The man veteran Notre Dame Head Track Coach Joe Piane calls "The Gentleman Coach" shares his insights into how to succeed at track and field and cross country as an athlete and as a coach.
Bob Smith has experienced track as a Central High School and University of Notre Dame athlete, then as Riley High School coach and later as Notre Dame assistant coach.
From sports washout to the Olympic Trials, from student to teacher and coach, his story shows the triumph of hope and perseverance. The book is more than a memoir. It covers every aspect of the sport from the tribulations of a beginning runner to the insights of a master coach. Many area track athletes and coaches are mentioned and/or pictured in the book. The appendices give statistics for years of area and regional competitions. Joe Piane, awardwinning head track coach at the University of Notre Dame for over 30 years, has written the foreword, giving his views of track as a sport and its potential to change lives, encourage growth, and prepare a person to succeed in life.
One of the questions we have been asked by people who have seen advance copies of the book is: "How did you pick out the colors for the front cover?" They are quite simply the team colors of the South Bend schools where the author ran and coached: Central High School (blue and orange), Notre Dame (blue and gold), and Riley High School (purple and gold). South Bend Central was the school made famous by the movie Hoosiers, which also got its school colors wrong. In the movie, Central lost to Hickory in the state championship basketball tournament.
The book isn't up on the Productivity Publications website yet because it has not been "officially launched", but you can buy it at Amazon by clicking on the link in the book list on the right side of the page.
Bob Smith took over our track and cross country teams at Riley High School in South Bend when neither had had a winning season in school members memory. He had no compunction against running right along side us during practice nor during familiarizing ourselves with a new cross country course. These actions gained him the complete confidence of our teams. We were used to being told what to do as far as exercises went and then told how to practice running as well as how far to run. Bob did not tell us these things, he showed us by 100% example. Once he even arranged apractice at the Notre Dame indoor track where we ran against ND players, who were also practicing. We beat many of the ND players and what a boost that was for out team.
Posted by: Cal Noell Riley High School 1951-1953 | August 07, 2007 at 01:24 AM