As you may be aware, back in 2015 I started a project with Mark Lebedew called Volleyball Coaching Wizards. Basically, we interview great coaches from all over the world. So far we’ve done more than 40 of them. Back in the latter part of 2016 we released the first Wizards book. In it we presented eight full interviews. They were chosen to represent a kind of cross-section of the coaches we’d sat down with to that point.
Mark and I have just come out with a second Wizards book. This one takes a very different approach, though.
As you can imagine, when you talk with 40+ great coaches there are going to be some really interesting nuggets of information that come out. Mark and I took a bunch of them and they formed the basis for this new book. We titled it Volleyball Coaching Wizards – Wizard Wisdom.
I think of this book as being more of a “practical” text than the first one. By that I mean it offers insights and perspectives on more day-to-day type of subjects. Those subjects include things like developing team culture and chemistry, planning practices, handling the team on match day, and developing yourself as a coach.
There isn’t much in the way of specific games and drills or the technical/tactical side of things here. You can find that stuff in plenty of other places. Instead, think of this book as speaking to the thought processes that lead to making those choices.
The book is fairly short at only about 160 total pages. There are 15 chapters, but each only has a few pages, so they make for a quick read. For me, that was an important point. Give readers some good stuff to think about, then move on.
Reviews from the folks who got a look at the advanced copy of the book have been excellent. An NCAA Division I women’s head coach told me:
I like the anecdotal style. Having practical information from coaches and then reflect on the success is a good style for me.
A long-time juniors and middle school coach said:
This must have been more difficult to write than the first book. And more enlightening.
A former NCAA men’s coach told me:
This is a very intriguing book. Pretty easy reading, I’d say. I liked that it’s a very conversational tone. Super easy to follow.
One of my classmates from the CAP III course said:
It’s great, really easy reading – I like the format. And the content is good too. I’ve recommended it to several groups I participate in.
For me, this was a really interesting book to develop. Obviously, I’m listed as author on the first book. In that case, though, Mark and I really just facilitated other people’s content. Here we generated a lot of the content ourselves, albeit with insights from the Wizards as the core framework.
For me, one of the big things I look for in a non-fiction book is that it gives me something to think about. I feel like that’s something we’ve accomplished with this new Wizards book. In fact, it’s kind of the whole point of the book.
Click here for more details and info on where you can get a copy.
For what it’s worth, during the run-up to release, when the Kindle version was available for pre-order, the book went to #1 among volleyball books on Amazon in the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Italy. I think that’s all of them. 🙂
