Vern Gambetta edit
Sun, Aug 13, 2023 5:40PM • 41:42
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, athlete, people, talking, great, mental, athletics, week, book, trite, learn, call, years, sports, dance, dad, rhythm, names, focus, special
SPEAKERS
Vern Gambetta, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Then combat. Hello, and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Vern Gambetta 00:05
Well, Paul, thank you, it's an honor to be considered a great coach. I just think I'm another guy that has been very fortunate for 50 going on 54 years two, to coach, my dad, my mom and dad were immigrants. My dad was basically did physical work all his life. And I think even to the day he died, he couldn't understand how I could make a living and T shirt and shorts. You know, and not digging ditches or something like that. But so I kind of joke that I, I've been, I've been able to travel all around the world on somebody else's dime be around some of the greatest greatest people you could ever imagine. And, and we call it coaching. So it's pretty neat. It's pretty neat.
Paul Barnett 00:56
We're gonna get all into that backstory today and those 50 plus years of coaching some very diverse sports and sports people. But then something really simple to kick off. Could you tell us where you are in the world in what you've been up to so far today?
Vern Gambetta 01:12
Oh, today? Yeah, well, I'm in Sarasota, Florida. Got to work with probably one of the three best swimmers in the world this morning. A 16 year old Canadian summer McIntosh, who swims for our local club here, the Sarasota sharks. And as of late, my emphasis has been a lot on dryland preparation for swimming. So her and I and a head coach on Tuesday and Thursday mornings go about 45 minutes of dedicated we'll call it core work, but it's very postural, postural shapes, all of that kind of stuff. Two mornings a week. So it's, and I'm, I feel really blessed at this time in my career, which is basically the Twilight the end of my career, to be able to, to work with somebody like her because she really a special really a special. And I haven't said that about too many that I've worked with some great ones. But this this young lady is she's got it. We'll keep
Paul Barnett 02:17
our eye out for summer as she heads towards the Paris Olympics. But could I start burn by just referencing, here's just a few of the great coaches you've worked with. And there are so many, but there's Gary Winkler, check out the week note, Gordon, and of course, Frank dequeue. We've also been on the show, but you've seen so many great coaches up close. So I'd like to ask you, then what is it you think the great coaches, the really special ones, do differently? That sets them apart?
Vern Gambetta 02:51
Well, over the years and of late working on my new book, I've given us a lot more thought. And, you know, and, and I guess you get to be 75. And you're a little bit more retrospective respective. And that and I think the biggest thing, like you name those people is, first of all, they had incredible technical, incredible technical knowledge, okay, and, but that's a given, there's a lot of people that have technical knowledge, that can't, can't coach their way out of a wet paper bag, you know, and all of those people you mentioned are just, they're great people, they're really, really good people. They can connect with the athlete they can can connect with their colleagues. They're very strong and firm in their foundational beliefs. So they're not going to be waffling. And when we believe in one thing, and next week, believe in another, I think that's, you know, I think that's really a characteristic of, you know, of the great ones that I've seen. [PB1]
And yeah, I think that's the biggest thing, but it almost seems trite to say, you know, they're their orientation they coach, and this is something that Frank Dick articulated before I ever met him in writing. You know, we don't coach shot putters, or Discus Throwers or whatever. We coach people who who do that. And it's as a young coach for me, sometimes because I was into being technical in that it was easy. It was easy to forget, there's a great coach that nobody's ever heard of Martian Clarke, who coached if there anybody in athletics would know these names Dawn Cardon, who was fourth in the 76 marathon, in Olympic Games marathon and a bunch of really good middle distance and distance runners at Stanford. And when I was in grad school there, I was, basically an assistant coach and, and being around Marshall was was just, it was, he was so passionate. Okay, and that's what they all share any care There's so much sometimes cared to a fault. You know. And and, and this is what I, you know, I continue to see there's a, I've gotten to know Ron Adams is a little bit one year younger than me and you share a lot of parallels from Fresno, California where I went to school and college and from there and he's also a Swiss Italian. And he's with the Golden State Warriors. And it comes through and he's he's he is with the coach whisperer, the NBA. But it comes through that it's about people he can, he can talk for two hours on defensive schemes, and footwork, but it doesn't matter. I mean, we had a conversation about one player that he worked with, and, and it was, it was just purely about that player as a person. And if he if he could get to that player as a person, he would be a better basketball player. So at the risk of being repetitive, I think that's what it comes down to.
Paul Barnett 06:00
And your first years of coaching, were back at La Cumbre junior high school in California all those years ago, and I understand it was near where you grew up. What do you remember about that early experience?
Vern Gambetta 06:13
Oh, it was, the farther away I get from it, the warmer the memories. All of those kids that I coached now are in their late 60s, because I was very young when I started coaching. And as time has gone on, because of Facebook, various different connections, I've been in touch with more and more of them. And it is just so gratifying. And again, it comes down to this. We won championships, we won two national championships, believe it or not, for ninth graders, tremendous. For performances in track and cross country, I actually also coach basketball when you're in American football, but primarily track and cross country. And you know what we get? We talk on Zoom, I've gotten together with some of them. There's nothing about championships, it's some of them. It's it's about the friendships about the crazy stuff that coach Gambetta did, you know and that what three of them were talking about, we'd gone there over the freeway that they would go on the oak, all our runs were named after where they would go. And it was Oak Park run. And they talked about on the Oak Park run because it was a really easy day. They all had this really tough Spanish teacher. And and they would work on verb conjugations. You know, like think about that, you know, six, that's 60, not 60 is 55 years ago, you know, and so that, that, that just reinforces what I said about coaching. You know, I remember some of the workouts we did really innovative things, you know, at the time, the kids were, were incredibly focused and dedicated, you know, but there was a, this cohesion, this camaraderie. And what we had was everybody talks about diversity today. The first two years, we didn't have any girls. I eventually recruited and started a girls track team there too. And have one of our throwers ended up fourth at nationals that year. And I remember the first meeting with the girls, I said, one of you will, will place at Nationals this year, and they didn't even know what nationals was right. But on the coattails sort of on the coattails of the boys, but diversity. I mean, we had kids from the richest neighborhood in Santa Barbara, and we had kids that were just across the border from Mexico, you know, we're like, their parents were illegal. They were illegal. You know, and it was and I, I grew up in that neighborhood. Okay, I grew up three blocks from Laguna junior high school. And so, and I wasn't married yet. So I lived in the neighborhood. And then on Saturday afternoons, we karting school, was across the playground across from my house, I go out and play soccer with the kids, you know, and I don't know if you could get out. You know, I was 21 years old, and I knew all their older brothers or other brothers were my age, you know, and they'd known me since they were little kids. So is really special. I don't know if you can tell by the tone of my voice, but that I that for years was just an incredibly wonderful experience and a wonderful four years. Yes, fond memories.
Paul Barnett 09:43
Then I've read, where you describe your coaching philosophy as coaching the best to be better. Now you've coached across so many sports, baseball, soccer, football athletics, on and on and on. Why I wanted to ask you, are there any similarities in what the best have to do to get better across those different disciplines?
Vern Gambetta 10:08
No, there's no question. And I think that's one of the things, why I've been able to crop coach across disciplines, again, people. And you know, to be the best is, is really special. And when I say coaching the best to be better, it's it's go to the Cobra junior high. I mean, we knew who the two or three best boys were based upon what they did in gym class. But they were already really good. And probably, if I would have done nothing, they would have been pretty good. But to take them to the next level to have that boy run for 33 in the mile in ninth grade. And do that was, you know, you have to raise the level of expectations. There was a focus, a concentration that was necessary, you know, to be able to do that sometimes, with college aged athletes and even athletes on a school that were really good and underachieving. It was giving them a focus. Working with I'm not trying to drop names working with a 31 year old, pretty good female cricket player, the best best female cricket player of the last 10 years at least parry from Australia. And for Elise, the whole goal is reawaken the athlete within, you know, you are a world class soccer player, and the more you specialize in, in cricket, the more injuries you had. So we've got to reawaken the athlete within and and, and bring out that, that joy that that, that that special thing about training, it's not a chore, you know, and that so, yeah, that's, you know, and again, I mentioned, you know, this morning with summer, I mean, she beat Kaitlyn, Deki, two weeks ago, I mean, doesn't get any better than that. She's 16 years old, and she, she can ride on a reputation and probably get a couple of medals. You know, in Paris, maybe three, maybe four, you know, she's a two time world champion this year. But I think and I'm a part of a team, okay, don't stop because of me, don't want to say that. But, but we are really, and we had some conversation, the head coach, and I had some conversations this morning, you know, about, but she holds us accountable. And, you know, and that's really cool. She reminded me of something. I hadn't seen her for three weeks, because I was in Switzerland, she reminded me of something. So, you know, it's it's that partnership, and sometimes it's being in the right place at the right time. You know, and that, but yeah,
and I've been fortunate to, to observe some of the greatest athletes not necessarily work with him and see what it took. And it was just an incredible laser like focus. You know, it's so sometimes it seems so trite to say these kinds of words, but, but it's true, because you don't get to be the best of the best, without consistent without consistency. And Without these qualities really being developed to the finest degree you have people that are, I call him, shooting stars, you know, come up, they win one champion teams, same thing. They win one championship, and you say, and then 10 years ago, whatever happened to you never play that game, whatever happened to I can name those names, too. And those are the frustrating ones. That's why the gray hair, you know, the ones that that you thought could be the best. And you just couldn't reach now, I think coaches you mentioned about great, good coaches, great coaches, I think we have a Messiah Complex, we have this feeling that, you know, we can save you, we can make you better. And that's something that, you know, 54 years into this journey, I think, the last 10 years, I've finally come to the realization that, Vern, you're not the savior, you know, you can show him the way and the path that you're not going to you know, and this was a metaphor that one of the coaches in Singapore said, you know, we, today, we're trying too hard to make the path smooth, straight, narrow, really, you know, just like no problems for the athlete. And what we've forgotten today, and this is what I think the motto in the back of my shirt. Coaching, the best to be better is, is we prepare the athlete for the path, there's going to be periods of construction, there's going to be dead ends, there's going to be detours. And so coaching the best to be better is preparing the athlete for the path and having them understand the deep deep investment in the process that's necessary.[PB2] [PB3]
Paul Barnett 14:44
Then you describe yourself as a specialist of being a generalist. And in your words you say and this is a quote, a synthesizer connecting the dots in seemingly disparate areas looking for similarities differences in pay happens that may not be readily apparent to really great description and I, I wanted to ask you could you tell us about a time that you connected these dots, and a team or an individual.
Vern Gambetta 15:14
There's a moment in time, there was a moment in time, it was October 1973, Stanford University and movement analysis class. I've told this story a lot, but I'll tell it again. We all have to do a presentation in our respective area and that time, and it would be if I had to do it today, we'd be in athletics. I picked the javelin and I picked two throwers that are honest, Lusas and classical from an honest Lusas from the Soviet Union, Klaus wolfman from West Germany then and the one from and won the gold medal by the smallest margin ever, like five centimeters, whatever, five centimeters, something like that. And so I it was everything was Super Eight film then okay, or 16. But in my case, it was super eight. So I took and I had each thrower, and I showed him frame by frame, and I started at the foot and worked up the body, you know, joint by joint, broke it down to the most finite things you could think of, when I think about it, like, how did you do that anyway, so compare them both. And everybody, everybody, oh, that's really cool. Because it looked javelins, a cool looking event, I love watching that event. And so we had Stanford used to have a big history in dance, modern dance, all different disciplines of dance. We have five dance master students in the class. And there was this one woman who was just she was pain in the butt. She had always asked all these really pointed questions. And I realize now she wasn't a pain in the butt. I mean, actually, probably one of the reasons I've had any success at all it was because she was a bit of a pain in the butt. And she says, she raises her hand, and I thought, oh, no, she's going to ask me like, What the rectus femoris did when it connected with this or something? And she goes, No, she says, play it again. So I start going, click, click, click, she says, No, play it again. And and and she starts flapping the rhythm. And the light goes on the fruit, the light literally goes on. And I go, I get it. Now. It's not about the ankle and the muscles attaching to the ankle. It's about rhythm and tempo. I just said something like this yesterday on my morning walk. It's about rhythm and tempo. It's a big dance. I remember going down to that track that day. And I was working with my high jumpers. I said, guys, I want you to forget everything I've taught you were just it's a big dance. And I counted out the rhythm of the steps, you know, in that. And that's been the journey I've been on ever since.
So you look at music, you look at dance, you look at the arts, you know, anything you can, you know, I spent last week in my colleague Martin being a sir in Zurich as the hammer coach. And that's a one of them, I've never coached but I was I was immersed in it for like five days. And I can just shut my eyes right now and, and hear the rhythm of a good throw. Okay, and you can see the library behind me my reading is, is incredibly diverse. I read a lot of research and in you know, in the respective fields, but as far afield as you can go. And when you get out to the ANSYS that's where you really learn and getting around people that are of the same ilk that that neat leave no stone enter. Really want to keep learning I've gotten to be really good friends with Dr. Mike joiner at the Mayo Clinic who's a world renowned exercise physiologist, and his white coat is in is in anesthesiology. He's amazing. He's a polymath. He's written books, he writes poems, Ron Adams that I mentioned earlier, we have this three way thread. Hardly any of it's about sport. Did you read this article? Did you just read this book? What do you think? You know, and but that all makes you a better rounded person, which makes you a better coach, I think and virtually every coach that I know, that's been really, really good, is has a wide range of interest. You know, they're very intense, you know, in their discipline, but that and I don't know I think some of it is I used to drive the nuns nuts because I couldn't sit still in elementary school maybe I'm maybe today if I were in school and are nine years old. I probably be medicated and comatose because it was just hard for me to to you know, I'd see something and it would trigger something else and it would trigger something else. You know, so that's that's the story so there was out when it's hot, you know more Most of the time you don't. It's hard to point to one point in time, but I, you know, people know me, I've heard the story a lot. So
Paul Barnett 20:08
back when you were coaching Track and Field at Berkeley, you put together a mental training handbook, which I believe was called Mind plus muscle, the great winning, you're probably going to pull it out of that stack to the roof there. But
Vern Gambetta 20:21
someplace over here. Yeah, I
Paul Barnett 20:22
wanted to ask you, if you had to rewrite that handbook today, what chapters would you add? Or take out?
Vern Gambetta 20:32
Probably wouldn't take out anything. I haven't looked at it in a while. I know you sent that and I'm sorry, I meant to look at it before I went to Zurich, it's someplace over there in a bookshop. I think mainly, what I'd add would be more work on and not because this is the current thing about self care. And taking care of themselves. We talked a lot about self image and what self image was and what it was to be a female athlete, you know, and that in at the time, they were pioneers, it was a, it was a hostile environment, in a lot of ways, but I think it would be more, more work on self care and focusing even farther outside there, then, equals winning, it might be mind plus muscle equals life. You know, and something like that. But we were, we were lucky. I mean, Nora Thornton was really instrumental. He was the men's swim coach, he had a mental training coach who'd be talking about diverse, who had been an opera professor at Florida State REIT, got a big inheritance, retired and, you know, Berkeley's where everybody, all the hippies, everybody that was into alternative lifestyles, and he came in and he was a mental training coach, and he worked with us and I spent a lot of time talking to him. And he brought in every two weeks, he brought in world renowned experts in the whole area of mental training psychology of sport. Who was the guy Epsilen wrote golf in the kingdom, guys like that, you know, any of the coaches that wanted to come? There's only about 10 of us that came, you know that were into that. But yeah, so I think broaden the view and make it mind plus muscle equals life. Yeah.
Paul Barnett 22:25
Then you worked with Monica Seles after her horrific incident, you know where she was when she was stabbed? I'm sure many of us have seen that horrible footage. But what did you learn? Watching Monica get back to the court?
Vern Gambetta 22:37
Yeah, it was there was also the time that I worked with her was coincided. Her father had just died in May, I believe of the of it. So it would have been 9787 or 98. It was somewhere I know that World Cup was 98. So I only worked with her for about three months. But it was a it was a really neat three months. wonderful lady, first of all, just a wonderful lady really caring. Her and my daughter, my daughter was 12 I guess at the time, and she would come and do some of the running workouts. And Monica wanted to learn to play said I want to learn to play soccer, like Kristen, and my daughter was against AI, which was kind of funny. And but what I learned from her was, you know, the deep, deep, deep connection between her and her dad and how important he had been in her career. I mean, it was all around, we would go over and workout at her house, she had a clay cord, hardcourt, there was like a hill that her dad had built a sand cord. And people don't know this. Her dad was a triple jumper in the former Yugoslavia. And so she had up until she was about 14, she had a very, very athletic background. And what I learned there was and this is what I said to I didn't call it that at the time. But Monica we've got I would say now to her, we've got to reawaken the athlete within. So we tried to do more athletic type of movements. And somebody had taken her and said, you know, all about her weight, they made a big thing about her weight. The girl was the woman was powerful. And she's never what's gonna be spelt, and you weren't gonna make her that way. And so you work with you work within the parameters of what she what she brought to the table. And so we tried to enhance that, you know, in that So, and again, it was a short period of time, but it was a you know, when you work with an iconic athlete like that, that was it was a really good experience. And I saw it and I felt comfortable enough to talk to her. I said Monica, hitting for two hours every afternoon off the ball machine really isn't going to make you better, but she came back and she said, Well, it helps me feel my you know, okay, I mean, you respect you know, but I said I have to offer my opinion, you know, and But again, not being a tennis person, she had a reason for doing it, you know, so. And anything we would do that was competitive, look out, look out just like summer and out, you know, so if we were doing step ups against time or something like that, and she said last one was 12. And she, when I get, you know, and that so you know that so that was that was what a lot of what that experience was. Yeah. And and and listen, that was a deep emotional trauma, deep emotional trauma. I don't think people even come close to understanding then that coupled with her dad dying and how, how close her dad and her were, you know, it's it's amazing that she could come back and play really emotionally.
Paul Barnett 25:48
So now, when you're asked about mental skills, how do you define mental strength?
Vern Gambetta 25:56
Well, yeah, and first of all, you obviously you've done your homework, I hate mental toughness. I think it's, I think it's a, it's the worst thing you could ever think about, you know, everybody used the Navy Seals and that kind of stuff. And it's, they're not mentally tough, they're mentally strong. And great. Athletes are mentally strong, they can handle adversity, they know how to handle success. They, they, the lows aren't very low, and the highs aren't very high. You know, that they, it's trite to say, but they, in each in their own way, are very goal oriented. You know, and that's a mental skill is to be focusing on goal achievement, rather than anybody can set goals, goal achievement, you know, and, and mental practice is part of your part of your daily work. [PB4] [PB5]
You know, so I always say, we had a girl, woman Emma Wyatt, got the silver medal in Tokyo in the 400 IMR, arguably the toughest swimming event. And the whole thing, the whole theme, you know, and again, she was an it was an example of COVID actually helped her she got her other year of maturity, she really figured out that dryland was going to be important to her before she kind of just, she kind of just did it. And now it became really important to and our theme was on the finish. So everything we did every day, every exercise every was about never losing sight of the fact that we have to own the finish. And she came up a couple of 100 short, I think, you know, but but she came on in the last 50 meters, like gangbusters, you know, so mental mental training. And look, I got to work with Bob NIDA for Dr. Bob Knight, AFER, who was one of the pioneering sports psychologists in the world, wrote a terrific book called The inner athlete, which if listeners can get might be out of print, he pioneered a test call the taste test test of attentional interpersonal style, we got really ended out at cow we did a lot of that with the White Sox. And but I think too much of it was sit down and talk about it in classroom settings, and that and not enough on the field, and picking out opportunities to point out things that they were doing really well.
And things that you could work on, debriefing part of part of good mental training is, is a good debrief after practice and after competition, where you're you're really, really objective about what you've done, what you haven't done, what you need to do so, and certainly the discipline,[PB6]
look, when I started coaching, the our textbook at University of California, Santa Barbara, and my California go for a fifth year to get your teaching credential was problem athletes and how to handle that's what psychology you know, it was like you go to a shrink, okay. And there was only two books on sports psychology, Bob Knight offers was the third book published in the mid 70s. Now everybody has a mental coach, you know, sometimes I questioned the effectiveness, you know, but because what I want to do as a coach, I'm a, I, my job now is physical preparation. I'm not coaching technique and that but i
All of us are mental coaches. We, we, you know, if there's negative self talk, we point well, we point it out, you know, and say, what do we have to do to turn that around? And, you know, my favorite book that I assigned to athletes is something my mother gave to me when I was, it's called, I think I can the little engine that could, you know, I think I can I think I can now it sounds trite, but that gives us a frame of reference to go back to when the negative self talk starts in order, they're saying, we're gonna go this meet this next week. Look at the times that those Yeah, you're gonna be you're gonna be right with them and you're gonna beat him. Because we own the finish. Because of what we do. physical preparation Neil's mental strength, by the way.[PB7] [PB8]
Paul Barnett 30:16
What about if we flip that coin around Vern? What have you learned about the measure of a coach?
Vern Gambetta 30:22
You know, he won five national championships. His winning percentage is 875. Yeah, probably means that he had really good people, and he didn't screw up. You know, in a lot of ways, I think the measure of a coach is what you do with what yeah, I'm convinced that there are, I know, I know, coaches that you've never heard of, that are infinitely better coaches, and some of the names you've mentioned. Because they didn't coach Olympic teams, they coach in a in a small high school someplace, and every year, those kids were just they performed up to their level of ability. Okay, and that's all you can ask as a coach. Now, sometimes great coaches, you know, based on environment, a lot of different things can get people to, to rise above the level of their ability, you know, and more power to him, you know, but a lot of people that we look at, as great coaches achieve that success through manipulation, domination and control. I'm not into that. [PB9]
I'm not into that, you know, I look at Nora Thornton passed away two years ago, and I look at the tributes to him from his former swimmer still today on, you know, and that and, you know, he made their life better. That's all you can ask, you know, did, did they make the light their lives, or the lives of their athletes better, you know, in all way shape? I know, that sounds hokey, to a certain extent. But, you know, again, you know, the hardest thing is, I will say, is to have a team or a squad with incredible ability, you talk about pressure, that's pressure, you know, because now you got them, you got to get them aligned, and to reach their ability, whether it's team or something like that. So
Paul Barnett 32:20
then these days, you run the very successful game network, you helps people with their professional development, and you've had some great coaches attend. I know, Eddie Jones, came over there and talked about it as well. I've heard him mention it. But what does gain actually focus on to help people develop?
Vern Gambetta 32:38
So it's a great question, and it was back going back back, almost not grad school, but just after, when I got out of grad school and went on went back and it was coaching now at Santa Barbara High School, where Lecouvreur junior high students fed into middle school and then high school. I was exposed to some in 1972 to the AAU then was the Governing Body a sport and they had a learn by doing clinic in in Sacramento, hotter than Hades. And for a guy named Fred wilt, who I is an iconic figure in track and field really did a tremendous amount for coaching in the US. And we went from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon. And then from seven to nine at night, every night, for five nights. And it it was and you name it, anybody who was anybody at the high school, junior college or college level, in athletics coaching in the United States in the next 40 or 50 years, 50 years, 50 plus years, I was at that clinic and went through everything you did the events, and he had great teachers. And I thought, you know, this is a model. This is a model if I ever get the opportunity. I want to do something like this because it made the difference for me. So fast forward to 19, late 1980s. And I started to do some more teaching, doing some workshops for conditioning coaches and speaking more nationally and internationally. And I started a workshop called building and rebuilding the complete athlete, not strength training, not speed not and it was it was for coaches, physios, doctors, chiropractors, parents, athletes, anybody, and it was very successful. But we did it. Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. I taught it by myself after this last weekend where I talked for six hours. I don't know how I did it, it was like 16 hours nonstop. And as as we got more and more into it, and I used to say you can't learn to dance sitting on your pants, you sit on your butt, you know for eight hours a day and take notes and discuss things. I said wouldn't it be really cool if we could have a residential thing like this? So in Tucson wasn't seven we started with 13 brave souls in a hotel across Florida that had a soccer pitch outside. And, and we've had it well, we have one year with the pandemic, we have to do it online. But in the last nine years, we've done it at Rice University. Its total immersion, you get up at at, we start at 630 in the morning, and you have movement madness, you have three teaching stations, where you, you interact with Jimmy Radcliffe was one of the greatest coaches I know, or Bill knows one of the best rehab people, and you learn active learning, and you have breakfast, and then you have two lectures lunch, you have workshops, then you have two lectures, more workshops, you have dinner, and then you get together for an hour or so and discuss and then there's a pub on campus where beers are really cheap, and, or you can just sit there and and so the whole thing, what is, again, specialize in being a generalist, everybody, so you're a physio now. Now you're interacting with Eddie Jones, Eddie Jones, over at the pub was amazing with the young coaches, like why do you why do you want to coach that? Why? What Why are you You know, why aren't you doing? You know, and, and that's the way it is. So you'd have these all these experience people mixing with, with new people and men and women, and it's all about professional development, real professional development, you know, not just learning exchanging ideas. And so the network, and it's very viable during the year we do like this week, there'll be a coffee talk. In fact, if you're interested in joining, you can join in, email me and I'll send you the link. You don't have to be in the network to join in the coffee talks. In fact, we want other people that will say like, what are you guys talking about? You know, we're not trying not trying to be a cult, or exclusive or anything like that. We do have some different viewpoints. You know, we're not, we're not over the moon about some of the stuff that people are talking about today, analytics, and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, we're going to look at analytics, but we're going to try to put everything in a in a context, okay. And then, and we're very active in keeping in touch with each other. I mean, just in Switzerland, Martin is set. Martin and my wife are second in command with the game network. We had one of our one of the Swiss coaches had been to gain he came again, Saturday, he was able to reinforce the other people some of the stuff that we were talking about, because we're the the theme like for last year was coloring outside the lines. And, and Nico, this coach said, his question was the first night out and he says, Why do we even have lines? Right on brother? Why do we have lions? You know, next year, our our theme is invest in the process. And that idea that I told you about the road, we're not going to prepare the road for you, we're going to prepare you for the road through deep investment in the process, long winded answer to say it's a really special group of people that again, that because of various interactions with people throughout my career that I've been able to gather, and, and a lot of and what I love about them is I'm not held up like, Oh, this guy is a guru, they have no problems and Bernie are full of crap. You know, and it's wonderful. You know, that's, that's, that's about learning, you know, in a So
Paul Barnett 38:49
then you've been so generous with your time tonight. Maybe just one final question if I, if I could. And I'd like to just read a quick quote of yours before I frame the question. And you say, as you've said, in this interview, you say you coach the person. And so being a coach, and being a teacher, and being a person of influence is a real special thing. And so I just wanted to ask in closing, now that you in your own words, also get into the twilight of your coaching. Yeah. What's the legacy you hope you've left with the people that you've coached?
Vern Gambetta 39:23
Ah, I've thought about this a lot. I guess. I've talked to other people. John Pierre Edgar, who's an iconic coach, I had lunch a week ago. And he's he said, I'm retired. He said, You're not retired, he said, I'm not going to travel anymore. And, but, and and when we, when we left, Martin and I were talking a little bit then I had some quiet time and I'm thinking, you know, I just hope they say whoever it is coaches that I've interact with, he cares. He cared. He cared about me. He went that extra mile. I don't want to, as you were just talking rocking, I'll read you something. I just saw something pop up from summers Mother, you know, thanking me. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that, you know, she didn't have to thank me your daughter's one of the best in the world. You know, but they know, I care, you know, and that's, that's the most important thing. Yeah. Same thing with my children, you know that, that they know that dad really cares about him?
Paul Barnett 40:26
And I guess, with the children and with those athletes, you've helped to prepare them for the path ahead.
Vern Gambetta 40:34
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. You know, I had the pleasure of coaching my own daughter in track in high school, my son was not into sports, which is fine. He was into theater, arts and love. I mean, he's really helped me with. He's in, he's getting his PhD in architecture, and we have some of the greatest discussions and he's always interested, you know, in what I'm doing, and he gives me a different perspective, you know, which is really cool. You know, a little bit more of a park perspective. Yeah. Neat.
Paul Barnett 41:07
Man, it's been an absolute masterclasses evening. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. And I wish you all the best finishing that book that I know you were working on before I called and all the best with summer heading towards Paris.
Vern Gambetta 41:19
Very good. Well, thank you very much. The book is on its way. So I'm very excited and we mission was accomplished last week. We still got we got to own the finish now. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And those are very nice, incisive questions that are fun to talk about. Thanks, Ben.