By Peter Kerasotis
Publication Date: November 3, 2015
I collaborated on Extreme Winning: 12 Keys to Unlocking the Winner Within You with Orlando Magic vice president Pat Williams, drawing on his experiences that span more than a half century in sports and sports management. Pat is a renowned motivational speaker and a fountainhead of knowledge and insight. If you look on the Orlando magazine tab on this website, you’ll see two magazine stories I wrote about him – one chronicling his prodigious reading habits (which won a Florida Magazine Association first place Charlie Award for best feature story) and another on Pat’s cancer battle. It was a pleasure working on this project with him.
What Pat has discovered, and I agree with him, is that winning has a broader meaning than a mark on a ledger after a competition. It isn’t just sports centric. It permeates sports, business, self and every aspect of life.
Extreme Winning is a very motivational book. I felt motivated just writing it. The book breaks down the 12 characteristics Pat has observed in all winners, and how they do them to an extreme. You can, too. Each characteristic is its own chapter:
1. Extreme Dreams
2. Extreme Preparation
3. Extreme Focus
4. Extreme Passion
5. Extreme Work
6. Extreme Responsibility
7. Extreme Attitude
8. Extreme Goals
9. Extreme Perseverance
10. Extreme Competition
11. Extreme Desire
12. Extreme Teamwork
My friend Bruce Bochy, the three-time World Series-winning manager, wrote the foreword.
By Peter Kerasotis
Publication Date: March 17, 2014
America held little promise during the 1930′s, when the Great Depression vice gripped the country and a boy named Thomas Errol Wasdin was born into the hardscrabble farmland of Waldo, Florida. Wasdin was only months old when his mother died of blood poisoning. Soon afterward, he and his sister were sent to live with their Uncle and Aunt, who raised them with old-fashioned values rooted in discipline and hard work. These became character traits that served Wasdin well – later at the University of Florida and eventually throughout his life. And what a life it has been; rich and varied, and not without heartache and an ongoing, debilitating battle with Trigeminal Neuralgia, which the medical profession chillingly refers to as the Suicide Disease. Wasdin was part of the two-man coaching staff that took Jacksonville University to the pinnacle of college basketball – the 1970 NCAA Championship Game against John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins, the most powerful program in college sports history. He then went on to become a successful businessman and community leader. It is a life lived in full, and a life story worth reading.
By Peter Kerasotis
Publication Date: September 1, 2005
Thrilling victories, crushing defeats, comical mishaps, and colorful coaches, players, and fans-these are the legendary moments and larger-than-life personalities that have made the Florida Gators a gridiron favorite.
In Stadium Stories: Florida Gators, veteran journalist Peter Kerasotis shares his favorite memories of this beloved team. Together you’ll relive the highs and lows and become reacquainted with some of the team’s all-time greatest heroes and legends including: