The Rochester Rocket

My first pro! Many people do not know this story so bear with me. The year was 1975 and into my classroom came this little kid. I was teaching 7th grade and he was in 6th grade. He told me he was going to beat me in racquetball. He had never played. I met up […]

Observations of Racquetball Nations

The World Junior Championships were held some months ago and I spent hours watching my athletes play. I had seven players from 3 different countries. All seven played great and it was and still is an honor to work with them. But during the tournament I saw what I consider huge errors made by juniors […]

Victory has a Price

Nobody but the athlete and the coach who has logged the time on the court knows and understands that feeling. A professional athlete must have confidence in the coach or the game plan, and multi-coaching will not work. If an athlete runs around getting different advice from different people they should go back to their […]

Game Plan, “Must Adjust!”

Scouting 101-scouting the champs is my job and it is fun to watch carefully the little things that will make the difference between winning and losing. Things I watch for: 1. Mental approach-how tough are they? Many champions are a house of cards-they appear impressive but take away one card and they are as tough […]

Brain Games

You never know where you will find tips for training and for help on your game. I am watching a tv show called Brain games. There I learned that our brains are programmed to watch movement. There was a clip of a football game and some cheerleaders on the sidelines. Then the viewers were asked […]

Ethics

Some years ago I returned to international team Coaching, as a private coach only, for the USA Junior team. It has been 14 years since I coached for the USA. I donated my time and efforts and I lost a ton of money but a few things prompted me to help the USA. The coaches […]

Process Poet

There is a reason for every kill shot and every miss. Know those reasons and your game takes off. My first question when I began playing was “Why did the ball go there when I was aiming over there?” Nobody I knew could really answer that question so I had to find out for myself. […]

The First Rule is No Rule?

The first rule is there are no rules-only guidelines! In a conversation I once had with the greatest player in racquetball history he made this statement: “You know it is hard to learn racquetball because there is always an exception to every rule. There are really no set rules when it comes to footwork and […]

Be Creative, B, E, Creative!!

After the skills have been mastered; forehand, backhand, drive serve, serve return, conditioning, shot selection, nutrition, and positioning comes that one area that is really hard to teach. That for lack of a better word is creativity. How do I define creativity? That is hard to do. Examples of creativity 1. Coaching yourself. It is […]

Make Super Serves

Use the service box! Use all of the box! Today’s game consists of serve and how well you can return. To be effective in serving you have to move around the service box. Serving from one position can doom you. Put it another way. How many times have you been serving and the opponent is […]