Ex-UConn coach Calhoun to sign his book at Sturbridge pickleball club
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STURBRIDGE – With the arrival of March Madness, former college basketball coach Jim Calhoun, who led the University of Connecticut to three NCAA men's championships, will be taking part in a timely book signing.
Calhoun will be signing copies of “More Than A Game: How the UConn Basketball Dynasty Was Built on a Culture of Caring” from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19, at Pickleball U, 178 Main St., Unit C.
Calhoun, who authored the book with Dom Amore, won NCAA national championships in 1999, 2004 and 2011.
The book is published by Woodhall Press.
Gary Galonek, co-owner of Pickleball U and part-time actor who had speaking roles in two films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture (2015’s “Spotlight” and 2021’s “CODA”), provides narration for the audiobook of Calhoun’s memoir.
Galonek, who lives in Sturbridge, said you don’t have to be a basketball fan to enjoy the book.
“In the book, Calhoun goes back to Dedham High, Northeastern and, of course, UConn, and he’ll take an individual. It doesn’t have to be someone who was a star in the NBA,” Galonek said. “One guy, all he wanted to do is become a dentist. Another guy has been at NASA for the last 30 years. And he does a chapter on each one of those people. They’ll do a foreword on the chapter on what Coach Calhoun meant to them. And then he tells them what he learned from coaching them.”
Galonek said a big hurdle was how to handle the coach's common use of profanities.
“This guy had a flare for the vernacular,” Galonek said. “I said, ‘Coach, how do you want me to treat the swears, like Kemba Walker? Do you want me just to say the swear?’ And he (Calhoun) said, ‘Ah, God (expletive), no. A lot of (expletive) kids are going to listen to it.’ We’re talking about the swear and he’s swearing about the swear. So we end up settling on ‘Shut the F up.’”
As for how many hours go into a finished audiobook, Galonek uses the simple formula of the time it takes to listen to it, multiplied by five or six. “You have to preread the book, so that’s 10 hours...You could have a book where there’s Latin terms. There’s some research, Then you have to go into your booth and record it,” Galonek said. “You make your mistakes while you are recording it, that you catch."
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Ex-UConn coach Jim Calhoun to sign book at Sturbridge pickleball club