To add insult to injury, the Green Devils had traveled to Martinsville for a game against the Artesians. In front of a packed crowd—maybe the
biggest crowd ever to see a game in the gym where I had been an All-State basketball player—the Green Devils lost 27–17. Their coach was Glenn Curtis—the Ol’ Fox. Martinsville went on to win the Indiana state championship that year, but losing in front of my hometown friends and former teammates made the ride back to Dayton seem very long.
THE CLASSROOM COACH
Fortunately, I was better at teaching English. In fact, my coaching skills improved greatly because of what I did in the classroom. Teaching a solid subject such as English forced me to create a detailed schedule and lesson plan and to get things done efficiently without wasting time. I couldn’t just amble into class each day without precise preparation.
For example, I had fourteen days to cover Hamlet. In college Professor Liddell spent an entire semester teaching that one play. For my Dayton students to have any chance of learning something about Shakespeare, I needed to carefully hone my plan—each hour, nearly each minute. I budgeted my time in the classroom precisely—carefully planning how to cover Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities, poetry, and 58
Shakespeare.
I learned to accommodate the abilities of a wide range of students.
My patience grew, my tolerance for boys and girls who had difficulty keeping up with my lesson plan increased, and my understanding of various personalities and how to deal with them expanded. All of this I tried to apply in coaching. I believe that in that first year at Dayton MY PERSONAL BEST
High School I learned more about how to work with people and about myself—my temper, stubbornness, impatience, and desire for immediate results—than any of the thirty-nine years of coaching that followed.
The second season reflected this and produced my very first winning record as a coach: 15–3. The Dayton Pilot, our yearbook, proclaimed that “Johnny Wooden, our versatile coach, whipped into shape one of the best teams Dayton has sponsored in recent years.” My coaching was hailed as “tip-top” and the Green Devils proclaimed to have “soared to
great heights” during this “triumphant” year.
I had gone from a goat to a hero in a few short
months. I had been the hero before, but never
the goat.
I had great expectations for the coming sea-
son, my third at Dayton, but Indiana came
calling—South Bend Central High School
offered a teaching and coaching position with a large pay raise that included $2,400 a year as English teacher,
athletic director, school comptroller,
and baseball and basketball coach.
Eventually I even taught tennis.
Nell and I accepted the offer
and headed home—but not alone.
We were brand-new parents—a
threesome with the arrival of our
beautiful little daughter, Nancy
Ann Wooden.
7
BACK HOME IN (SOUTH BEND) INDIANA
A t Dayton High School, I had fallen in love with teaching and coaching. There were great frustrations, setbacks, and embarrassing moments, but the pleasure of teaching young people was more than money could buy. It was joy, pure and simple. In fact, during my entire career as a teacher and coach there were always offers for outside jobs that paid a lot—a lot more money than teaching did. Nell, bless her heart, never once suggested I should change professions.
This was important because had she asked, I would have quit and taken the higher-paying job. Nell seemed to understand that I was meant to be a teacher—she may have known it even more than I did.
And this was important because I faced an immediate challenge with my new job.
A CHALLENGING SITUATION
At South Bend Central there was no gymnasium available at the school.
Instead we used the stark facilities at a local YMCA, whose unheated 61
Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.
locker room was in the dimly lit basement. Hot water was in short supply. During the frigid winter months, players could occasionally see their breath as they changed clothes. Never before or since have I witnessed a team shower and get dressed as fast as those boys did on a subzero morning.
Practice for the Bears began in the early darkness at 6:30 a.m. because the Y’s gym was unavailable later. Upstairs we worked practice around hindrances, including a boxing ring, wrestling mats, and gymnastics equipment as well as YMCA members who came in for some exercise.
Nevertheless, the players who showed up for the Bears basketball practice wanted to be there as much as I wanted to be their coach.
Nellie even pitched in by washing the team’s socks and athletic supporters with a special softener she bought. This
may not sound like much (or maybe it does), but it
A good teacher or coach
was very helpful because stiff socks can cause blis-
must not only understand
ters. A coarse athletic supporter creates its own
others, but himself or
kind of problems.
herself as well.
Because our early morning practices overlapped
with first-hour study hall at South Bend Central, I received permission for the boys to make it up at the end of the day. In effect, the players were kept after school to study. Unintentionally, this worked to my advantage because their girlfriends weren’t allowed in the study hall, 63
got bored waiting, and went home. I think it’s one of the reasons my players were generally good students—they got to study without any distractions.
While my Bears never won a state championship, the teams always BEND) INDIANA
had good seasons and several times won regional or sectional titles.
Along the way I improved at working with faculty, students, and alumni who occasionally disagreed with me and also got better at not just lis-IN (SOUTH
tening, but actually “hearing” what others said.
HOME
But I had a lot to learn. A good teacher or coach must not only BACK
understand others, but himself or herself as well. One of my single biggest mistakes and regrets as a coach happened at South Bend Central because I was still figuring this out.
NO SMOKING
I had an absolute rule forbidding
the use of tobacco. Any player
who broke it was automatically
cut from our team with no second
chance, no excuses—“Clean out
your locker and don’t come back.”
One of our best players, I won’t
mention his name, broke the rule.
This young man was on his way
to an athletic scholarship and a good college education when I caught him smoking. In my mind, a rule was a rule—I dismissed him without 64
remorse or a second thought. The effect on the youngster was trau-matic, and it soon became apparent. He dropped out of South Bend Central without graduating, and never got the college education and a chance for a better future he deserved. Instead, I found out later, his life became a series of low-paying jobs when it could have been so much more.
MY PERSONAL BEST
A reprimand or a suspension would have accomplished what I
wanted, but in those days I lacked the maturity and experience—wisdom—to do that. Everything was in black-and-white terms with no middle ground, no compromise, and no attempt to understand the bigger picture (as Coach Curtis had done when I stormed off the court during practice). “Be more interested in finding the best way, not just in having it your way,” is good advice. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn this in time to help my player.
How would it make you feel to hurt someone like I hurt him? Profound responsibilities come with teaching and coaching. You can do so much good—or harm. It’s wh
y I believe that next to parenting, teaching and coaching are the two most important professions in the world.
Common sense, an ability to read human nature, and good judgment are among the most valuable assets a teacher and coach can possess—
much more important than just ABCs or x’s and o’s. I worked to improve in these areas, but it was not easy. We need to recognize the
difference between a principle that matters, and a rule or regulation that doesn’t justify capital punishment. We need to be open-minded yet minding to those things that matter. We need to couple firm discipline with fairness and reason, understanding and compassion. It took me too long to get a handle on what is the appropriate balance for all of this.
BE MORE INTERESTED IN FINDING THE BEST WAY,
NOT JUST IN HAVING IT YOUR WAY.
I quote this little poem occasionally as a reminder not to go over-66
board on enforcing rules and regulations:
Stubbornness we deprecate,
Firmness we condone.
The former is my neighbor’s trait,
The latter is my own.
MY PERSONAL BEST
I wish I had taken this message to heart sooner as a coach and teacher.
PAYING THE BILLS
During this time I also found part-time work with Harcourt Brace Publishing. Because they knew my teaching salary was low and that I was working fifty- and sixty-hour weeks, an executive would contact
me regularly about working full-time for the company. I’d get a phone call, usually at the end of the school year, asking, “Mr. Wooden, are you about ready to make a change?” It was almost as if they knew how cold it was in our basement locker room at the YMCA on those January mornings. I’d politely decline, but then accept assignments on various editing projects, usually English textbooks.
Our second child, James Hugh Wooden, arrived just as I completed a big editing job for seventy-five dollars (which was a lot of money).
When the company found out about the birth of our son, they sent a gift set of encyclopedias to welcome the new arrival.
They also gave me something that reflected how I felt about parenting, coaching, and teaching—which in so many ways are alike. Printed on a special card were a couple of verses from a poem called “The Lit-67
tle Chap Who Follows Me”:
A careful man I want to be.
A little fellow follows me;
BEND) INDIANA
I do not dare to go astray,
For fear he’ll go the self-same way.
I cannot once escape his eyes.
IN (SOUTH
Whate’er he sees me do, he tries.
HOME
Like me he says he’s going to be,
BACK
The little chap who follows me.
That little chap’s name was Jimmy, the new member of the Wooden household. That poem still hangs on the wall of my den.
WE COULD STAY FOREVER
Our years in South Bend were wonderful—I was making a living doing what I loved, everyone was healthy, and we loved the city and our friends there. Additionally, teaching high school students had its own great rewards. Students are more impressionable and receptive—more open to being taught—in high school than they are later when they go off to college. A high school student is more likely to ask, “How?” In college, the student is more likely to ask, “Why?” I preferred to spend time teaching how rather than explaining why.
Looking back, even with all the subsequent attention at UCLA, there is no doubt in my mind, nor in Nell’s, that we would have been totally happy and completely content staying
put in South Bend, Indiana—raising our
69
family with me teaching high school
baseball, basketball, and English.
BEND) INDIANA
THE WAR CHANGES
EVERYTHING
World War II is the reason we left and
IN (SOUTH
ultimately arrived at UCLA. After serv-
HOME
ing as a lieutenant in the navy from
BACK
1943–46, I returned home to find things
The only time Nell ever got
in the South Bend school system had
furious with me was when I
changed.
enlisted without telling her.
Coaches who had gone over-
seas and fought were, in some
cases, being denied their jobs
when they got back from the
war. Yes, they were given other
duties, but not the jobs they
had been doing previously—
namely, coaching. I was treated
OK, but I didn’t like what I saw
happening to friends—other
coaches—throughout South
Bend. The treatment was so
70
wrong that I wanted to get out
of the entire system and find a
job elsewhere.
Kokomo and Marion High
Schools were interested in hir-
ing me, but when Indiana State
MY PERSONAL BEST
Teachers College in Terre Haute
called, I listened and accepted their offer of $3,500 a year. Our family packed and we headed south. I was about to become a college basketball coach, but our enthusiasm was greatly diminished by the simple fact that we loved South Bend, Indiana, and the Bears.
8
THE SYCAMORES, SPEED,
AND SEGREGATION
A t Indiana State Teachers College in Terre Haute, I was stepping into the sizable sneakers of my Martinsville High School mentor, Coach Glenn Curtis. He was now a Hoosier legend—four state championships, as many as any Indiana high school coach had ever won—and the success continued at Terre Haute. His decision to coach in a new professional basketball league was not
welcomed by Sycamore fans.
I immediately ruffled feathers by
replacing many of his returning squad,
including starters, with players I had
coached at South Bend Central—
Jimmy Powers, Don Kozoroski, Bill
Jagodzinski, Dan Dimich, Bob Smith,
Lenny Rzeszewski, and others. They
already understood the fast-break style
that I’d been taught by Piggy Lambert,
71
Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.
A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION
TO PROVE MY POINT.
much different from the deliberate ball-control pace of Glenn Curtis and most other coaches of the day.
To me modern basketball was about speed, and like Piggy Lambert, I taught speed. “Move, move, move!” I’d shout, and then, “Faster, faster, faster!” Always quick and pressing and shooting—not carelessly, but taking it to the opponent. I called it positive aggression, and it occasionally caused us to make mistakes, but I was somewhat tolerant of an error made in that circumstance.
Coach Lambert had preached at Purdue, “The team that makes the most mistakes will probably win.” I couldn’t go quite that strong, but I believed if you were not making some mistakes, you were not doing anything. You need to do something to make things happen. “I’d rather 74
have a 50 percent shooting average and score 100 points, than a 100 percent shooting average with 50 points,” I explained to players. “The former has mistakes. The latter is perfect. I’ll take mistakes over perfection for a hundred points—but not a lot of mistakes.” (Coach Lambert’s point was that the “doer” will make mistakes. Mistakes of commission, to a point, are accepted, but not mistakes of omission—that is, the mis-MY PERSONAL BEST
take of not doing anything.)
“Be quick, but don’t hurry,” I’d instruct. “But be quick!” Quick was good. Hurrying was careless. I wouldn’t tolerate careless mistakes, and warned, “Please don’t make a second mistake because
you’re thinking about the first.”
Initially, my change to a fast-break style with some glaring miscues didn’t go over well in Terre Haute, especially with some of Coach Curtis’s returning players. When we lost our first game to Fort Sheridan,
51–49, the resistance remained. For those who hung on to Coach Curtis’s slower style of play, I offered a simple demonstration.
I asked our fastest player, Bobby Royer, to demonstrate how quickly he could move the ball up the court dribbling at top speed. We were standing next to each other under the basket, each of us holding a basketball. I blew the whistle, and Bobby took off dribbling as fast as 75
TION
The Sycamores went to
Madison Square
Garden. Coach Piggy
Lambert disagreed, but
it was my call.
THE SYCAMORES, SPEED, AND SEGREGA
he could—and he was very fast. At the same instant, I threw my basketball to a player standing at the far end of the court. Bobby had dribbled approximately three yards when my pass reached the fellow standing under the other basket.
I blew the whistle and said, “Bobby, I think you were holding back just a little. Let’s do it again, but this time please run as fast as you can.”
The second time he managed to go four yards before my pass arrived up court. To emphasize my point, the player who caught the ball, Jimmy Powers, made a casual layup.
“Fellas,” I asked, “is there anyone here who still doesn’t understand the fastest way to move a basketball up the court?” I saw a lot less dribbling and a lot more passing after that demonstration.
76
As I was working my way through the season, a creative student manager also tried to help me out. He wanted to circulate a petition for changing the name of the school—removing the word Teachers from Indiana State Teachers College. The young man felt that having Teachers in the name hurt our image and kept superior athletes away.
I explained nicely that I was a teacher and proud of it. I also MY PERSONAL BEST
explained that teachers were what the school was producing, not basketball players, and that I wouldn’t be working at a place where turning out basketball players was the goal. After our talk, he decided not to circulate his petition.
My Personal Best Page 5