By C.D. DESALVO
Hays Post
Bob Fisher was in junior high when he fell in love with the game of basketball.
Fisher grew up on a farm just outside Vermillion, Kansas, and played basketball for Centralia High School about eight miles east of his home town. Fisher would turn to coaching a little later on in life and ended up coaching high school and youth basketball in Kansas for about 20 years.
Fisher always had a special interest in the shooting aspect of basketball, and in 2006 a book titled “The Physics of Basketball” by John Fontanella found its way into Fisher’s hands.
“In the book, he broke it down into the four factors that affect the flight of the ball. That would be gravity, drag force, Magnus force and buoyancy of the ball,” Fisher said. “I, like a lot of people, was searching for the answer to shooting. What Fontanella did was point me down a different path, and that is: ‘Is it possible to use physics to help make shots?'”
Fisher started studying physics, anatomy, biomechanics and started reading a number of books that brought him to determine all it really takes to become good in anything is knowledge, practice and time.
At 52, Fisher decided to test this theory himself.
“I went to the gym and started practicing shooting free throws. Four months later, I set my first record with 50 free throws in one minute. That got a little bit of publicity, so I started looking at the two-minute
record, and I broke that one a few months later,” Fisher said.
Fisher went on to break more free-throw records, teaching himself how to shoot left-handed and even blindfolded. To this day, Fisher has set 22 records in 14 different free-throw categories for Guinness World Records.
Fisher has been featured in a number of different TV shows, such as Inside Edition and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and has also been in the New York Times. Fisher has made instructional videos and is close to finishing his first book.
Fisher will be at Gross Memorial Coliseum at Fort Hays State University tonight to attempt to break another free-throw record at halftime of the Tiger men’s game. The record he goes for will be determined right before the event.
General admission tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for kids and will be available at all gates at the coliseum.