Soccer Team Notebook published!

Click on cover to see ordering information. 

–from the Introduction of Writing on the Bus:

A dozen years into this new century and just about every athlete I know is writing.

Some keep blogs and others maintain Facebook sites––it’s mind-boggling how many use Twitter. Professional athletes work with sport psychologists, fine-tuning their mental approaches to training and games through talk, imagery, meditation, and writing. If you played basketball at Duke University for Coach Gail Goestenkors, 2006 US Basketball National Coach of the Year, you kept a journal. If you played college soccer for Mike Keller at the University of Southern Maine or Amy Edwards at Gonzaga University, you kept a Team Notebook. Olympians and world-class athletes in all sports keep training logs and exchange reflective email with advisors, coaches, and training partners.

As you’ll read later in the book, tennis champion Serena Williams pulled out her journal book for the press at Wimbledon in 2007, and for those baseball fans who followed the phenomenal Red Sox teams of the mid-2000’s, they witnessed all-star pitcher Curt Schilling on the bench between innings… writing.

In England, 16-year-old soccer players who become apprentices to professional teams are required to keep a journal about training sessions, games, diet….  And if your goal is to make the US Ski Team and are fortunate enough to land a spot at the renowned Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont … there’s a good chance that writing will be a part of your training. What’s this all about, you ask? It’s about learning.