EVERYONE should read this book: Parents, coaches, educators employers. Consider Coach Reese a guide to optimal performance not only in the pool but in life. He uses every good gift of intellect, intuition, intrepid hard work from himself and those who share his world and playful joie de vie.
What a privilege to learn about Coach Reese the person; he EMBODIES humble greatness by motivating others to do their very best. His focused humanity unleashes a willingness in every person to exceed personal limitations. His coaching successes are but a fraction of a life well spent/raced/swum. This book should be REQUIRED reading for everyone: all coaches, employers and teachers will realize that motivating an athlete, an employee or another person demands compassion, humor and very hard work while treating individuals with patient recognition of the time required to incrementally improve.
Coach Reese did not seek to be a legendary coach. He did not contemplate personal greatness. He simply asked his legions of swimmers to achieve a personal best with every effort either in practice or at a race and most often in daily life just as he showed them by his exemplary life via his winsome greatness.
Martha-Ann Alito, A swimmer parent of 14 years , former Y swimming official and lifelong enthusiast for personal excellence ~
I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. He's a master of his craft. He works his sport better than anybody I've ever seen. He understands it. He gets it. He understands how it all comes together — mind and body. And he understandscompetition, what second is, and what it takes to be first.
Rick Barnes, Head Coach U Tennessee Basketball (ranked #1 in NCAA)
When I open the pre-publication draft, I thought I would get a biography (and there is a bit) or an elite coaching manual (and there is a bit). What I got was a love story. Eddie’s love for Elinor and Elinor’s reciprocated love, multiplied exponentially.
The love affair of Eddie with his swimmers and his swimmers multiplying that into each other, Kris, Elinor and Eddie. There was the surprising love that the entire UT Athletic Department has for Eddie and how he reciprocated that love by coaching a football coach! Then we see the love Eddie has for our sport and how our sport loves him back.
Chuck Warner's great lesson to the readers of this book is that love isn’t a zero sum game. In every way that Eddie Reese approached his life with love, it went out into the world, multiplied many times over, came back to him much stronger than he sent it out, then spilled out again into the world.
Chuck Warner and Dana Abbott tell a master love story. Eddie Reese demonstrates to all of us that when you fill your life with love, you change forever those whom that love touches. In turn, you are forever enriched by the return of that love from the world.
George Block, President World Swim Coaches Association
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I always had a great amount of respect and fondness for Eddie while coaching at different programs, and it has only grown since my time here at Texas. Working in close proximity to him these past seven y
