Finalizing the Soccer Team Notebook and Running Black Mountain

Available August 1, 2012

The last few weeks have been focused on finishing this new book. The Soccer Team Notebook offers a variety of learning opportunities for coaches and their players. The book is co-authored with Amy Edwards, head coach of the Gonzaga University women's soccer team. I enjoyed working with Amy because she has a background in using "writing as a way to learn" with her teams. 

For the past four years, Amy has been using my writing protocols with her Zags and previously with her University of Missouri team. Amy has a deep interest in sports psychology and has several friends who offered their feedback on the Team Notebook's drafts.

Handed out by the coach, a team notebook has activities that assist players in thinking more deeply training and games. The players write in the notebook in response to the various prompts.

Team Notebooks and Journals inspire writing. I think a lot of my English teaching friends would be surprised to read their student-athletes' writing in these books. Voice, detail, passion... it's the real-deal that writing teachers hope for and work toward with their students.

Team Notebooks add to the ways athletes learn in their sports. Here's a graphic I created after interviewing athletes and coaches throughout this study. This chart gives a glimpse at how writing can add to athletes' learning (as with all the pictures in this blog, click on the graphic to enlarge). 

Reprinted from Writing on the Bus (page 4)

The book also includes 100 journal prompts to help athletes think about soccer and about themselves as people, athletes, and teammates. This book is the first of 10 sports team notebooks co-published by the National Writing Project. NWP also co-published Writing on the Bus with Peter Lang/USA. I'm excited to work with a variety of coaches from different sports over the coming years. Next up, I think: the Basketball Team Notebook. 

After I finishing the final draft of the Soccer Team Notebook, Bailey and I took a celebration "run" up Black Mountain (my PR for the year: 28:52 to the top) and then ran down. Bailey hit several streams on the way down, and after the 60-minute run, knowing nothing of this book, he lounged in his favorite swimming hole with an ear-to-Big-ear grin.