and ex-collegiate players. The Professional Volleyball League could certainly develop into a full blown profession league in the United States that so many of us have wanted. The concept uses USA Volleyball’s 40 current regions and creates divisions within these regions. Teams will compete for their chance to win their division and play at the National Championship. A prize pool of $20,000 is already being considered. Continue Reading
Along the way, you meet good people. The people behind the Coastal Classic Volleyball Tournament are some of those good people. I met Richard Knott and Aly Pompeani through one of volleyball’s unfortunate experiences, the sudden passing of Ranse Jones. I donated to help with Ranse’s fight and in return, got a great T-shirt. I was wearing that T-shirt when I registered my Carolina Juniors Club Team at AAUs in Orlando when a typical Florida mid-afternoon thunderstorm came flying in. Many of the coaches were huddled under the baseball stadium when Aly introduced herself. She recognized the t-shirt because she and her boyfriend Richard, both coaches at Grand Strand Juniors, designed the shirt and was helping to collect the funds for Ranse. Through that conversation in Orlando, Aly, Richard, and I have started one of those special friendships only volleyball can put together. People “on the outside” of our sport don’t understand why volleyball coaches and players do what we do for our sport. It’s because of bonds like these that makes our sport genuine and what we do so special. Continue Reading
The volleyball world lost a great coach and leader, Yasutaka Matsudaira. Mr. Matsudaira, Men’s Head Coach of Japan’s 1972 Olympic Gold Medal winning team, was a master strategist and pioneer of the fast style (Asian-style) offense prevalent in the game today. His offense proved that ball control and a fast offense can dominate over power and height. Mr. Matsudaira went on to be the President of Japan Volleyball Association, the first Vice President of the FIVB was the first international coach inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame. Yasutaka Matsudaira put Japan on the map in the volleyball world. Continue Reading
With the New Year here, I wanted to express one of my New Year’s Resolutions. I probably should be working on CoachRey.org website, but I learned that I had to delete all the work put in last week and reinstall, so I’m a little discouraged at the moment. My mind is wandering… Continue Reading
“Failure is the stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me… I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized.”
