Passion, Practice, and 10,000 Hours

1978 Croton Harmon vs Walter Panas at Army’s Michie Stadium

When I was in eighth grade my physical education Don Daubney, a University of Rhode Island grad, taught a soft stick and soft ball lacrosse unit in the Spring. He followed that up with a boys 8^th grade summer rec program that lasted about three or four weeks that I joined. The summer program culminated with a game against the Lakeland/Walter Panas rec program. Like my first game at Syracuse against Carolina, I was both scared and thrilled at the opportunity. The exposure and opprounity was critical to my lacrosse career. Just learn about the experience of an outlier like Bill Gates and you will see that exposure and opportunity are critical one's development. Gates logging 10,000 hours of practice on computers at a very early age in life. Malcolm Gladwell will tell you there is no mastery without passion and10,000 hours worth of practice.

My Series on Outliers: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Outliers

Excerpts from Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, The Story of Success: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html

Interview with Malcom Gladwell on Outliers: [Listen Now 4 min 31 sec] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4hPbHIZ6Y

How I Improved My Stick Skills: [Watch Now 4 min 2 sec] http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-i-developed-my-lacrosse-stick.html