Reaching for walls.....

Fort Pulaski sits quietly now on Cockspur Island surrounded on the north and south by the Savannah River across from Tybee Island. If Georgia was a profile of Homer Simpson, Fort Pulaski is the belly button.  Rebuilt three times, it stood as is, being built in 1829 at a cost of $1 million using 25 million bricks and taking 18 years to finish.

Two weeks after South Carolina had seceded from the Union starting the Civil War in late 1860, the Georgia militia was ordered to seize Fort Pulaski and it became part of the confederacy once Georgia seceded on January 19, 1861. President Abraham Lincoln ordered blockades of the southern ports and by the end of the year, with economic woes confronting them, the Confederates receded and gave up some strategic points of which to launch an attack on the Fort.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee, knowing an attack was inevitable, wasn’t concerned however; walls nearly 8 feet thick of solid brick with massive masonry piers was only part of the Fort’s defense. One U.S. Official speaking of its impervious  reputation said, “You might as well bombard the Rocky Mountains!”  It was a mile away from the closest attack point, Tybee Island. And since Union guns could only muster rounds that could travel 700 yards, Lee told the Fort’s commander, Colonel Charles H. Olmstead that the Union guns could, “make it pretty warm for you here with shells, but they cannot breach your walls at that distance.”

What Lee didn’t know was that the Union had experimented with a new weapon: a rifled canon that used grooves on the inside of the canon barrel that caused the bullet shaped shell to spiral, gathering both distance and accuracy. The new rifled canons had a range of almost 8,500 yards. A new science was about to make a difference.

On April 10 of 1862, responding to Olmstead’s rebuttal of surrender began an assault on the fort. Shells from the rifled canons slammed into the walls of the fort shaking the landmark’s foundation. Shell after shell slammed into the Pulaski’s eastern facade, putting chunks and finally holes into the thought to be impenetrable fortress.  One shell went through a hole in the wall and skated across the Fort’s infield and settled just feet from the powder room where all the rest of the ammunition was stored. Had the shell gone a few more feet, the fort would have been leveled by its own firepower.

Col. Olmstead surrendered in 30 hours and the world was stunned at how quickly Fort Pulaski had been taken down. A new technology had seen to it’s demise and ushered in a new wave of artillery that is still used today.

Fort Pulaski sits as a National Monument today but it’s also a historic fable of overconfidence and hubris. It’s also a lesson in how new technology, when embraced, can make a difference.

The good folks at the Olympic training helm are constantly working on how to do things better: teaching our athletes from the mental, optical, physical and even emotional points of view. We, as coaches, need to embrace changes as they happen. A PowerPoint entitled ‘Debunking the Myths of Volleyball” has taken science and shown that some of what we have taught our entire coaching lives, is wrong. Are we as coaches willing to accept the fact that we didn’t know then what we know now and we have to change the way we train? At the very least, are you familiar with the science of Motor LearningTheory. 

Imagine an Audio Visual teacher in high school that started in the 1980’s and NOT keeping up with technology. They are threading the film strips and the reel to reel tapes while you are downloading the entire text book on a phone the size of the box of red pens on her desk.

A Chinese proverb states, “A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.” As more and more information becomes available, are you, as a coach, embracing those ideas that are credible and easily adaptable to your team?

Take a history lesson. Embrace change. It can make a difference.