Biography Sports Coaches

Every four years, Americans turn their attention to the world’s game - soccer. As recently as 1998, the USMNT merely made up the numbers at the biggest sporting tournament of all, but once Bruce Arena took over the team, American soccer started to find its footing. In the 2002 World Cup, a highly-fancied Portugal team, featuring the great Ronaldo, lost to Arena’s US team in a shocking 3-2 victory, and but for a handball that wasn’t given, they could well have knocked off eventual winners Germany.

The Pyramid Principle is based on the true and never before told story of Hall-of-Famer John Vallely. Filled with miraculous triumphs and hellacious heartbreaks, The Pyramid Principle masterfully depicts the impact of UCLA Coach John Wooden and his legendary “Pyramid of Success” he invested into all his players during his 29 year coaching career at UCLA. During Vallely’s daughter’s death from cancer and his own battle with cancer, Vallely would discover Coach Wooden’s true meaning of success.

That afternoon was the last time the high-school Patriots would see one another for weeks; some teammates they'd never see again. Hurricane Katrina was about to tear their lives apart. Hurricane Season is the story of a great football coach, his team, his family, and their school - and a remarkable fight back from shocking tragedy.

An enlightening biography and gripping sports narrative that takes us behind the scenes into the lives of some of the world’s most elite runners in Kenya and their coach, Patrick Sang.

Harry Sydney III is known for his Straight Talk-Sound Direction. The story of Sydney’s path from North Carolina to three Super Bowls and on to the founding of My Brother's Keeper, will inspire and challenge you to overcome the odds standing between you and your destiny. Told in Harry's unique voice, Win from Within takes listeners on a journey across the U.S. and Canada, from an abusive and alcoholic home to locker rooms filled with world champions; chasing his dream, developing his story, defying all odds, and overcoming disappointments.

When most people think of the celebrated greatness that is Coach Dan Gable, they think of an almost mythic intensity toward wrestling. Gable breathes and bleeds the sport and faithfully applies lessons learned from both on and off the mat. Expanding upon Gable's first collection of stories, A Wrestling Life 2 goes a little deeper into the mindset and life events that have shaped the man, the wrestler, and the coach.

When Coach Joe Kennedy started offering a prayer on the field after each high school football game, the school district tried to shut him down, launching a seven-year legal battle that went to the Supreme Court—twice. In June 2022, he won. Average Joe is the story of an unlikely champion of religious freedom. A former atheist, Kennedy never imagined he’d lead the defense of Americans’ First Amendment rights. He certainly didn’t intend to be at odds with his wife, who was the school district’s personnel director.

Coach Philip W. Russell was a premier level, varsity girls basketball coach who worked at Ogden High School in Ogden, Utah, from 1973 to 2013. In this capacity he accumulated 502 wins, 10 regional titles, 5 state championships and 40 years of teaching Sociology and History. He was a popular and extremely beloved member of the community, undertaking various assistant coaching and other odd jobs for both boys and girls, in addition to his passion and primary role as head girls basketball coach. His voice, inspiration, sense of humor and laugh are legendary.

Welcome to the true story of my life. From a modest upbringing in a town never before exposed to soccer, to the playing fields of competitive NCAA Division I soccer. From the plush grass fields, coaching next to farms in the suburbs, to the concrete courts and metal fences that surrounded them in NYC. I would be left to find my own way in a world where anything could happen and often did. The tragedy, the violence, the assaults, and the murders would all impact me. Soccer would expose me to a world many don't even know exists.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son had an unmatched mind for the game's strategy and a stomach for its brutality.

In this "powerful and inspiring" true story, follow Joe Moglia's legendary career transition from head football coach at Coastal Carolina University to the CEO of TD Ameritrade, one of the country's most successful financial firms. By the time Joe was in his early 30s, he had risen through the high school and college football ranks to become the defensive coordinator at Dartmouth. His dream was very much within reach. Problem was, Joe wasn't making enough money to support his growing family.

Come spend a week with legendary Coach John Wooden at his summer basketball camp! Filled with timeless basketball and life wisdom from Coach Wooden, this recollection of those summer days includes stories about campers, coaches, and the Dallas Cowboys who experienced camp alongside Coach, a humble hero who did not disappoint. Author Greg Hayes witnessed the beloved coach mentor, mold, teach, and inspire players and coaches of all ages, leaving a legacy that seeped into the future of all those he encountered.

Charles Adams is a product of the Minneapolis’s North Side, the city’s poorest neighborhood, and of North High, the state’s poorest school. After graduation he joined the Minneapolis Police Department, overcoming racial prejudice within its ranks to become his alma mater’s resource officer. Then something magical happened. Adams stepped in as football coach, and transformed a winless team into state champions. As North High began to thrive, Adams was hailed as a model of what a Black man from a Black neighborhood might be. That lasted until Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.

What would one call taking teens with no evident running talent and putting them through breakneck training combined with mantras from rock n' roll, techniques from Kenya, and philosophy from Australia, and turning them into champions? Is it revolutionary? Or just plain crazy? Bill Aris has heard both, but one thing is indisputable. Everything Aris does with his runners - male and female - is new and extraordinary, and he has created a new American running dynasty.

Gordie Gillespie’s coaching prowess stands alone: While coaching three sports - baseball, football, and basketball - his teams won 2,410 games, four national collegiate baseball titles, and five Illinois State High School football championships, he was inducted into 18 halls of fame, including the College Baseball Hall of Fame, won four NAIA national baseball coach of the year awards, named the NAIA Baseball Coach of the Century in 2000, and his 1,888 wins in collegiate baseball made him the highest winning collegiate baseball coach of all time.

Collectively, Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, and Gary Williams have won more than 2,300 games and six national championships and reached thirteen Final Fours. Before Pitino became the face of the Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville programs, before Calhoun turned UConn into a national power, and before Williams brought Maryland to its first national championship, these coaches cut their teeth in front of modest-sized crowds in college gymnasiums of Boston during the '70s and '80s. Boston Ball charts how this trio of coaches, seemingly out of nowhere, started a basketball revolution

Jurgen Grobler’s Olympic coaching career is one of legend, yet the man himself has remained resolutely out of the spotlight. Over the last 20 years he has masterminded British Rowing’s incomparable success. And when the difference between gold and silver can mean mere fractions of a second, Jurgen Grobler has consistently delivered Olympic gold through various boat classes and with an ever-changing group of athletes.

The definitive autobiography of the legendary rugby coach who has led Wales to three Grand Slams and four Six Nations titles and masterminded two hugely successful Southern Hemisphere tours at the helm of the British and Irish Lions.

Warren Gatland's In the Line of Fire is the ultimate chronicle of this summer's remarkable Lions tour to New Zealand - home of the fearsome All Blacks, the double world champions - which culminated in a historic and nerve-shredding series draw. The book is the Head Coach's wonderfully candid and vibrant record of the withering ferocity, the turbulent peaks and troughs and the triumphs and despairs of one of sport's toughest challenges.

Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry could not have had two more divergent personalities. Yet, while working for the New York Giants of the mid-to-late ’50s under head coach Jim Lee Howell, the pair formed what stands, to this day, as the greatest set of coordinators on one team. Given their personalities, one might have likened Howell’s job to that of Dwight Eisenhower as the general struggled to control the egos and politics of his allied subordinates during WWII. But for some reason, Lombardi and Landry worked almost seamlessly, and as a result, the Giants rose to the top of the NFL.