Tracy Austin, tennis

Tracy Austin Holt is the youngest ever U.S. Open singles champion and youngest inductee of all time in the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Austin won her first professional tournament at age fourteen in 1977. Over her professional tennis career she won thirty titles including three Grand Slam’s winning two Grand Slam singles titles at the U.S. Open 1979, 1981 and one mixed doubles title at Wimbledon in 1980 with her brother John. It was the first brother and sister team ever to win a Grand Slam event. Her tennis career was slowed after back injuries and recurring sciatica began to impair her mobility on the tennis court. By 1983 before her twenty-first birthday Austin’s tennis career due to injuries was waning. Though in 1988 she began the road to a successful comeback reaching the semi-final of the 1988 U.S. Open Mixed Doubles with partner  Ken Flach. Her comeback was ended by a near fatal car accident in 1989. The car accident damaged her knee and inhibited her from training intensely enough to continue to compete at the elite level. This life change eventually redirected Austin’s professional career into television commentating.  She currently is an analyst covering major tennis events for The Tennis Channel through-out the year and the BBC during Wimbledon.

Tracy Austin Holt long ago made her career transition from player to commentator although she keeps her tennis skills sharp.

SZ: One of your big world impacts was when you became the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Open. As an adult besides family and children what accomplishments to date are you most proud of?

TAH: Starting a new career in television after retiring from professional tennis and finding a nice balance staying stimulated between working and raising a family. Trying to strike that balance is very tough and everyday I’m constantly trying to balance everything. I’m really into trying to be centered and balanced. There are adjustments I have to make everyday in achieving that balance.

SZ: There’s not a lot of lull time. You also have foundation that puts on charity events.

TAH: For twenty-seven years I had a charity event for under privileged children that is no longer going because the two gentlemen that ran it passed away. But for those twenty-seven years it was a huge impact for needy families. The money raised provided services for dentistry, psychology and health needs. That was very important to me for all those years. More recently I’ve participated in about five tennis celebrity events to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis research because my brother John has M.S. I believe that if an athlete has a platform and is able to give back it’s certainly very rewarding I was telling my husband the other day that I need to stay in shape because I  still participate in tennis exhibitions, I stay knowledgeable because of my commentating job, then there are the different needs of being a mom, and wife. I am leaving for Singapore later this week to cover the 2015 WTA Finals. I will be away for eleven days which is great for my commentating career but tougher for the family. I’m constantly trying to find that right balance.

SZ: Even though juggling multiple responsibilities can be overwhelming it’s nice that you are able to continue to use all your skills, knowledge and insight. These opportunities keep life interesting and stimulating.

TAH: The key like anything else in life is to find a balance. Yes, I do commentating but not too much. I keep my foot in the door so that I’m engaged and knowledgeable so I’m very much a part of it, but the majority of my time is spent at home.

SZ: What is your commentating schedule for the most part?

TAH: I work for The Tennis Channel through-out the year mostly in the studio but attend the Indian Wells, the BNP Paribas Open, as well as the Miami Open. I cover some of Wimbledon for the BBC, and usually work at the U.S. Open.

SZ: Do you have a favorite tournament?

TAH: I love Indian Wells. I just love how relaxed it is. It’s like a mini Grand Slam in a beautiful location. That’s probably my favorite.

SZ: What’s a typical day like when you commentate?

TAH: There isn’t a typical day. For example I just received my schedule for Singapore and I don’t start working until 4pm on some days. There is a lot of research and I must say research is so much easier now than it was fifteen years ago with the internet and the WTA/ATP websites. Before the internet trying to extract information about player’s head to head’s and all that it just wasn’t readily available. Now I can read about what a player says, and how they felt after each match. I enjoy doing that type of research and preparation. When I work from the studio in Los Angeles I am now commentating on the men’s matches as well as the women’s and that’s opened up a whole new category for me which is exciting.

SZ: Are you assigned certain objectives or an agenda in match reporting?

TAH: No, it’s never like that. The network will tell me I am going to cover certain matches and sometimes they pair me with another commentator. I frequently work with Paul Annacone and we’ve worked together enough that we have a feel for how much we each talk during a match. We do have a meeting about forty-five minutes prior to going on air. During that meeting we discuss about what we will talk about on camera and assess whether we need a graphic to illustrate certain information. For example; right now there are four spots left on the road to Singapore, so we may create a graphic that highlights the first four players (out of eight who have the most points) in yellow, then show the next four players and their point total leading into the tournament, followed by the next eight players that have a possibility of qualifying and the conditions that it would take for them to make it into the final eight. That creates a fluid discussion as we simplify the information for the viewer yet highlight why the matches are important to the players.

SZ: This summer you played in the Wimbledon Ladies Invitational doubles event. During the year you play in several tennis exhibitions. What do you do to stay physically fit and tennis sharp?

Austin stays active playing charity and WTA legends events as well as commenting for The Tennis Channel, and BBC during Wimbledon

TAH: I play a couple of times a week just because I enjoy it. Playing a few times a week also makes it easier when I play events. I also played the U.S. Open this year.

SZ: Do you go to the gym?

TAH: My life for so long was, “I have to go to the gym, I have to do this, I have to do that.” These days I take hikes, walk, swim, go to yoga sometimes, and stretching class. My exercise is not set in stone and I like it that way.

SZ: Nothing like a TRX class or pilates?

TAH: There are certain parameters that I have with my body at this stage of my life. I do some yoga but it’s in the effort right? In the trying.

SZ: Yoga is the most uncomfortable….

TAH: It’s very difficult but in the trying I feel better the next couple of days, then stiffen up again. Or I will be in a yoga class and look up at others in class and think, how did they get their body to do that? But that’s okay. We are all good at different things.

SZ: In your book, “Beyond Center Court: My Story” at age two your mom enrolled you in a program with Vic Braden at the Jack Kramer Tennis Club, in Rolling HIlls. You credit Vic Braden for making tennis fun for you. What do you remember about the experience that made it fun for you?

TAH: Vic had such a large personality. It wasn’t about enrolling me in his class because I basically just rolled out the pro shop door to play with Vic. He was just a lovely man with an infectious personality which drew me to his court. There were lots of kids, lots of balls and lots of games. He just made it fun. It wasn’t about perfect technique or perfect footwork. It was about engaging the kids with a lot of laughs, a lot of smiles and I just got hooked.

SZ: Most kids pull away from demanding expectations. Reflecting back to the early days when you were coached by Robert Lansdorp, how did Lansdorp’s “tyrant” coaching style help mold/motivate your tennis skills and contribute to your young playing success?

TAH: I think Robert’s personality and his persona drives a lot of kids away because it’s very demanding. He is a tyrant. He demands perfection from players but also from himself. I’ve never seen the guy give less than one hundred percent in any lesson whether that player was nationally ranked or a casual player. I respected him immensely and I respected that he wanted everyone to become better. That’s what his goal was in every single lesson. I wasn’t pushed by my parents, I was self driven. I recall feeling like no-one was going to get in my way. I wanted to go in the direction I was going. I woke up everyday with goals and with the desire to become better. I felt that when Robert was pushing, working me hard it gave me  confidence that he thought I could do more. That’s how I interpreted it. I think others may take his coaching as being critical but to me I saw it as a positive that he had confidence that I had more there.

SZ: His pushing was in alignment with your inner belief that “I can do this.”

TAH: Yeah, I mean I felt that he wanted the best for me. If he thought I could do more that gave me confidence that I could do more. When you think you can….it’s like certain people come across a coach and that coach says the right thing, then all of a sudden, the person goes, “Wow, okay this person believes that I can win Wimbledon.” Hana Mandlikova coached Jana Novatna to the 1998 Wimbledon singles title and a career high ranking of number two in the world. Because Hana thought Jana could win Wimbledon, Jana believed she could win it. All of a sudden Jana was a changed player.

SZ: Your son Brandon Holt is going to attend and play for USC next year. A hot topic in junior tennis these days is the issue of gamesmanship, poor line calls, coaches intimidating opponents etc. As a parent have there been times when your son has had to deal with this issue while playing an opponent?

TAH: This is a timely and appropriate question. It’s an issue everyday. There are some kids that actually play tennis and complete matches without cheating, without swearing, without throwing their rackets, and without medical time outs There are plenty of those kids but unfortunately in my opinion there are way too many kids that are pulling a bunch of shenanigans on the court. The disruptive kids use everything. It’s just disappointing and I’m very vocal about this. I’m very vocal that if you are fourteen years old and are still cheating, throwing your rackets, swearing wildly which my husband was at a match and the kid yelled, “F ***” as loud as he could while a grandmother and her six year old granddaughter were sitting watching the player’s. That’s when my husband decided to get on the Southern California Disciplinary Committee. Because you know who’s fault it is that at fourteen years old kids are still behaving like this, it’s the parents. They have not come down on the child for his/her behavior. If my son ever thought of pulling these shenanigans it wouldn’t happen because the chance of these kids becoming professional tennis player’s are so slim that I want to build a great human being instead of a mechanical tennis player with bad manners.

SZ: I watched an ESPN documentary on Roger Federer and one of the statistics they cited was that he has won more sportsmanship awards than any other professional player.

TAH: Apparently as a child he wasn’t a great sport as his parents at one point took away his rackets. They let him know that poor behavior wasn’t going to be allowed to continue. The boundaries were set. Whereas clearly there are junior players doing rotten things on court, bad manners, bad sportsmanship, and creating distractions to change the momentum of the match. They are clearly not being given any boundaries. The only thing important to their families is the “w.”

SZ: What’s your advice to parents that are on the end of their child being cheated in matches?

TAH: There’s nothing you can do. I mean you can go ask for a lines person. But what happens is the umpire comes onto the court for two games and then they leave. Because there are very few umpires at these junior tournaments. My husband suggested paying more money for entry fees so there can be additional roaming umpires at tournaments. My third son chose not to play tournaments because the experiences were so bad in the first few tournaments he said he didn’t want to continue. I told him okay because I am not sure I wanted to sign up for this again either.

SZ: But that’s huge….

TAH: But it’s not going to change. It’s not going to change cause they aren’t coming down hard enough on it.

SZ: If the USTA would provide for umpire money for tournaments I think there’s an opportunity for change. I would like to see the USTA say, “Hey this is where money needs to go so we attract, develop and keep really good players in our sport.” We are losing talented players to other sports.

TAH: I know so many players that have been lost from tennis and my third son is one of them. I’ve already gone through the tournaments with my second son and I’m now like, okay that’s fine. It takes a certain mentality to stick it out. First of all it’s a one on one sport so that’s more difficult than some of the team sports. Players are responsible for calling their own score, their own lines, then all of a sudden someone throws in
cheating, medical time-outs, bathroom breaks and everything else. My son played a match where his opponent called seventeen lets in the match. There aren’t seventeen lets in a month when you play. It’s just crazy.

You have to make an impact on the parents to create change because they are the ones that need to change their child’s behavior, when the child is ten, eleven or twelve. If a child is still acting up at age fourteen I’m not blaming the child because the child has obviously gotten signals from the parent that what he/she is doing is condoned in their house. If the parent were to change the messages then the child is going to change his/her behavior. I believe change starts at the top like everything in parenting. Words say so much but modeling says a lot. If you are modeling bad behavior or condoning it, without saying a word that sends a message.

SZ: I still don’t understand why the rules allow for bathroom breaks during a set. At the end of a set sure.

TAH: We can go on with this discussion for days.

SZ: Along with your son Brandon, which junior players should fans keep an eye on for the future of the game?

TAH: Taylor Fritz obviously as he just won his first Challenger. It’s only the second Challenger that he’s ever played. So Taylor has a huge upside. I think this group of young men, the Tommy Paul’s, Frances Tiafoe’s, Jared Donaldson, Taylor Fritz, these kids have a real opportunity to make a big impact. Now who knows, they are working very hard and they have great promise which is very exciting.

SZ: Tracy thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this interview.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro

*This article can also be read @ Examiner

Aaron Zigman, film composer

Aaron Zigman is an award winning composer who has developed over fifty film scores for major Hollywood directors and studios. He combines his classical background and training with strong knowledge of contemporary music. Some of Zigman’s film scores include The Notebook, Bridge to Tarabithia, The Proposal, and most recently he worked on Mr. Right and I Saw The Light, the Hank Williams Story. Both movies were shown at the recent Toronto Film Festival.

A native of San Diego, Zigman began training as a classical pianist at age six. While in his third year at UCLA, Zigman signed a four year song writing contract with Almo- Irving. In the mid 1980’s he broke in as a studio musician working with producers, Don Was, Gary Katz, Steely Dan and Stewart Levine. From this experience he got a foot in the door and started to get a name for himself as a producer/writer and soon wrote the pop hit, Crush On You for a group called The Jets. In the 1990’s he entered the film industry, with his work being featured on film soundtracks for Mulan, What’s Love Got To Do With It, Bird Cage, License to Kill, Caddyshack and Pocahontas. It was inevitable that Zigman’s lifelong devotion to classical music would eventually lead him to the film scoring stage.

SZ: I was looking at your website and listening to some of your pieces this past week. Your music is just beautiful.

AZ: Thank you I just wrote a seventeen minute piece for cello and piano. It’s a serious concert work.
We had our first concert at the United Methodist Church in Palos Verdes. It was the finale and received a standing ovation. Cellist Andrew Shulman and pianist Robert Thies will be performing my work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Sunday, October 4th. The classical station KUSC will be broadcasting the performance live.

SZ: That’s exciting.

AZ: It’s very exciting. The cellist, Andrew Shulman was the principle for the London Philarmonia Orchestra at the age of twenty-one. He worked with that symphony orchestra for fifteen years then came to Los Angeles for the L.A. Philharmonic and then started working in the movie studios. Currently he’s the principle for the L.A. Chamber Orchestra.  Andrew concertizes every two weeks and is an incredibly savant cellist. Robert Thies will perform on piano. Even though I’m a very accomplished pianist, it would have taken me six or seven hours a day of practicing to be able to play this piece. That’s why we have concert pianists who dedicate their life to performance art.

SZ: It’s nice for you that you’ve achieved recognition in your field so you have access to these artists that are at the top of their field. What a wonderful place to be.

AZ: I was commissioned to create this piece of work. When I write a piece of this magnitude it’s wonderful to work with musicians who are so experienced they can take the piece to a whole different level.

SZ: Once you’ve written a piece like the one you are describing…

AZ: The process is a collaboration with the artists. Once it’s written I send the material to them and they practice it. First they spend time with the material and work out their parts. Later we meet and start to rehearse.

SZ: Once you’ve written and performed this piece at a later time can you take the material and ….

AZ: Oh yeah, it can be programmed in any orchestra.

SZ: Few people probably know that you are an accomplished tennis player and could have played in college at the Division 1 level. What events happened along the way that shifted your athletic pursuit and talents to a full time music focus?

AZ: I was an accomplished junior tennis player up to around fourteen years old. At fourteen or fifteen I made the decision to venture off to make my life 100% music even though I kept playing through my first year in high school. My high school Point Loma High School had a good team. We had Kelly Jones who became a top professional doubles player. That year we got to the finals of C.I.F. . I think if I had been in really great tennis shape we would have won. I lost to a player who I’d beaten the year before in junior tournaments. I just stopped practicing tennis but I was still playing on the team for the first year and a half of high school. Then I quit because I could not put any more time into tennis.

SZ: What events happened along the way that shifted your athletic pursuits and talents to a full time music focus?

AZ:  I’ll tell you exactly the defining moment. At fourteen years old I was at Yale University playing with the Yale tennis team because they were recruiting guys like me who were ranked top in Southern California. I was in my second year of the fourteen’s. I was invited to go on an Ivy League tour. I played with Princeton, Yale and Harvard. When I was visiting Yale one of the team members knew my interest in music and invited me to attend a piano recital. That night there was this amazing pianist who played a free form style of jazz. He played very much in the style of Keith Jarrett. Jarrett had a hugely successful album around that time in the 1970’s called the Köln Concert. It was his tour de force record. So this pianist was playing wild stuff and at that time my facility was almost that good but not quite. By the time I was sixteen I could rip something like that out. But it was during that Yale performance that I had my epiphany.  It was so cool. I was very much into jazz at fourteen and fifteen years old. I was into Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, and Keith Jarrett at that time. It was after that recital I said to myself “I am going to make music my life.”

SZ: Are there lessons that you learned playing competitive tennis that carry over into your work as a composer?

AZ: When you play competitive tennis you are competing against someone else and you have to win. Playing music at that age I didn’t have to win I had to become better within myself. When I lost a tennis match that made me upset or hurt emotionally I would find myself going to the piano and playing for hours. It was my place of refuge and solace. I realized at that time I wasn’t competing against anybody and it was much more doable for me in the sense of an emotional response. Now I am in a business where I am one of the go to guys for film composing. The thing I learned from playing tennis is that I know what competition is. I can handle rejection. You cannot do what I do for a living without having a thick skin. With that said it still does hurt when I lose a film to another composer when I believe I should have gotten the opportunity. So there is competition. It’s almost like I’m back in tennis competing in a way. There are usually about twenty composers vying for the number one spot for a big or medium film.

SZ: What a great place to be. I’d rather be in that spot than the guy in the twenty-first spot.

AZ: My gratitude is that I am almost always on the list of composers who are considered for a movie. I just completed a documentary piece for Antoine Fuqua for the Suge Knight documentary. You know I don’t do a lot of television but this was for Antoine Fuqua one of the greatest directors in the world. He directed South Paw, Training Day, The Equalizer and many more movie hits. Antoine Fuqua is a guy I couldn’t say, “No” to do a thirty-seven minute documentary on Suge Knight. I had to write and deliver the music within a week. It turned out really well. My hope is that I can work for him one day on a big feature.

SZ: Do you have techniques to quiet your mind or environment to access your creativity I would imagine there is some pressure to turn out creative work when there is a dead-line.

AZ: That’s a really good question and sometimes it’s very hard to turn off my brain especially when I have an eighteen hour day. I try to stop working by 10 or 11pm but you know sometimes there is nothing I can do about it. I just completed a five month run on two movies one called Mr. Right with Anna Kendrick, which will be released Nov. 27th and “I Saw The Light,” the Hank Williams story. Both movies were in the recent Toronto Film Festival. In fact Mr. Right closed the festival.

SZ: What do you do if anything to quiet your mind. There’s a lot of pressure when you have a week to deliver a large volume of work. How do you access that creativity?

AZ: Sometimes I just listen to classical pieces of music to take me away from my work. I’ll go on-line and type in Opus 69 #3 Beethoven with Glenn Gould and Lenard Rose playing a recording that was done in 1975. That’s what I kind of do to wash away the notes that I’ve been working on all day. As human beings we need to sleep so that’s kind of one of my little tricks. I have a huge record and cd collection of all kinds of great classical, jazz and all music but I find the internet very accessible and quick.

When I create I don’t think in technical or mathematical terms until the idea is formulated Musical composition is formulated in improvisation. Once a pianist like myself sits down and begins to play and start thinking about what I am writing all of a sudden a little tune will emerge, a little spot light and I’ll go, “That’s interesting.” Then I formulate and keep playing then all of a sudden I’ve created sixteen bars of music that I’m writing out. Then that improvisational experience is turned into a mathematical one. Before my little dots go on my score there’s a lot of thought, preparation and revisiting.

Film writing and concert writing are two very different things. In film writing I am serving the film and it tells you what to write. I have to stay within the parameters of the film. In writing concert music for the stage I can write anything I want and in this day and modern age rules can be broken. Composers can do things that weren’t allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules. As you well know there was a riot in Paris when The Rite of Spring was played. It was a piece of music people couldn’t handle. They were enraged by it and then somehow the piece became accepted. I like to adhere to form and symmetrical writing but it’s very…

SZ: There’s more flexibility within the art form.

AZ: The best way to get the best score out of me is that I watch the movie without music.  A lot of times I walk in after the film has been shot and the music editor or director has already laid in the pieces of music that they like or think that works well with the film. So they say,”We kind of want this but in your own voice.” If I see a cut in its’ raw form I say, “If you temp this you’re going to spoil what could have happened. Just let me  demarcate where you want the music.” We will have a music editor in the room and we all agree where the starting part for the music will be and no-one puts any temporary music in and they just let me write the score. That was how I worked on The Notebook. The only score that Nick Cassavetes, the director, temped was a scene which was one of the bigger moments in the film when Ryan Gosling is kissing Rachel McAdams in the boat during a deluge of rain. Cassavetes temped that piece from Out of Africa. It took me four or five drafts to get him to love what I was writing because he was so attached to that piece of music.

SZ: Do you go on set to watch the filming?

AZ: All the time. I’ve probably done this on fifteen or twenty films. I did it on The Notebook. The landscape in South Carolina is breathtaking in certain seasons. I wrote the opening piece before the movie was completed. The solo piano piece during the opening sequence was written before they were even half way done shooting. They edited the sequence to my music instead of the other way around.

SZ: I read where you said, “Visualize the future you want for yourself and one of the key ways to getting there is networking and creating relationships.” How did you know or develop what you wanted for the future?

AZ: You decide what relationships are going to be worth it. You look at a director and think this guy is innately a great director and he’s got a bright future. You try and nurture the relationship. This day and age we have to do a little more networking than we used to do. All that does is make sure you befriend the people you are working with on a project so you hopefully carry it over to the next one.

SZ: What is your advice to young composers trying to break into this business?

AZ: You have to be involved in student films. Work on gratis unless you’re going to a school like USC which has a very good film/music department. Berkeley and a few others are good as well. In my opinion USC is probably the strongest in the country so if a student goes through the USC program then they can work on shorts for composers. That way they can develop a reel to show people what they can do. Another suggestion for young people is to find some Indie film where the budget is 2mil and the film makers aren’t going to be able to afford someone with my experience. Although if the film is 2mil and I think it’s going to be the next Oscar contender I will probably do it. If it has great content I will do it.

SZ: Aaron thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule to speak with me.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ Examiner

Professional stuntwoman Jessica Harbeck

Jessica Harbeck grew up in Dallas, Texas and as a child loved jumping out of trees, wearing costumes and playing multi sports. During college she played softball for Illinois State University for two years then transferred to the University of Colorado where she competed on the track team, heptathlon, as well as playing fullback for the rugby team. After college Harbeck moved to Los Angeles to break into the business of stunt work. Some of her television work includes, CSI: NY, True Blood, Revenge and American Horror Story. Her film credits include, Bridesmaids, Battle Los Angeles, Get Him to the Greek, Star Trek into Darkness.

Elite stuntwoman Jessica Harbeck

Today Harbeck continues to participate in stunt work but has branched out with her business partner, Timothy Eulich and started En Pointe Action Designs a stunt coordinator company that designs and executes action sequences for the entertainment industry. Most recently she just wrapped up her first feature film stunt coordinating job, Swiss Army Man starring Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano.

SZ:  I read that you began your career in 2005. How did your career as a stuntwoman take off?

JH:  I wish I could say my career as a stuntwoman “took off” from the day I stepped foot in Los Angeles.  In reality and in the moment, it felt more like a slow crawl through peanut butter.  After graduating from The University of Colorado where I was a member of the Track & Field team (heptathlete) and played fullback for the women’s rugby team I moved to Orange County.  I was lucky enough to have an amazing Aunt and Uncle who let me live with them while I found a job and got on my feet.  If it weren’t for them and their support, things could have gone very differently for me so I thank them daily and plan to pay their goodness going forward.  I worked at Starbucks in the morning, drove to Los Angeles in the afternoons to hustle stunt work and train, then drove back to OC in the evenings to work at Trader Joe’s.  There was a great amount of luck involved in what happened next, I met an actor on a movie in which I was doing background work and we struck up a conversation about what we really wanted in life.  I explained I was doing background work to get my SAG card and hopefully someday become a stunt performer. He told me he knew a stuntman from one of his acting classes and offered to hook me up with him.  He came through and put me in touch with stunt coordinator Banzai Vitale who turned out to be one of my greatest mentors.  Banzai sacrificed his time and energy for years teaching myself and a small group of buddies what we needed to know if we wanted to become real stunt performers.  He trained us in all of the basics (fights, falls, set etiquette, etc.) and was always there to answer a question or lend a hand and also put us in for work when he thought we were ready.  I then met a stunt coordinator named Charlie Brewer who at the time was the stunt coordinator on the TV show Monk.  Charlie gave me a huge boost in my career because he put me into some hard hitting spots and helped me build the confidence I needed to keep getting work from others.  Charlie would do his best to give me a day of work if he could, he didn’t owe me anything and did it out of the goodness of his heart which to this day I can’t thank him enough for doing.

SZ: I have to say the work looks like fun but obviously dangerous in most if not all situations. What is the typical length of time it takes to learn the choreography of the stunt and the training behind it? How much improvising comes into play during a take?

JH: Stunt work is one of those professions which keep your body and brain on their toes because the learning and training never stop.  The business is constantly changing and the only way to survive is to be as prepared as possible while staying open and flexible to the changes.  The way I physically train my body to be prepared is through massive amounts of yoga mixed with as much ocean time as possible.  I call this my happiness workout, because being in a gym is just too stuffy and being happy when I workout matters to me.  I love to be in nature when I’m breaking a sweat.  I surf, body surf, stand up paddle, etc. rock climb, and spend time training in martial arts at The Inosanto Academy which was founded by renowned authority on Jeet Kune Do, Dan Inosanto.  I try to mix it up while not over doing it because at this point it is the work which will take a toll on my body over time so I consider training to be upkeep rather than tearing myself apart like I did when I was twenty.
As far as improving stunts during a take is concerned, we typically do not do this.  Our goal is to make something look spontaneous, dangerous or nasty then get up and do it again and again and again.  The timing of stunts becomes a huge safety issue therefore we map out and rehearse our stuff until each player has it burned into their mind.  If a stunt performer decides to take a chance and change something about their performance without communicating it to the team it could lead to disaster, injury and even death.  Because we work as a team any changes must be communicated to all players involved in the action sequence.  Communication is a huge part of our job and the only person who should ever change anything about the action is the stunt coordinator, or the director, and when a change happens it is important to make sure everyone is on the same page and ready to go with it.

SZ: Most people have no concept of how grueling doing stunt work can be and the athleticism involved. What do you do to prepare yourself mentally for a difficult stunt scene?

JH: It depends on the stunt I’m about to perform, but as far as mental preparation I definitely use visualization techniques when it comes to things like choreography, stair falls, driving etc.  If it’s a hard hit I tell myself over and over how much I will destroy the object I’m going to run into/break though/be thrown through.  I will say, “Jess, you are going to destroy that floor.  You are going to show that floor just what it means to be broken, and when you’re through with it no other floor will ever want to be in the same room as you again.  Knock it out.  Kill it.  Break it where it counts.”  I typically go to mental Viking mode and psych myself up as much as possible for the upcoming destruction.  I thank my rugby days and my former marine of a father for this mental edge.

SZ: You started En Pointe Action Designs and now work as a stunt coordinator as well as a stuntwoman. What is the role of a stunt coordinator?  How and where do you discover talent?  What temperament and other qualities are useful to make it in this profession?

JH: I started En Pointe Action Designs with my business partner Timothy Eulich who just so happens to be one of the most talented and thoughtful stuntmen I have ever encountered in the business.  He is definitely the yin to my yang, which is why we have been able to work together for so many years creating quality action with directors and producers we love. The role of a stunt coordinator is to create and design action sequences which support the directors’ vision while holding safety of the performers and any crew involved in the shot to the highest priority.  Most stunt coordinators were once stunt people themselves so they know the talent pool well.  I am lucky enough to perform stunts and have personally worked with a large amount of the incredibly talented stunt performers who are working today.  If someone I know thinks they are the right fit for a job I’m coordinating they will usually shoot me a text or an email letting me know.  If it’s a newer person or someone I haven’t met they typically email or mail in their resume and headshot introducing themselves.  The business has changed a lot since I started, specifically concerning social media.  Facebook has helped many new stunt people connect and get in touch with stunt coordinators we once found to be unreachable.

Diving out of the way of an explosion

If someone wants to make it as a stunt person having a very diverse physical background and a positive attitude are very helpful traits.  It is important to be in control and to not come off as reckless because we are expected to create controlled chaos, get up and repeat.  I find having a team sports background has helped me a lot as far as connecting with others and keeping my ego in check.  At the end of the day we are all just a team creating a piece of art we can safely walk away from and hopefully feel proud to have contributed.  It’s imperative to check egos at the door. It doesn’t matter if you’re the lead double or doing a non-descript fight in the background, our work ends up in the same piece of artistic entertainment. Our relationships and connections with the humans we have worked with are what matter most. That relationship of trust and communication without ego is what translates best to the end product, which then creates connection with the audience.

SZ: If you were to make a movie that involved action that would require stunt work what type of action scenes would you include in the movie and why would it be fun or interesting for you to create this?

JH: If I were making a movie involving action, I would care more right now about being part of something in which the female archetypes kick ass rather than having their asses kicked by the patriarchy.  I’m so bored with the same old story line in which men are the hero’s. These old stories hold us down and stifle evolution of society by teaching children from a young age women are victims that need saving and men are hero’s.  I want to see more stories of women who are doing amazing things and are smashing the glass ceiling left and right.  I think it is this type of visual which will empower the young women of the future.  I just read about the two females who were the first to graduate from Army Ranger school 1st Lt. Shaye Haver and Capt. Kristen Griest. Becky Hammond is tearing it up in the NBA as the first female assistant coach.  We are witnessing the inroads of change by Jen Welter the first female to coach an NFL game, and Sarah Thomas, the first female NFL referee.  These women are making their mark in history right now.  Those would be killer stories to tell and being part of the team creating the action to support those stories would be an honor.

SZ: You hold a distinguished position being a member of the Stuntwomen’s Association of Motion Pictures, an invitation only organization for Hollywood’s top stuntwomen. Besides the honor of being selected to this association for your professional contributions what are the benefits of being on the inside of this organization?

JH: Being invited into the Stuntwomen’s Association of Motion Pictures was one of the biggest honors in my career.  My two mentors, Lisa Hoyle and Heidi Pascoe took me under their wing in a big way and helped me become part of the team.  I am thankful to them both for life for their commitment to helping me grow.  Being a part of the group has benefits on many levels.  First, it is a statement to the stunt community, which says “I am taken seriously by my peers and get along with my coworkers.”  It’s a badge of honor and pride to be counted among the most hard working, hard hustling, and talented women in the business.  Some of the insider perks of this are:

*Being in the direct company of other women who coordinate and a few who second unit direct.  We are comprised of 28 different women, many of whom carry with them expertise in areas I am not as familiar as they are. They help answer any question I have about a job and have also given me coordinating jobs on shows they run in town.

*We keep each other working so if things are slow I can email or text one of my sisters who is running a show and say “Hey, have anything for me?”  This is not something you can just ask a coordinator normally so being pulled into the club and being given the keys to the network is a huge deal.

*I have a pool of 28 talented, experienced, stuntwomen with wide ranging backgrounds to pull from if I need to hire someone for a job.  It is incredibly uplifting to have a team of badass women on your side night and day who are there through thick and thin when you need them.

SZ: Let’s say someone starts out their career as a stuntwoman what doors open by being in and around the business if they wish to transition at some point? You have expanded into a stunt coordinator business. What other transitions do people make?

JH: Transitioning from one department to another in Hollywood can be a challenge or can happen over night if you’re lucky.  Most people work incredibly hard to break into their chosen career path, if it ends up happening transitioning can be scary because you know how much work it took to get to that point and the idea of doing it all over again can be daunting.  It is also difficult to break out of the role you worked so hard to pigeonhole yourself into.  Moving from stunt performer to stunt coordinator means you have to make connections with directors and producers which can feel like a career restart after spending the last however many years of your life making connections with stunt coordinators.  It is a delicate dance with social politics playing a huge part.  Luckily, the transition from performer to coordinator is a more natural one and the stunt coordinators in your life who understand that difficulty and are in a position to help will do so if it’s deserved and they have the resources.

I’ve seen stunt people move up from stunt coordinator to 2nd unit director, which is an awesome and huge career jump.  2nd unit directors are in charge of shooting most of the action footage and are found mostly in the feature film world.  One of our group members is a stunt coordinator and also a writer.  I’m not sure how tough that transition is because I have never tried it.  Again, it can be tough to move from one part of the business to another because everyone you’ve worked with for years has only viewed you as a “stunt coordinator” or “stunt performer” and you have to make it known you have other talents and interests.  It helps to be in the business because then you have access to people in other departments who know their stuff.  But it can hurt because everyone views you as the one thing you do well.

SZ: Do you have any favorite stories from work you’ve done as a stuntwoman?

JH: One of my favorite days of work ever in the world occurred on the show “Grace and Frankie.”  I was there to double Jane Fonda in an episode where she slips on yogurt and falls to the ground during a fantasy sequence.  The director was a hilarious and legendary woman who sensed my aversion to hair and makeup and was teasing me about wearing false eyelashes on the job, which I loved.  My boss, Jill Brown, is a woman who also happens to be a great friend, and I was in the presence of two of the most legendary actresses of all time, Jane and Lily Tomlin.  After I performed my stunt and the nerves had worn off, I realized just how incredible this moment was and thanked Jill and my lucky stars for the opportunity to be surrounded by matriarchy.  It is so rare in a male dominated business and it is days like this one which fuel my feminist fire to burn brighter and stronger than ever.

Another cool story, I am lucky enough to get called to double an incredible woman on NCIS: LA named Daniela Ruah.  The first day I started doubling her I was climbing over a fence and running after a bad guy during a foot chase.  I performed my action for camera a few times before Dani arrived to set and once she was there she jumped in to do hers. Dani is an incredible athlete and can do most of her stuff.  I’m usually there as insurance and to do the redundant work so the repetitive nature doesn’t make it difficult for her to come to work the next day and do it all again. (She is the lead actress and works many many many more hours than I do making her job physically and mentally exhausting.  I typically come in for a day or two per episode giving me more time to rest up and prep for the next one).  That day, right before they were ready to roll, she looked at the director and my boss and said, “Wait wait wait, did Jess get camera time yet?”  I fell head over heels in respectful love with her in that moment because it was proof of just how much the woman cares to understand her on-set family.  On TV we are paid residuals if we make it on camera and because Dani takes the time to understand what it’s like for others, she wanted to be sure I was on camera.  I find her selfless nature to be incredibly refreshing and also the definition of feminism because we are a team, not competitors.  I’m there to support the character she has created and we are no threat to each other, if she wins I win and vice versa.  To steal a term from my gardening muse Travis Nuckolls, it is Hollywood symbiosis at it’s finest.
 
SZ: Is there anything you would like to add?

JH: I just wrapped up my first feature film stunt coordinating job.  The film is called Swiss Army Man and stars Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano.  Go out and see it and prepare to be blown away by what The Daniels (genius directing team) have created, it will be more than worth it.

SZ: Jess, congratulations on your success. Thanks so much for taking the time for this interview. I have a whole new understanding of the world of stunt work.

*Featured guests are not former nor current clients of Susan Zaro
*This article may also be read @ Examiner.

Rolf Benirschke Indomitable Spirit

Rolf Benirschke began his NFL career when he was selected by the Oakland Raiders in the 12th round of the 1977 NFL Draft. After being traded to the San Diego Chargers in his rookie year he had a fulfilling ten year career with the Chargers. Benirschke was the San Diego Chargers placekicker from 1978 until 1986, and the third most accurate placekicker in NFL history at the time of his retirement. In his second season with the Chargers Benirschke was stricken with a life-threatening disease ulcerative colitis. He underwent two surgeries to remove his large intestine and was in the intensive care unit for six weeks. When released from the hospital, he weighed on 123 pounds and had to adjust to life with two ostomy appliances. In 1980 Benirschke returned to kicking for the Chargers and played seven more seasons before retiring in 1987 as the team’s all-time leader in points scored.

Benirschke received numerous honors during his career including NFL Man of the Year; Comeback Player of the Year; Philadelphia Sports Writers Association, Most Courageous Athlete. In 1997 he was inducted into the San Diego Chargers Hall of Fame. Benirschke has taken his bouts with illness and devoted his time and energy to inspiring others. He founded Great Combacks, a patient advocacy and support program sponsored by ConvaTec, and is the co-founder of Legacy Health Strategies, an strategic marketing firm that develops patient support, disease awareness, and treatment compliance initiatives for medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

Our interview begins as we were talking about a mutual friend that we have who played on the Women’s Professional tour.

SZ: In this day and age it’s special to have friendship through such a long period of time. I think it’s also the benefit of participating in sports. I am sure there are people that you still know from your football playing days.

SZ: You realize that you are in a unique fraternity and once you mature those relationships become that more important. No-one can quite appreciate what you go through except those that have gone through it. It’s pretty unique in that way.

SZ: The shared experience that you both understand. When you think back to the juniors in tennis and everyone is competing for little opportunities and over time everything just sort of works out. It’s a good thing.

RB: How did you end up deciding to be a sport counselor?

SZ: My ambition had been to turn professional at some point but I wasn’t ready and really needed guidance to understand my skills, where I had been as a junior, where my current skill level was at, what skills I needed to develop to move to the next level. The desire to go back and become involved in sport counseling was that I knew a lot of players in many sports were in similar situations. I currently work with youth, adults, professionals around anxiety issues, performance issues, transitions, peak performance, and am Board Certified in Biofeedback. I conduct physiological stress tests which are very helpful for athletes to see how their thoughts influence their bodies ability to perform.

RB: I love that it is such a real thing for every player but no-one actually wants to admit it because it’s almost a sign of weakness or perceived sign of weakness. I think it takes a strong person to recognize that. I would say it’s becoming more accepted though I still think for younger people it takes awhile.

SZ: Some of it is mental maturity. Frequently the mind set of a young player is, “I should beat this person.” “I should do this or do that.” My job is to scale it back and focus the player when they make an error how do they get themselves back on track without a mental melt down? Frequently the answer at the beginning is, “I just hit the ball harder.” Or, “I tell myself to work harder.” Those solutions often add to their difficulties. Physiologically they may need to reset their body and readjust their mental thoughts. Many more sport teams employ performance consultants. It’s much more common than it was ten years ago. The Seattle Seahawks employ Dr. Michael Gervais. He’s been running their program for several years.

RB: David Cook is the Director of the Peak Performance Center at Baylor University and wrote a book called, Links of Utopia. There was a movie made about him. David is a really compelling wonderful guy. When you are around him it’s just so cool. He’s just a bright, thoughtful, approachable guy. You recognize how fragile the psyche of so many players are. We wrestle with so many of the things you are talking about. I used to read Tim Gallwey’s book “The Inner Game of Tennis.” That was my fledgling attempt to manage a lot of that stuff.

A lot comes with mental maturity. Many athletes are identified so early these days it can create such damage. Some athletes think their skills are going to give them happiness and reward yet for some it stunts their growth socially and intellectually, then there is the possibility of an injury or they don’t make it. It’s devastating to watch.

SZ: Earlier we were talking about pressure on kids to succeed and their role models. Looking at the last Super Bowl and the deflated ball story who makes that decision? What does that say about the game? Does it mean players have to cheat to be good enough to win? Can they play within the rules of the game and be successful?

RB: To me that is systemic in a sport where we are all looking for an edge. The line becomes blurred whether it’s nutrition or strength training or enhancement supplements. Everybody is pushing it. I don’t think that’s healthy either. I believe athletes need two to three months down time away from their sport. Just to let their bodies recalibrate. I don’t thing it’s good to work out twelve months a year and expect your body and emotional capacity to remain strong and be able to get dialed up when you need to. But it’s done because we all want an edge and this leads to a dilemma as parents. Parents may feel pressure to encourage the child to select the sport they are going to play by the age of twelve. In the minds of many parents their child will not be able to to make the high school team if they don’t fully commit for example to soccer for ten or eleven months a year to the detriment of other opportunities. We’ve created this unhealthy system that potentially leads to a lot of the problems we are talking about.

SZ: How would you change the process?

RB: That’s a very big question with lots of answers. I think it begins with making people aware of what happens when you do this and things don’t turn out well. We are talking about the fraction of a percent that actually makes it to the college level or professional level. It’s the story of Todd Marinovich the football player at USC told a hundred times for parents to get the message of, “Wait a minute, sports is for enjoyment to learn how to challenge yourself to build skills of how to get along, how to deal with defeat, how to deal with success and how to push yourself beyond what you think you can do.” All the healthy things about sports becomes unhealthy when we make it our God idol, and when it supersedes family vacations and all that. Parents couple by couple have to rein that back in and say look sports are going to be a healthy balance for my child.

My youngest son is in his late teens and we’ve had to make some hard decisions as he’s shown athletic ability. He’s been on teams that play hard but it’s not life or death to them and if they lose it’s tough but they go have a milkshake and off to the beach. I just know it’s in the long term the right balance. I’ve sadly watched kids drafted into baseball and have an injury and never get past double AA. Five years later they are looking around and their buddies are deep into careers.

SZ: Because they continue to pursue the dream and they didn’t make it.

RB: I think there’s a correlation between the longer you play the harder it is to make the transition. I don’t care how bright you are or how well prepared you are. It’s harder. If a player leaves the game at thirty-three or thirty-four years old they are so far behind their peers in the normal development of a career. That can be extremely challenging for the most adjusted player to make the transition. Now there’s no doubt that they may have a leg up if they’ve played that long and have a reputation or experiences that are unique.

When I was playing my agent was Leigh Steinberg and he said to me, “Rolf you need to get involved in the community.” I asked “What does that mean?” He strongly suggested that I learn to public speak. I’d never done it before. I’d never taken classes in that so I bought a Dale Carnegie book on public speaking and read it. When I went to the San Diego Chargers my rookie year in the off season I said every time there’s a request from somebody and would like a player to come out and speak put me on the list. In that rookie off season I must have spoken ninety times.

SZ: What a great opportunity.

RB: It was a brilliant opportunity but if Leigh hadn’t said it I wouldn’t have thought about it. I spoke at Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, junior high schools and the special Olympics. I was exposed to the fabric of the community and began to meet the presidents and CEO”s of companies. But through that the community got to know me as more than an athlete and what really changed for me was I became ill. I got sick and at a time when our team was loved by a community one of their players got sick and there was this great out pouring of support and affection. I was very lucky to have lived and should never really have lived. I am rewriting my book Alive & Kicking right now.

SZ: You became terribly sick with ulcerative colitis and had two surgeries which left you wearing two osmotic sacks, yet returned to the Chargers as a kicker the next year and played for four more years.

RB: I figured out a way to protect my stoma and I did get hit a few times and there was some concern certainly initially about my playing again. The point is my illness was played out in the public and there is this safety net in the community if you recognize the opportunity that the platform of sport gives you. During my career I got to play for ten years in my community where I had gone to high school. In a place where I was going to settle for the rest of my life at least I thought. Then with my illness which was a horrible thing yet turned out to be a blessing in my life. It forced me to grow up on a lot of fronts.

When I was in college at U.C. Davis and played for the football team and the soccer team I really thought I was going to go on to vet school and was also intrigued by a graduate program at Cornell University. Then I was drafted by the NFL I was the last player drafted in the NFL draft in 1977 but I was drafted by the Oakland Raiders. They had just won the Super Bowl so I ended up deciding to go and see what it was like to play professional football. Once I arrived in Oakland I realized that my skills were as good as others guys and back then there were six preseason games and I got a chance to kick. I had some success in those games and pretty soon I’m the guy.

SZ: If you’re playing football that the position to be in.

RB: I agree with you (laughing), and it fits my personality. I love being part of the team and I love to be able to make a difference in the outcome. You have a big impact on the outcome of the game and autonomy. You can kind of do your own thing as long as you perform.

SZ: You had an amazing professional kicking record. Are you still in the top three of all kickers for the Chargers?

RB: When I retired I was the third most accurate kicker in the history of the league. That’s obviously since past. I did things in the off season that weren’t football related. As I mentioned I learned to public speak, traveled and did other things. I was never a hundred percent devoted to kicking. I believe if I had been I’d have been a better kicker but I don’t think I’d have been a better person. When I played we didn’t make a lot of money so all of us were always trying to figure out what’s the transition? When’s the transition? What are we going to transition into? I felt I needed to keep my options open so on the one hand it was healthy, on the other hand it probably kept some of us from reaching our true potential. What I wanted to get to though was the stuff that you kind of talked about earlier. I ended up in San Diego and I began to experience the scrutiny that these athletes go through everyday. I like most athletes began to start to put my self worth on my performance and when I performed well I felt good. If I struggled I didn’t feel so good about myself. I ended up on this roller coaster, feel good about myself when it’s going well and feel like dog meat when I’m struggling.

But there were a couple of guys on our team who didn’t seem to be on that same roller coaster. I didn’t know why but I wanted what they had. There was a peace and self confidence about them that at the end of the game in the locker room I couldn’t tell if my locker mate who I have huge respect for, had caught ten passes or if he dropped five balls. I just watched and there were four or five guys on the team that were just like that and they were encouragers. They had something I didn’t have and I wanted it. I began to ask them and what they had was a faith. I learned that they had wrestled with their faith. Is there a God or not? If there is a God what are my obligations? If there is no God what’s this all about? They invited me to some of the chapel services that the team had. Back then the speakers that would come were just incredible. Some of the giants of faith, David Jeremiah, Mike MacIntosh and others.

SZ: Through the church.

RB: Yes, through the church. They’d have a chapel service either the night before the game or sometimes right after a team meeting. I started to attend this chapel and it touched my heart. I made a decision that I was going to learn more and read the bible and start to figure it out. Then I started to get ill and it was confusing. How could this be happening? It was unfair. I was twenty-three years old. My life was ahead of me and our team was getting good. In a short time my illness required two surgeries. I lost sixty-four pounds. When I woke up from my second surgery with two ileostomy bags on my side.

I’d sort of made peace with God and believed that I was going to die. I confessed my sins and was ready to go and God allowed me to live. I was so sick that I really shouldn’t have lived. Now I’m twenty-four years old and everything I loved to do involved outdoor athletics. I loved San Diego. I was in the water a lot scuba diving. I ski, play a lot of tennis and was making my living as a professional football player. Now I am thinking, “No girls are ever going to like me.” I went through a really hard time. I was discouraged and interestingly that as I recovered my life changed.

SZ: It’s a letting go.

RB: It’s a couple of things. Yes, it’s a recognition. After the surgeries I had no idea what the rest of my life was going to be like. That was the beginning and then it was, “Alright I’m alive now what?” There was a book written by a guy named Jerry Coffee who was one of the longest held P.O.W.’s in Vietnam. He spent over seven years in one of the P.O.W camps and he wrote about how he survived. He shared some of the principles that made a lot of sense to me and I began to apply them to my life. The prisoners had to figure out how to get through the day, they couldn’t think about tomorrow or a week from now which seemed like an eternity. It was literally, “How do you get through the day? The moment.” I felt that’s me. First I’ve got to figure out how to get through the day. Second thing is the prisoners made small goals, silly little goals. I used that and everyday one of my goals became getting up and walking to the mailbox of my parents house and back. The next day was two mailboxes. Everyday I was going to add a mailbox. You live in California, you know how close those mailboxes are. It’s not a huge accomplishment. But it was for me.

The next thing I learned from the book is that the P.O.W.’s learned to lean on each other. These are studly guys and when they felt that they were beaten and worn out and couldn’t do any more the other guys spread the word that someone was ready to give up and word got around, “You’ve got to help Bill in cell twenty.” They learned to tap the wall in code, coughed in code and they left notes where their buddies would find them. The notes had words of encouragement, “God bless you,” “Don’t give up,” “You can’t give up we are with you.” They talked about how important that was for each of them to know that people around them were with them.

I had to learn to do that and share with my friends who came by and team-mates the burden, my embarrassment, my uncertainty, my fears. That was huge. I also discovered as had the P.O.W.’s that instilled inside everyone of us is what we call the indomitable spirit. We read about the human spirit all the time. We see it live out particularly in sports. Most of us live our lives sort of between the guard rails of life. We may have problems and bounce off the walls because we missed a kick or failed a class, but until we crash over the proverbial guard rail of life and end up in a ditch and survive you come out fundamentally changed.

The guys that survived the P.O.W. experience returned to the U.S. and became presidents of companies, and political leaders. They discovered they had a greater ability to cope, greater perseverance, greater creativity, and courage than they ever thought they had. The irony of this is that the only way they could discover that was to have gone through this incredible trial. I began to discover that for myself. Because I was still under contract with the Chargers the strength coach took me under his wing. Day after day he helped me rebuild my body and confidence. I took it a day at a time and learned to lean on him and made small goals that I was achieving. All of a sudden July came around and I am at one hundred and eighty-five pounds. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. I wonder if I can kick with the bags on. The trainer and I go out one day and I discover I can not only kick but I’m booming it. But I am thinking there is no way the Chargers are going to let me play. There’s a hundred guys in line who want my job including the kicker who took it when I got sick.

I went to the owner of the team and said, “Look there’s been a lot of public support for me. I appreciate that but you need a kicker that you can depend on. The Chargers are a good team you will make it to the play offs. All I am asking is to let me compete for my job. No special favors. Just allow me to compete.” And to my surprise he said if I could prove to the medical staff that I could protect myself they would let me try out. The owner gave me an opportunity and that’s where my life changed. So the last thing those guys in the P.O.W. camps wrestled with was is there a God? Because if there is no God then what was happening to them was just a bad nightmare with no redeeming value. But if there was a God then he was asking me to do certain things which was to believe and trust that one day it might be revealed.

If you had given me a million options I would never have put the opportunity to play football, to play in a Pro Bowl, to play seven more years after my surgeries on the list. I was just such an incredible outcome. So that was my faith journey. I’ve watched God take what were horrible circumstances and turn them into the great lessons of my life including the company that I have now. The company that I co-founded, Legacy Health Strategies is based on all the things that I learned as a player, through my illness and a company I started over thirty years ago called Great Comebacks which educates others about ileostomy. Legacy Health Strategies is built around the premise that patients need support during their illness trial and helping create that support. My business partner and I started the business in my spare bedroom. We now have thirty-six employees. We build programs that profoundly change the lives of patients everyday.

So getting back to our earlier discussion about these young athletes. Some of them will make fifty million dollars and will never need to work again. I don’t know if that is healthy or not. If you are twenty-seven years old and you’ve got fifty million dollars in the bank you think you are pretty hot stuff. In that place it’s hard to realize that there is more to life than that.

SZ: Maturity is an important part of the process. What you are describing is a story or life path that has been experienced in many ways. Viktor Frankl told it in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. The essence of being human and in the dark moments making choices to survive for a greater purpose. The belief that nothing worse can happy than what is happening right now can happen to me. If it’s death then I will go forward by doing something productive for myself and others.

RB: I don’t think you just sit there and expect God to do something. I think you’ve got to move you’ve got to make decisions. God has an opportunity to direct your path. I think you’re right there’s a volitional component to this, a faith component, a trust and maybe it’s a view of the world.

SZ: You’ve incorporated compassion and patience through your experiences. When you say to yourself, “If I sit here and just watch and observe for a second and allow myself to have empathy and compassion then I may understand what’s going on a little better.”

RB: We run from accountability. Somewhere along the line you have to make the decision to accept what’s happened and then figure out where to go from there. Initially it’s “Why, why me?” A very natural reaction. I was there for awhile, but it’s the wrong question. Why, is a circular loop that comes back to poor me why did this happen? It’s not fair. Once you mourn through the why question the question becomes, what now? If there is an acceptance it’s happened I can’t change it and these bags are not going away. If I didn’t have these bags I would be dead. I began to recognize that I had an opportunity to do something.

SZ: It’s motivational for you everyday.

RB: It’s inspiring and humbling really. 

SZ: Rolf thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day for this interview.
It’s been a pleasure hearing your story.

*Featured guests are not current nor former guests of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @examiner

Follow up to cheating

In response to the the last post: “The missteps of cheating in junior tennis.” Here were a few responses.

Tom Leonard : Independent ATP Tennis Professional

“Even some of the higher ranked players- and it’s always the same ones and everyone knows who they are – there r complains made against them – but nothing is ever done!!”

“And unfortunately it doesn’t end in the juniors!! It’s still in the Opens and the Seniors.

My response to Tom:

Tom hi,

There will always be some players that skate. I believe that if a reward system that promotes the culture and value system of the sport is presented and reinforced at a young age it will product a different consciousness which players will take forward. I would love to see the utilization of players like, Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Roddick,  Davenport, Tracy Austin etc. doing a commercial. The setting would be a junior tournament and one of the players pulls some cheating/gamesmanship behavior and up pops one of the “stars” who yells out “That’s NOT cool.” Simple and to the point. It can be followed up by correct behavior and the “star” then giving a high 5 or thumbs up. The idea can be carried out in so many creative was and through social media. The options are endless. It’s not the answer to all the problems but it gives it visibility. You can do the same with a parent talking to a kid, or harassing an opponent. Up pops the “star” ….”That’s NOT cool.” Make it fun, funny entertaining and shift the energy. There is certainly enough material to work with.

Candace Miyatani:

“Thank you Susan for composing this. It is important, timely and we really need to implement some of these notions…but how? It seems we have all these committees and workshops that bring passionate tennis folks together to brainstorm etc. and then what? Nothing implemented? Why bother? I do teach my junior (12yr old) when she complains a player cheated: It is not always easy to call the shots perfectly especially when you kids all want to win so much..just give them the benefit of the doubt and focus on your OWN close calls…on or near the line or unsure..call it IN. If you have to cheat to win a point or the match–have you really won? I like that point: If you cheat a lot, you will really have the confidence to win when playing on a bigger stage with higher stakes? I believe I was the parent you mentioned in your article…I suggested that players and referees vote on for the sportsmanship award and the player can get the next tourney fee waived and/or a USTA stipend that would add incentive for the parents. How may we implement? Can USTA PD launch the “Public relations Leader” position for each section? I’ll sign up.

My response to Candace:

Candace hi, Thanks for your feedback. I believe your child will benefit more from participating in tennis the way you are suggesting she engage, give opponent benefit of the doubt, etc. Parents such as yourself have valuable thoughts as to how to remedy this situation and give the kids a better sport experience.

What are your ideas?

The missteps of cheating in junior tennis

Why do junior tennis players cheat in tennis? This topic came up recently when I attended a USTA Nor. Cal. Coaches Summit. The presenters for the summit included USTA Director of Coaching, Jose Higueres. Other presenters were Kent Kinnear, Director of Player I.D. & Development, Paul Lubbers, Director of Coaching Education and Geoff Russell, Manager of Player I.D. and Development. What lead to our discussion of cheating was a panel discussion about the drop out rate in competitive junior tennis being consistent with the trends of many other sports. Sport participation tends to drop off around age thirteen which is developmentally a critical time for social skills and self-esteem.

Many studies of why children drop out of sports cite the following reasons:

1) The sport is no longer fun.
2) The child moved on to other athletic interests.
3) Coach played favorites or was a poor teacher.
4) As the child moves up in age group specialization and year round training required too much commitment to remain competitive.

Rarely was combating cheating and gamesmanship listed as to why a child drops out of sport. Yet, as a USPTA Elite tennis coach and Sport Counseling Consultant, when I talk with juniors about their competitive play, the issues around cheating are typically a large part of their overall match feedback. When I brought up the issue of cheating in junior tennis as a reason juniors leave the sport, the USTA panel acknowledged that, as they travel around the nation talking with coaches, this topic was a major issue.

I believe that when a more player friendly environment is created by lowering the variety of ways cheating in junior tennis occurs, it can significantly increase the retention rate of this “sport of a lifetime.” There are endless creative ways that juniors use to shift matches by. Some of these include:

1) Deliberating calling balls out that are in during pivotal points during a match.
2) Faked injury time-outs which break-up the momentum of the player who is winning.
3) Bathroom breaks in the middle of a set if the player is losing. Why are bathrooms breaks allowed in the middle of a set instead of when the set is over?
4) Entourages bullying an opponent. Talking to either player by anyone outside the court besides a referee is prohibited.
5) Deliberately hitting a ball over the fence to break match momentum.
6) Changing the flip score cards to the wrong set score during change overs.
7) Not announcing the game score after points, then when questioned about the score saying the wrong score favoring themselves.
8) Parent or coach illegally signaling from the side-lines.

Where are the referees one might ask? Tennis tournaments do have referees but, unlike other sports where only one game is happening at a time, a tennis tournament may have only two roving referees available to monitor four or more courts at a time. When a referee is called to a court to work out a dispute the referee typically only stays long enough to hear the complaint, get the match restarted and stand there for a few points before being called away to monitor another match. Players often report that when the referee walks away the cheating and gamesmanship tactics resume. I believe junior players have enough on their plate playing the game without adding the distraction of cheating.

Parents of players who don’t cheat have become more vocal sharing their disappointment in how the USTA hasn’t stepped up enough to protect young players so they can focus on playing. The parents are upset that their child works hard practicing and playing and when they get to the tournament spend too much time engaged in arguing about line call disputes and needing to call referees over to monitor their matches.

An article titled “Is Cheating Ruining the Game,” by USPTA Tennis Pro Blair Henley addressed this issue. Many parents wrote in to express their thoughts after reading the article. Here are just some of the comments by parents:

“The USTA needs to be like golf and have a zero tolerance for cheating and keep suspending kids and stop listening to parents who say, let the kids figure it out. Some kids are bullies and usually their parents are too.”

Another parent who plays competitive tennis wrote, “Coming from a soccer, baseball, basketball, background, to not have refs at tournaments seems crazy! I won’t be introducing my daughter to tournaments for a long time simply because I believe cheating will take all of the fun out of tennis. I have played a couple of cheaters before and even if I win the cheating drained most of the fun out of the match. So I will try and prepare her for the cheating aspect of the game but I don’t want her dealing with it on a regular basis.”

“I invited some friends to a Level 1 tournament to watch my daughter play in the 12’s two years ago. First junior tournament for them and they were shocked. The amount of cheating and the inability for the cheated player to stop it had them asking me, ”What the heck are you doing this for? Soccer, softball, volleyball, basketball are so much more enjoyable. ”

With the expense of participation in tennis, which includes lessons, tournament fees, equipment, and travel expenses, it not unlikely that with all the other sport choices parents will steer their kids into easier to navigate sport environments. Even though youth sport referees are not always accurate at least they are present and serve to manage the games environments.

For a moment let’s think about the pressure unsupervised players experience when competing in tennis. In a research article titled “You Can’t Be Serious, That Ball Was IN: An Investigation of Junior Tennis Cheating Behavior” Jonathan Cooper, who had been a competitive junior player and a teaching professional, hypothesized that cheating in junior tennis is a result of three influences, the coach, the parent and the personal desire of the junior to win.

Under coach pressure, findings from Cooper’s research indicated that coaches who focused on performance, for example, winning is the most important thing vs. mastery, the focus being on improving skills predicated cheating behavior. The research indicates that ongoing exposure to coaching that emphasizes winning motivates a player to cheat.

The second pressure in Cooper’s research paper was identified as the parent. Robert Giltinan, a junior coach for the Australian National Tennis Association, was quoted in Cooper’s research paper as saying, “The link comes mainly from the parents. Generally ten-year old kids don’t go out there to cheat, they go out there to play the sport and have fun. They are not out there to try to cheat. It’s just that they get pressures from home.”

The third pressure on the player identified in Cooper’s study was personal expectations for high performance and the stress associated with competing. If the player perceives that the match outcome is vital for the future of their career it can lead to cheating as a way to not have the let down and trauma of losing.

People who play and understand the game of tennis know what a great game it is. Most parents are well aware that the probability of their child becoming a touring professional is very slim. What most parents do want for their children is the opportunity for their child to enjoy the benefits of learning the game, developing their skills to the best of their abilities and participating in a competitive environment that allows for accurate feedback of those skills. In the current culture of the sport at the junior level things need to change. Referring back to the comments from parents in the Blair Henley article it is easy to see that there are many good ideas for helping to make this change. Suggestions for reform include:

“The USTA makes 200+ million in revenue during the U.S. Open alone, it seems reasonable that they might cover the cost of additional officials at junior tournaments.”
I would add to this, at all junior tournaments, not just the higher tier tournaments need more officiating.”

“The USTA implements mandatory parental meetings to inform parents of parental codes of conduct then empowers tournament directors and officials to enforce the rules of that conduct during tournaments.”

A parent also suggested that a Public Relations team should be hired to implement a sportsmanship award that is voted on by players and referees. The winner would be able to waive the next tournament fee, or be given a USTA stipend to provide an incentive to parents as well.

It would also be useful to educate referees at the junior level more adequately. A common complaint by players and parents is that when a player calls a referee to a match the referee doesn’t always seem to know how to handle situations. There are many incidents of referees being influenced by input from the cheating player or a parent. The ref would be more credible if there was a stronger mandatory system in place for their education. Something similar to a USPTA or USPTR rating for the refs skill level would be useful. It would be an easy task for referees to keep up to date by taking on-line course work provided by the USTA.

Last, this is a wonderful opportunity for the WTA, ATP, USPTA, USTA, USPTR to utilize their resources to reset the culture of the sport. During televised tournaments have well known tour players, collegiate players and coaches appear in public service announcements talking about behavior and values that our sport wishes to promote. Create public service announcements that address guidelines for junior players and parents. Shape cheating into an uncool thing to do. It could be quite a creative campaign with well-known players and coaches talking about the benefits of not cheating. For example, players who don’t cheat have more confidence in their skills and ability to perform at higher levels when people are watching.

Cheaters are not the majority in the game of tennis, but they are disruptors and create enough discomfort for others that it can influence whether a player chooses to continue in the sport. A ten year old has enough to think about and react to without dealing with the shenanigans that to some have become recognized as the “norm” of competition. Let’s make an effort to change the culture of junior tennis so that it reflects the values of competition and fairness that are important for the sport and for the development of young players.

*This article can also be read @ examiner