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SHINING_SPIKE

                                             May  30, 2011
                                             June 16, 2011

Gary Willis has a                                      ALL_THINGS_SHINING
great deal of fun
getting in jabs at     As we all know, real                  (The "Shining"
Dreyfus and Kelly's    intellectuals are                     authors' love of
apparent love of       above the merely                      atheletics
sports.                physical joys of                      appears to be
                       athletics.              PSYCHED       strictly as a
                                                             spectator.)


    An early icon in my life--
    which was not exactly dominated
    by a love of team sports--                SCHOOL_OF_PAIN
    was The Spike in volleyball.

    When conditions were right,
    there I would be, up in the air
    with my hand in just the right
    place, reacting "instinctively"
    without any of the self-conscious        SPONTANEOUS_COMBUSTION
    reflection that (rightly or
    wrongly) I felt excessively
    dominated my teenage life.

    "The Spike", for me, was
    doing it right the first          For someone who's really serious
    time, without effort.             about volleyball, I doubt it
                                      would be perceived in quite the
                                      same way:

                                         Real volleyball players have
                                         memorized strategies for
                                         performing spikes, and they
                                         drill in performing them on
                                         demand.
                                             
                                             The setter creates the 
                                             opportunity for the spike, 
                                             the person who drives it 
                                             over knows it's coming.


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