Whether you're a pole vaulter chasing personal records or a coach trying to coach them, The Pole Vault Toolbox is the blueprint. Shawn is a highly sought-after pole vault coach andeducator. In this book, he shares the tools that have helped thousands of coaches and their athletes vault personal records, break state records, win state medals, and received college scholarships. He breaks down his Master's Degree research on the pole vault and explains how he uses it today. Finally, he reveals the tricks he figured out as a professional pole vaulter, including how to overcome the fear of moving up to bigger poles or what to do if you struggle running through. Filled with his trademark humor, The Pole Vault Toolbox is invaluable for veterans in the sport as well as those who just picked up a pole for the first time. Often drawing from Shawn's personal and often humbling experiences.
Master the long jump, triple jump, high jump, and pole vault with Winning Jumps and Pole Vault. Athletes and coaches alike will benefit from the tactics and strategies that a collection of elite coaches provide in this book. Featuring tips on the approach, takeoff and landing, you can perfect technique and condition yourself for success.
“A Triumph Over Gravity!” Maggie Vaults Over the Moon retells the story of Maggie Steele, a gutsy, grief-stricken farm girl from tiny Grain Valley, Kansas, who pours her broken heart into the daring and dangerous sport of pole-vaulting. Driven by a secret that she dare not share with anyone, Maggie struggles over many obstacles as she attempts to soar waaay higher than her critics think a girl should ever go. Gripping in its portrayal of a teenager's grief and thrilling in its vivid descriptions of the exciting sport of pole-vaulting, Maggie Vaults Over the Moon is an inspiring and uplifting read! The nation's top Pole-Vaulters and Sports Journalists are cheering for Maggie! Team USA 2012 Olympic Pole-Vaulters: “I myself experienced loss when I was a young girl. Sports were my outlet and helped me through some of the hardest times of my life. This book captured me cover to cover. I highly recommend Maggie Vaults Over the Moon!” --Becky Holliday, Team USA Pole-Vaulter, USA Olympic Trials Silver Medalist, and Finalist at the 2012 London Olympics. “Every single person should be able to relate to Maggie in Maggie Vaults Over the Moon. We have all experienced loss, heartache or tragedy, but not all find a way to overcome. It doesn't matter if you are a pole-vaulter, male or female; it's about finding something in which you are passionate and not giving up. Maggie does just that—she finds her passion and it ends up taking her over the moon.” --Jeremy Scott, USA Olympic Trials Silver Medalist and Team USA Pole-Vaulter at the 2012 London Olympics. State Champion High School Girls' Pole-Vaulter: “Maggie's inspirational story will make any girl feel like they can accomplish their dreams. This is a MUST read for any athlete, no matter what sport you compete in.” --Taylor Marie Swanson, 2012 Kansas State High School Pole-Vault Champion. The nation's leading Pole-Vaulters' magazine: “Maggie Vaults Over the Moon shows a touching and realistic perspective of life's changes wrapped into one heartwarming story. It will captivate those who have lost loved ones and imagine being with them again. This inspiring tale celebrates the courage to turn tragedy and loss into something positive, and how the determination to master a sport can heal. The bits of pole vault history, technique, and struggle will keep the attention of vaulters for sure.” --Doug Bouma, Editor, VAULTER Magazine. The nation's foremost Female Sports Journalist and Author: “This inspiring book comes along at a perfect time, on the 40th anniversary of Title IX and in the same year as women athletes dominated the 2012 London Olympics. Girls who play sports and the coaches and families who support them will thoroughly enjoy Grant Overstake's warm, uplifting story. After reading it, we'll all wish we were pole vaulters like Maggie.” --Christine Brennan, USA Today Sports Columnist, ABC News commentator and best-selling author of Inside Edge and Best Seat in the House.
"Denby sat in on a tenth-grade English class in a demanding New York public school for an entire academic year, and visited other schools. He read all the stories, poems, plays, and novels that the kids were reading, and creates an impassioned portrait of charismatic teachers at work, classroom dramas large and small, and fresh and inspiring encounters with the books themselves. Lit Up is a dramatic narrative that traces awkward and baffled beginnings but also exciting breakthroughs and the emergence of pleasure in reading. Denby reaffirms the power of great teachers and the importance and inspiration of great books."--
Named to ten BEST OF THE YEAR lists and selected as a William C. Morris Award Winner,The Serpent King is the critically acclaimed, much-beloved story of three teens who find themselves--and each other--while on the cusp of graduating from high school with hopes of leaving their small-town behind. Perfect for fans of John Green's Turtles All the Way Down. "Move over, John Green; Zentner is coming for you." —The New York Public Library “Will fill the infinite space that was left in your chest after you finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” —BookRiot.com Dill isn't the most popular kid at his rural Tennessee high school. After his father fell from grace in a public scandal that reverberated throughout their small town, Dill became a target. Fortunately, his two fellow misfits and best friends, Travis and Lydia, have his back. But as they begin their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him. His only escapes are music and his secret feelings for Lydia--neither of which he is brave enough to share. Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending--one that will rock his life to the core. Debut novelist Jeff Zentner provides an unblinking and at times comic view of the hard realities of growing up in the Bible belt, and an intimate look at the struggles to find one’s true self in the wreckage of the past. “A story about friendship, family and forgiveness, it’s as funny and witty as it is utterly heartbreaking.” —PasteMagazine.com “A brutally honest portrayal of teen life . . . [and] a love letter to the South from a man who really understands it.” —Mashable.com “I adored all three of these characters and the way they talked to and loved one another.”—New York Times
Get more out of your legacy systems: more performance, functionality, reliability, and manageability Is your code easy to change? Can you get nearly instantaneous feedback when you do change it? Do you understand it? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you have legacy code, and it is draining time and money away from your development efforts. In this book, Michael Feathers offers start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large, untested legacy code bases. This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars: techniques Michael has used in mentoring to help hundreds of developers, technical managers, and testers bring their legacy systems under control. The topics covered include Understanding the mechanics of software change: adding features, fixing bugs, improving design, optimizing performance Getting legacy code into a test harness Writing tests that protect you against introducing new problems Techniques that can be used with any language or platform—with examples in Java, C++, C, and C# Accurately identifying where code changes need to be made Coping with legacy systems that aren't object-oriented Handling applications that don't seem to have any structure This book also includes a catalog of twenty-four dependency-breaking techniques that help you work with program elements in isolation and make safer changes.
