Selinger, Ari

Arye Selinger was born in 1937 in Krakow . From the beginning of World War II, his family was persecuted, hiding from the Nazis in the Polish villages of Bochnia and Brzesko ^[1] . In 1942-1945, Arie and his mother were detained in the Bergen-Belsen camp , and his father was killed shortly before the liberation of Auschwitz ^{[2] [3]} .

In 1945, the 8-year-old Selinger ended up in Palestine . While studying at school, he was involved in athletics , but the general passion for volleyball in the kibbutz, the main population of which came from Poland, could not leave him aside ^[4] . In 1955, Arie joined the national team of Israel , in September 1956 he participated in the World Cup in Paris .

In 1956-1957, Selinger served in the Israeli army. In 1961 he entered the Wingate Institute of Physical Culture and Sports , began to train local teams. In 1965, he was entrusted with the leadership of the Israeli women's team . The first major test for Selinger as a trainer was successful - at the 1967 European Championship, Israelis made it to the top eight.

Two years later, in 1969, he emigrated to the United States with his wife and three children, entered the University of Chicago and continued to engage in active coaching. In February 1975, after defending his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , Ari Selinger was appointed head coach of the United States women's team . In 1979, he accepted American citizenship ^[2] .

The United States team under the leadership of Selinger did not cope with the first task of winning a ticket to the Montreal Olympic Games , but this did not confuse either the leaders of the US volleyball or the mentor, who was just starting to create a team. Based on his own training system, Selinger put the team a game using complex attacking combinations, with an emphasis on high-speed gears and aggressive innings ^[5] . After daily eight-hour training, volleyball players spent more than an hour in the gym - this made them forget about all their life goals, except for sports ^[6] . In 1978, his wards took 5th place at the World Championships in the Soviet Union, rising by seven positions compared to the previous championship, and in 1982 won bronze in Peru . Meanwhile, because of the boycott, the Americans were not destined to speak in Olympic Moscow , but at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles in the absence of a number of teams from the socialist countries, primarily the USSR and Cuban national teams, which, however, they managed to beat during the Olympic cycle, Selinger’s students became second, losing in only one match - final - to rivals from China . Also under the leadership of Selinger, the US team twice, in 1981 and 1983, became the strongest in the NORCECA championships .

In 1985, Ari Selinger moved to the Netherlands , where he also led the national team, but already male . In the same year, he adopted Dutch citizenship and his son, the binder Avital Selinger , who settled in the Land of Tulips three years earlier, joined the national team. The players chosen by Selinger temporarily terminated the agreements with their clubs and entered into contracts with the national federation, being at the constant and full disposal of the national team coach ^[7] . High results were not long in coming - in 1987 the Dutch first hit the top five at the European Championships , then won a ticket to the Olympic Games in Seoul , where they also became fifth, and won bronze medals in the new Olympic cycle in 1989 and 1991 European Championships. In 1992, Ari Selinger led the Netherlands national team to the silver medals of the Olympic tournament in Barcelona and handed over the team to his assistant Jop Alberda , under whose leadership the Dutch will become champions of the Olympic Games in Atlanta 4 years later ^[8] .

Since 1989, Selinger also worked with the Japanese club Day Orange Attackers from Kobe , and since 2000 coached the Pioneer Red Wings from Tendo , with whom he became the V-League champion in 2004 and 2006. In 2007, Ari Selinger returned to Israel and after 38 years again became the head coach of the country's women's national team ^[9] . The main achievements of the team came in 2010, when the Israeli women made it to the Euroleague Final Four and the final stage of the European Championship 2011 , having beaten the national team of Belarus in butt matches ^[10] .

In 1986, Ari Selinger, co-authored with Joan Ackerman-Blount, published Arie Selinger's Power Volleyball methodological book, calling it "a complete guide to the new American style of play" ^[11] . In 1995, he was admitted to the volleyball Hall of Fame as one of the best coaches in the history of the game ^[12] .

• Wanderer zwischen den Welten (German) // deutsche volleyball-zeitschrift. - 1989. - Nr. 6 . - S. 9-11 .
• Two in one bunch // Volleyball time. - 2009. - No. 4 . - S. 30-32 .