Felix Lebed
Born and educated in former USSR Dr Felix Lebed professionally busies in team sports from the beginning of 1970s. As a team handball athlete he played in different cadets' and collegial teams, but he was not a top level player. At the same time, as an under- and postgraduate student of National University of Physical Education and Sport of Ukraine, he was one of most successful apprentices. Finished the university with excellence in 1977, Lebed published a first and rather large review of ways of intervention in processes of players' decision making in 1978 already, being 22 years old. In this field - on the border of sport psychology and pedagogics - he performed an empirical research in the beginning of 1980s, has finished his doctoral thesis in 1984, and was graduated as Ph.D. in 1986.
In 1981 Lebed was invited to the Team Sports Department of his Alma Mater University and held positions of lecturer and coach of team handball university squad. Close to time of his repatriation to Israel in 1990 Dr Lebed became a senior lecturer, a chief-coach of the female squad, and a coordinator (as well as a senior researcher) of scientific group for supervision and control of Soviet national team handball teams’ Olympic preparation. He has published a textbook in team handball (in cooperation) and more than 30 papers, surveys, and selected proceeding of scientific congresses.
In the later 1980s and in parallel course Dr Lebed began private consultations of professional clubs in different team sports. This experience became one of causes of Lebed's deep interest in general theoretical approaches to competitive game playing, teaching, and coaching. As a result, his first review dedicated to this topic was published in 1989:
Lebed, F. (1989) General theory of team sports as the basis for the control in the elite players coaching. In L. Latyshkevich, (gen. ed.) Control of elite athletes training in team sports, (pp. 4-39). Kiev, USSR: Ukrainian State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports Pub.; (in Russian).
Arrived to Israel in November 1990, Dr Lebed learned Hebrew rather quick and after 10 months only began teach practical course of volleyball (his second specialization in team sports) in the faculty of Physical Education of Kaye Academic College of Education, Beer-Sheba. In during following years he improved his Hebrew and English and returned to teaching of team handball, different theoretical and methodological courses, and to an activity as a scholar. This period is dedicated to interdisciplinary studies of competitive game playing, mainly to historical, philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical aspects of the issue. In during 10 last years all Lebed's publications are related to this wide topic: more than 20 papers in three languages, proceedings, a chapter in book, and two whole books. The first “Formula of game playing”: Comprehensive Theory, Teaching and Sport Coaching" (Volgograd: Volgograd State University Press, 2005) is published in Russia; the second (in cooperation with Prof. M. Bar-Eli) Complexity and Control in Team Sports (London-New York: Routledge, 2013) in UK. Enveloping six scholarly disciplines and using a popular in current period theory of complex systems, the last book analyses team game playing on different mutually coordinated levels: from the complexity of motor skill, athlete's behaviour, and team dynamics to the complexity of elite sport club management.
The beginning of 2000s is indicated as Lebed's returning to the professional consulting. In during this period he provides private consultations and gives public lectures to top level Israeli coaches in different team sports.