MY PERSONAL BEST
Warriner’s little dirt court in Centerton—
and it’s where I played basketball as a
member of the Martinsville Artesians.
In 1926, 1927, and 1928, Martinsville
High School battled all the way into the
finals of the Indiana state basketball tour-
nament. Our coach was Glenn Curtis,
whose nickname was the Ol’ Fox.
Coach Glenn Curtis.
LIVING IN MARTINSVILLE
We had moved into Martinsville my sophomore year, after Dad lost the farm and found work at the Home Lawn Sanitarium, one of the local health spas whose artesian waters and treatments drew visitors from Chicago, New York, and even Europe. Martinsville was known for not only its mineral waters but also its goldfish and, because of the goldfish, its frog legs.
Raising goldfish for sale was a big business in Martinsville. In fact, the Queen Mary supposedly had our goldfish on board as an attraction during its maiden voyage. Grassyfork Fisheries was the world’s largest goldfish producer, which required big ponds that in turn attracted frogs who lived on the edge of the water. Local cooks would find well-fed frogs and gig ’em—spear the frog—and cook the legs. Fixed right, 23
they’re almost as good as roast chicken.
But nothing topped high school basketball in Martinsville, not min-HERO
eral springs, health spas, goldfish, or frog legs. Basketball was king everywhere—except in the home of Joshua Hugh Wooden. Education SCHOOL
remained first for Dad, and he never let Maurice, Daniel, Billy, or me HIGH
forget that. However, that didn’t mean basketball was off my mind. I was sixteen years old, and a member of one of the best high school teams in Indiana.
HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL
Glenn Curtis was among the top coaches in the state. Very few had won a single Indiana state high school championship, but he already had two
when I joined the Artesians in 1926. My nickname was “Pert,” as in
“impertinent.”
During my sophomore year I got into a fight during practice with one of the starters, a big guy who occasionally used dirty tactics. We went at it hard until Coach Curtis came over, broke up the fight, and told me to apologize for starting it. I felt the other player was in the wrong—tripping me intentionally—and refused to say I was sorry, even though he claimed it was an accident. I didn’t believe it. Finally, I got so worked up that I ripped
off my jersey; took off my
shoes, socks, and trunks; and
threw them down in front
24
of Coach Curtis. Then I
stalked off the court. How
he kept from laughing as I
headed to the locker room
nearly naked, I don’t know.
Fortunately, Glenn Curtis
MY PERSONAL BEST
understood human nature
pretty well. After letting me
think about it a few days, he
saw me in the hallway and
said, “Johnny, let’s forget
about what happened the
Nell put my picture in her high
other day and get back to
school diary.
practice this afternoon.” Of course, I was more than eager to forget about it. Like all good coaches, he understood people very well.
GETTING DOWN TO BASICS
Coach Curtis broke basketball down into its basic elements and then practiced and perfected each one. After a while he’d put the pieces back together into a whole. This was uncommon in those early days of the game. Before he would let five players work together as a team, we had to perfect every basic skill he could think of—passing, defending, rebounding, making all the different types of shots, and more.
Coach Curtis stressed what to do when you aren’t shooting and don’t have the ball. In fact, his Artesians may have spent more time practic-25
ing without the basketball than with it. Maybe that’s why they called him the Ol’ Fox, but I don’t like that nickname, because it implies trick-HERO
ery or guile. There’s nothing tricky about teaching the basics. It requires only hard work and repetition. He was a teacher, not a “fox.”
SCHOOL
HIGH
POETRY IN MOTION
Glenn Curtis also had a knack for motivating players with poetry and could find a verse or phrase, even an entire poem, by Grantland Rice that he would read before a game or at halftime. Although my father introduced poetry to my brothers and me, Coach Curtis was the first person I knew who used it to win basketball games. His poetry always
got the players to put out more than we knew we had in us. One of my favorites ended with this verse:
For when the one Great Scorer
Comes to write against your name,
He writes not that you won or lost,
But how you played the game.
That poem sums up how I feel about competition in sports or anything else.
26
FIRST TASTE OF TOURNAMENTS
In 1926 I was a guard on the Martinsville team that reached the finals of the Indiana state basketball tournament. It was held inside the Indianapolis Exposition Center, which was nicknamed the “Cow Barn,”
because cattle were the usual feature attraction.
The tournament was a free-for-all with no divisions or classifications MY PERSONAL BEST
of high schools—all could participate and most did. Of 777 eligible schools, 719 teams signed up to play in the 1926 state tournament. It was my first experience with competition at that level and intensity. If your team advanced to the final weekend, you would play four games in two days: a game on Friday night, another Saturday morning, another Saturday afternoon, and if you kept winning, you played for the championship on Saturday night in front of more than 15,000 fans—four games in two days, three in one day.
The Martinsville Artesians, champions of Indiana high school basketball, 1927. I’m in the middle row, second from the right.
Most of the 1926 tournament was a blur, but one thing I remember—we lost in the finals to the Marion Giants by seven points, 30–23, defeated in large part by Charles “Stretch” Murphy, a six-foot-eight center who seemed as tall as a water tower. (Incidentally, if you’re curi-ous about the low scores, they resulted from the rule in those days that required a jump ball after each basket.)
The next year, 1927, Martinsville returned to the championship game and outscored Muncie Central, 26–23. The results were headline news on Sunday, March 30, in the state’s biggest newspaper, the Indianapolis Star.
The Artesians made it to the finals for a third straight time my senior year, 1928, and were favored to repeat as champions. Additionally, my teammates had voted to make me captain, an honor I took seriously.
For the first time, the tournament finals were played at the brand-new Butler University Field House —a gleaming, modern basketball showcase. Again we faced the team we had beaten in 1927, Muncie Central. What happened the second time around, however, was the most disappointing thing I ever experienced as an athlete.
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SOMETHING IMPOSSIBLE
In the final seconds of the 1928 Indiana state high school championship, with Martinsville leading by one point, Muncie Central’s Charlie Secrist flung a desperation underhand shot from half-court that literally MY PERSONAL BEST
went up to the rafters and came down straight through the hoop. It was impossible.
Here’s how impossible it was: in my forty years of coaching basketball at Dayton High School, South Bend Central, Indiana State Teachers College, and UCLA, I never saw anyone make that shot again in competition. But I did see it once—Saturday night, March 17, 1928, in the final seconds of the Indiana state high school championship.
Martinsville lost 13–12. Muncie Central fans were nearly hysterical at the buzzer.
The loss in the finals of the 192
8 Indiana championship game was the most painful thing that ever happened to me as an athlete.
29
In our locker room afterward, the Artesians, stunned and almost HERO
grieving, sat on the benches holding towels over their faces as they wept. Charlie Secrist’s last-second shot had been crushing, and all of the SCHOOL
players just quietly lowered their heads and cried. All but one.
HIGH
I couldn’t cry. The loss hurt me deeply inside, but I also knew I’d done the best I could do. Disappointed? Yes. Devastated or depressed?
No. Dad taught us on the farm, “Don’t worry about being better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be.” I had done that. Now as a member of the Martinsville Artesians basketball team, Dad’s instructions and example were put to the test.
You lose, you feel bad—sometimes very, very bad. But a much worse feeling is knowing that you haven’t done everything you possibly could have done to prepare and compete.
I had done what my father
taught me to do, including his
two sets of threes, one of which
was don’t whine, don’t complain,
don’t make excuses. That loss in
the 1928 Indiana state high school
championships, when the Arte-
sians were defending champions
and I was their captain, is still
painful to recall. But I couldn’t
cry. Dad didn’t cry when he lost
the farm. How could I now?
30
MY PERSONAL BEST
You lose, you feel bad—sometimes very, very bad.
But a much worse feeling is knowing you
haven’t done everything you possibly could have
done to prepare and compete.
4
TRUE LOVE
N ellie Riley was my high school sweetheart and the only girl I ever loved or wanted to love. Some kind of strong spark happened the first time we met. That spark never left—it’s still in me. Whatever basketball gave, and it gave plenty, Nellie Riley gave me more and meant more; but that spark almost didn’t happen.
I had seen her at Martinsville High School
when I was a freshman and still on the farm.
I thought, “Whoa, that’s a cute girl.” At the
summer carnival I saw her again, but I didn’t
think she’d give sour apples for me, a farm
boy who was extremely shy.
It turned out she’d also noticed me and
was interested enough to do something about
it. Nellie wasn’t shy. She convinced her very
best friend, Mary Schnaiter, to have her older
brother, Jack, drive the three of them out to
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Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.
our farm in Centerton on a scorching July afternoon. When they arrived, I was out in the cornfield, hooked up behind either Jack or Kate, our mules. It was hot and muggy, and I’d been plowing up and down all day—my boots and overalls were covered with dirt, and I was dripping sweat. The three of them waved for me to come over by the car, but I acted as if they weren’t there and slowly started plowing up a corn row in the opposite direction. After a while, they drove away.
That fall when school started, Nellie stopped me in the hallway as I was heading into Mr. Scheidler’s history class and asked why I had been so rude —why I hadn’t come over to their car to say hello. I hemmed and hawed a little bit, but then told the truth, “I was all dirty and sweaty,” I said. “I thought you’d probably make fun of me.”
32
Nell had a very sweet look on her face and said softy, “Johnny, I would never make fun of you. Never.”
Something happened in me right then—that spark that has never gone away. We began walking to and from high school together and occasionally downtown to the Grace Theatre for a Tom Mix or Charlie Chaplin movie. When I didn’t have twenty cents for tickets, I’d run MY PERSONAL BEST
ahead to the box office and ask the ticket taker, “Could I pay you later?”
In those days you could do that. Sometimes we’d go to Wick’s Candy Kitchen or Shireman’s Ice Cream Parlor where they popped popcorn outside on Saturdays to attract customers. But mostly we’d just sit on the swing of the Rileys’ porch, holding hands and talking.
We began going steady in a sense —in the sense that I was going steady with Nell but she wasn’t going steady with me. I really didn’t like it, but I understood because Nell was very popular and I was grounded
during the long basketball
season. Not only did Coach
Curtis impose an 8 p.m. cur-
few, but he also prohibited
Artesian players from going
out on dates during the entire
season.
Of course, everyone on the
team broke the second rule,
but it was tougher for Nellie
and me because Coach Curtis
lived a few yards from the
Riley house. He could see
33
right into their kitchen from
his dining room window.
LOVE
During the entire basketball season, Nellie and I made very sure we TRUE
stayed out of the Rileys’ kitchen.
Nell joined the high school pep band to get a courtside seat for the Artesians’ games, so she could be up close to watch me play. Her musi-cal skills were questionable enough that friends described her as an
“alleged” cornetist, who only held the instrument to her lips and pre-tended to play. It didn’t matter—she had a front row seat for all my games.
She was a good ukulele player, however, and a member of the Girls Ukulele Band. Unfortunately, playing the uke didn’t get her a front row seat, and it was during those games we started a little ritual that became
a part of our lives. Just before each game, Coach Curtis gathered our team in a huddle for last-second instructions and perhaps a poem. I began positioning myself in the huddle so I could see Nellie in the band’s cornet section. When we made eye contact she’d give me a little thumbs-up, and I’d wink or nod back at her. That carried right through to the last game I ever coached.
It became clear to everyone at Martinsville High School that Nell and I were meant for each other. In fact, I never even got around to proposing marriage. We simply agreed during my senior year that when I finished college we’d see the preacher. Nell and I were together through everything that followed—high school, college, family, friends, and my life teaching and coaching.
She is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
35
LOVE
TRUE
No written word nor spoken plea
Can teach our youth what they should be.
Nor all the books on all the shelves
It’s what the teachers are themselves.
5
INTEGRITY, TEAM SPIRIT,
AND PIGGY LAMBERT
W hen asked, I tell people, “I’m a Hoosier at heart, but the Bruins are in my blood.” However, the Boilermakers of Purdue University are right there next to both of them.
I wanted to become a civil engineer, and Purdue had an exceptional school of engineering. The Boilermakers also had an exceptional coach teaching an exciting way of playing basketball—the fast break—and wanted to play it. Ward “Piggy” Lambert became the third of the dear coaches and mentors whose impact on me was so profound. He was as principled a coach as any I’ve ever known.
TRUE TO HIS BELIEFS
For example, when tournaments were being held at New York’s Madison Square Garden and his Big Ten champion Purdue Boilermakers were invited, he refused to participate. He felt Madison Square Garden’s 37
Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.
co
mmercialization invited temptation and trouble for college athletes—
first and foremost, gambling. His was not an easy decision to make —
alumni loved the publicity, players wanted to visit New York City, and administrators liked the money that tournament appearances produced.
I doubt if Coach Lambert could have found one other person on the Purdue campus in West Lafayette who supported him. It didn’t matter.
Ward Lambert, a coach whose
teams won or shared eleven Big
Ten championships and who
was later inducted into the Hall
of Fame, refused to take his
Boilermakers to New York’s
38
Madison Square Garden. He
simply believed that it was the
wrong kind of environment for
his young players.
Later, scandal hit several of
the teams involved with the
MY PERSONAL BEST
tournament and many of their
athletes were hurt. Coach Lam-
bert’s instincts had been correct.
More important, he had the
strength to stick to his guns
when he was all alone. I saw
him demonstrate this quality
many times.
Our freshman basketball squad. I’m in the front row, fifth from the right.
TEAM SPIRIT
Coach Lambert’s great concern for the welfare of his players was coupled with his constant emphasis on team unity and togetherness, equal-ity and sacrifice. He taught that every man on the squad counts, each can make a contribution, and no one is superior to another (this applied, 39
of course, to a top-scoring guard whose name was Johnny Wooden).
The result was a dedication and commitment to the team by its members—every one of us—that was fierce and powerful.
Make no mistake, Piggy Lambert was extremely competitive —he
wanted to win basketball games. But he had an even greater commitment to the well-being of his players beyond basketball to the class-
, AND PIGGY LAMBERT
room, and beyond the classroom to our future. And we knew it. Piggy Lambert loved us.
My respect for Coach Lambert has grown even stronger over the
My Personal Best Page 3