A focused, goal-oriented handbook for young pro-sports hopefuls.
A competitive runner’s instruction manual for young athletes and their parents.
Internationally ranked runner and professional sports advisor Reid, in her debut, presents an upbeat, thoroughly detailed guide for parents who dream of shepherding their children into the world of professional sports—or who already have a child entering that world. Using charts, photos and inspirational quotes, Reid takes her readers through the basics of body growth, nutrition and training practices. She also provides an insider’s look at the process of developing a varied training regimen, maintaining a positive outlook (she points out that most of the worst obstacles a young athlete may face will be mental, not physical), creating a well-balanced diet, and, as the book’s title indicates, researching and selecting the right coach. As a complement to coach selection, she also provides parents with a knowledgeable guide to the various illegal performance-enhancing substances that haunt the professional sports world; the dangers and side effects of steroids, stimulants, diuretics and others are given a complete rundown. The brief book also provides common-sense instructions for more advanced athletes who face the prospect of hiring professional managers. The book’s tone is optimistic and avowedly Christian throughout (many section headings are biblical quotations), and its focus is highly specialized: Reid admits that her book was “written to encourage you as parents in how to support and guide your upcoming superstar athletes,” and the book shows little interest in young athletes who don’t aspire to “an Olympic or a professional career.” Some parents may object to Reid’s assertion that “without competition, there wouldn’t be sports,” or her declaration that “winning is about an athlete asserting superiority in an event—demonstrating it, publicly.” That said, even parents who primarily want their children to enjoy sports, rather than single-mindedly focus on them, will likely find a wealth of useful information in these pages.
A focused, goal-oriented handbook for young pro-sports hopefuls.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781481755900
Page Count: 172
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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