ABOUT THE BOOK

While lunching in Barcelona during the 1992 Olympic Games, swimming coach Tom Morin asked his Swedish counterparts how they had managed to beat the U.S. in a freestyle relay while drawing from a population of only 8 million.

The Swedes explained a coaching theory that differed from the U.S. style of developing great athletes. With the U.S. population big enough to "throw thousands against the wall to see who survives and who becomes a 'broken egg,'" it is possible to develop champions by sheer numbers. When the population is small, a different coaching and training style must be applied.

Thus was born what Morin saw as a call for No More Broken Eggs, the title of his important new book published this summer by Inkwater Press of Portland, Oregon. The book's subtitle: A Guide to Optimizing the Sports Experience for Athletes, Coaches, Parents, and Clinicians (ISBN: 978-1-59299-177-8; 266 pages, $19.95) explains that this is an attempt to reach out to all of those whose mentoring can touch and shape young athletes and create a more positive experience for them as they grow in their sports.

A psychotherapist in private practice in Oakland and Marin County, California, Morin teaches Intro to Psychology and Abnormal Psychology at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and teaches a counseling skills class in the Sports Psychology Program at John F. Kennedy's Graduate School of Psychology in Pleasant Hill, California. He is on the staff at MPI, a chemical dependency treatment program in Oakland, and served as Matt Biondi's personal coach for the 1992 Olympic Games, and as a swim coach at the University of California, where he first coached Biondi.

Biondi, winner of 11 Olympic medals (including eight gold), wrote the foreword to the book. Biondi writes, "Coaches need to stop and pay attention to those who do not compete at a high level. They need to help their athletes both to develop life habits like persistence and time management and to learn teamwork and goal setting."

Writes Morin: "Here in the United States we are often too focused on how good our kids are in sports by the time they are twelve. We use them, burn them out, and throw them away. We do not do much teaching, nurturing or instructing; we just try to weed out those who are not the best and we keep pushing and pushing those that are the best to be better. Many...end up being 'broken eggs.'"

The book provides case study examples of athletes facing difficulties stemming from injuries, depression, burnout, low self-esteem, accidents, substance abuse, and problems with parents and coaches, plus chapters dedicated to tips and guidelines for athletes, clinicians, parents, and coaches. Morin's straightforward approach to helping these often gifted but challenged young athletes will be indispensable for many other youngsters, as well as of enormous assistance to all those adults who touch their lives.

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