The Nobel Prize in Confidence goes to...

...Kees John from Guardrun. The SSS Gents 2 Nobel Committee notes that Kees John has excellent talks to motivate his fantastic team and gives everybody the confidence they need to win. His research shows us that confidence is the key performance indicator in his optimal prediction method to do damage to opponents. Read more below in the international press release why Kees John deserves the first Nobel Prize in Confidence.

Kees John from Guardrun tells the gents of SSS 2 every week to damage. So said, so done: SSS Gents 2 did damage to Veracles Gentleman 1 last saturday. It was already the 23rd official win of Kees John with his gents from Barnefield, since he became the head coach two years ago. In his first season; he won 15 times and lost only 2 times. One of these wins is disputed… because Kees John couldn’t coach in Barchem. Michiel from the Creek and his assistant Emiel Sennemom coached SSS to the win. In his second season, we won every match and celebrated the championship on a digital flat car.

The last defeat is from 7th December 2019. Okay, for Michiel it is even further ago… He lost for the last time on 12th October 2019. However, we can state that he lost last Saturday to Veracles; because volleyball is not really a team sport. Since he lost the fourth set… Wait… Let we not run on the cases forward.

Let’s go ten days back in time. The Nobel Prize in Economics 2021 was made known. The SSS Gents 2 were all excited, because they all thought that Kees John was about to win the prize. We all know how great he is in Econometrics. Everyone loves his piece ‘Multimodality p**-Formula and Confidence Regions’, because it is about confidence. The winner was a born Dutchman (check), born in 1963 (check), had lived in England (check), published in the Journal of Econometrics (check)... but it wasn’t Kees John. It was a random dude with the Dutch anthem as middle name.

Okay, maybe this guy wasn’t that random. He calculates how something affects something else. And he does it with natural experiments. Sounds like what Kees John does with SSS Gents 2 and also with VC Allvo Gents 2. So he has two experiment groups: one is successful, one not so much…

What is the key performance indicator that makes SSS Gents 2 successful? Confidence. Kees John gives us all confidence. That is what he has been doing the last two years. We get confidence from ticking lines each Thursday, we get confidence from stretching our necks and we get confidence from stories about his life in the outside land and about his family (especially Eforest the Young gets than a confidence boost).

Game report
How does Kees John brings that in practice? Bee example, he was too late again last Saturday. Every away game, he tells us that we must be on time. Every home match, he apps that he is in a traffic jam. Last week, he didn’t apped but was just late. We weren’t worried, but had confidence that he would be there and then he would tell us in the clothing room to do damage. So said, so done.

He gives confidence to the team and to players individually. In the first game of the season. Kees John let the starting seven stand almost the whole game. In this game against Veracles did Kees John a lot of changes in the game. To give confidence to the team. And also to some players.

Frank Steel started after a good raid turn in Bedum. He played a good game and gave good set ups to the attackers. However, the key to the first set win was confidence. Confidence in our service. Everybody could serve one round and than the set was over: 25-8 to SSS Gents 2. Especially the service from Martin More Mountain was good; he had a lot of confidence after the training and not so much trouble anymore with his volleyballeritis.

That was exactly what Kees John had calculated. He said that it wouldn’t be that easy in the second set. That was true, but we still one this set easy. Also because Rinaldo Build was in a flow. And that is something special, like Kees John always says and calculates. At the end of the second set, it was time to give Eforest the Young some confidence and that paid out: 25-17.

It was not the match of the middles Willco German and Gepko Rooster, like the last weeks. But Kees John wasn’t Kees John if he gave them also the confidence to let them stand (okay, also because he had no substitutes). But it was a good call. Because in the end of the very close third set, SSS scored three points in a row from 22-22. Two times Eforest and a block from the cock(y) captain.

In the last set, SleighJohn Roelofs came back in the game. Just like Michiel. And also Arno Boessandcabbage - instead of Ties Heeland (from Woodandmoremountain) - received confidence from the coach. It went up and down in this set, where SSS didn’t play so smart and Veracles had a very (left) handy diagonal. Kees John and his assistant Freek Having gave us tips like: Come on, guys. And it looked like everything would land in his paws, when Frank Steel served us back from 22-24 to 24-24. But two points later, the match was over and SSS had lost the set and a point.

So, what did we learn. The Nobel Prize, the Nobel Prize in Economics didn’t go (yet) to Kees John. But we have confidence that he will win it in time. Just like we didn’t knew at first if Kees John would make it to Christmas 2019 with us; and look at us now. We have confidence that he will be our head coach till October 2022, so we can celebrate together his 25th anniversary with his wife. And… maybe also a Nobel Prize in Economics.

Till then, we will drink on his Nobel Prize in Confidence and on our victories with SSS Gents 2. Because, in Kees John we trust.