If you've been waiting for a book on youth, interscholastic and intercollegiate sport that honors and addresses the need for cooperation among student-athletes, parents and coaches, and that embraces physiology, philosophy, and ongoing development-with a focus on what's best for the student-athlete, welcome home.
The 2013 editions of The Quality of Effort and The Quality of Effort Workbook invite student-athletes, parents and coaches to observe and explore their unique and necessary roles in bringing about a healthy athletic experience. Reggie Marra writes through the soul of a poet-athlete-teacher-caregiver, and kid who got cut from the team he later went on to coach.
He takes us by the hand and challenges us to inquire into our own values, behaviors, and relationships. If we're willing to take up the challenge, this inquiry helps us see ourselves and all those heroes and villains out there from increasingly comprehensive and balanced perspectives.
"Preaching" only what he practices, in The Quality of Effort, Reggie Marra authentically engages each of us to become increasingly more aware of our stories-the interpretations we choose, and how they affect, and even effect, what we do next as parents, coaches, student-athletes and human beings.
Early Praise
"As a former college athlete and longtime leader of high-performance military units, I recommend Reggie Marra's work with unbridled enthusiasm.... Following this comprehensive approach to training will not only produce better athletes, but also happier and healthier citizens as our youth grow and take their place in the world."-Fred Krawchuk, Retired U.S. Special Forces Colonel and RAND Consultant
"....Reggie Marra offers a blueprint that encourages our children to become not only better athletes but better people. He delivers a powerful message filled with humanity and honest answers to questions that we sometimes think but may not want to ask."- Anthony Perrone, VP, Challenger Division, Cortland American Little League
"The Quality of Effort has helped me reinterpret my career as a professional athlete-providing both relief and direction....Reggie Marra offers a map to tomorrow's competitive edge, a map that requires effort-not necessarily in doing more drills or pushups, but in taking responsibility for all aspects of your approach to life."- Ryan Leech, Professional Mountain Biker (Retired) and Professional Integral Coach(TM) - http: //ryanleech.com
"....Sports can and does play an instrumental role in the healthy unfolding of a human life. If we take advantage of Reggie's frame of understanding-highlighting the role of effort, in relationship to talent and results, as an equally important consideration in our definition of success-we have a grand opportunity from which we can chart a significantly improved learning and developmental pathway for generations of student-athletes to come."- Cherie Beck, Cultural Technologist - http: //about.me/CherlynnGrace
"The Quality of Effort is a profound embrace of Emerson's reminder that 'Life is a journey, not a destination'.... The book is an incredibly personal gift from Reggie to the reader, written through and with his bountiful, open heart."- Tom Rubens, Founder, The Accountability Factor - http: //theaccountabilityfactor.com
"The Quality of Effort is an incredibly insightful guide for how to bring integrity and passion into sport as well as into life. Mr. Marra takes a truly integrated approach to the role of sport in life and along the way lays out what is necessary to get the most out of being an athlete-at any level. An added bonus here is that he is a brilliant and witty storyteller who clearly speaks from the heart."- Michael Sallustio, Parent, Nutritional Consultant and Personal Trainer - http: //annapolis-nutrition-fitness.com/
About the Author: Reggie Marra is a poet, educator, Integral Coach(TM) and author. A former high school teacher, basketball coach, athletic director and college administrator, he embraces sports and the arts, among other disciplines, as having value in themselves and as vehicles for ongoing human development, cultural transformation and personal, organizational, local, national and global sanity. Reggie returned to his alma mater, Sacred Heart High School in Yonkers, NY, where he taught in the English, Business and Religion departments, and coached boys basketball in the New York CHSAA from 1975 through 1988. An alumnus of St. John's University (B.S. 1976) and Iona College (M.A. 1990), both in New York, he published the first edition of The Quality of Effort in 1991 as a reflection on the interplay of talent, effort and results in his own experiences as a student-athlete and a coach. In addition to this 2013 edition of The Quality of Effort and the companion Quality of Effort Workbook, he is also the author of This Open Eye: Seeing What We Do-Poems 2003-2005, which Naomi Shihab Nye called a book of "stunning, graphic precision" whose "poems are tributes to the nearly-invisible wounded and the honest humanity so many of us yearn for now," Who Lives Better Than We Do?, released in 2001, and the 2004 Living Poems, Writing Lives: Spirit, Self and the Art of Poetry, an invitation to readers to use poetry writing as a vehicle for self-knowledge. Reggie brings an integrally informed perspective to sports, poetry-writing and leadership. In addition to his Integral Coaching(R) certification, he is an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation, a Certified Leadership Agility 360 Assessment Facilitator, a Teaching/Integrating Artist with the Connecticut State Office of the Arts and a founding partner at ParadoxEdge. You can find out more about his work at http: //reggiemarra.com, http: //qualityofeffort.com, and http: //paradoxedge.com.
