The following is taken from an article written by John Wooden.
"At UCLA, where I was head
coach of men’s varsity basketball for twenty-seven years, poetry was one of my
favorite teaching tools. I have loved poems since I was a child, perhaps because
my father, Joshua Hugh Wooden, introduced me to literature at an early
age—reading to his four sons at night under a coal oil lamp in our Indiana
farmhouse:
Tennyson,
Whitman,
Longfellow,
Whittier,
James Whitcomb Riley,
Shakespeare, and more.
Later, at
Martinsville High School, my basketball coach, Glenn “The ’Ol Fox” Curtis, was a
master of motivation and utilized poetry to light a fire in his players.
Grantland Rice was one of his primary “assistant coaches” in this area.
During a game against Muncie Central in which our team, the Artesians, were
trailing at halftime and were thoroughly dejected, the ’Ol Fox jumped up on a
bench as we headed back out to the court. Like a fire-and-brimstone preacher
Coach Curtis exhorted us to remember the following:
For when the One Great Scorer
comes to mark against your name,
He
writes—not that you won or lost—
but how you played the
game.
We lost, but we did not quit. That poem, like many others, worked its magic,
and I remembered it when I became a coach.
At UCLA, I constantly incorporated bits of poetry, rhymes,
and maxims to help focus attention, give direction, and create inspiration. This
seldom occurred during games but was a constant element in the locker room, on
bus rides to and from arenas, in hotel lobbies, and especially during practice,
where the real work is done, the real improvement made.
Bill Walton, UCLA’s center for two national
championships and two undefeated seasons, tells people that I never stopped
talking during practice—“an overriding chatter, never silence,” as he describes
it. That so-called chatter included instructions on the mechanics of the game,
obviously, but also dealt with attitude, which is as important as knowing how to
shoot a jump shot properly. Poetry, in all its forms, was an efficient tool for
this.
While I never stood on a bench and recited Grantland Rice, I did constantly
inject ideas during practice that were “poetic.” If I sensed lagging energy in a
player—Bill Walton, perhaps?—I might quickly take him aside and sternly tell him
to step it up: “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, Bill!”
On those occasions when I had to remind him to cut his hair or shave his
beard before he could come into practice, he might offer the words of his own
favorite poet: “Coach Wooden, ‘The times they are a-changin.’” Well, they
weren’t a-changin’ for those who wanted to be members of the
UCLA varsity basketball team.
I began each season—the first day of practice—with the same demonstration and
instruction: showing players precisely how I wanted them to put on their socks;
after that, how to lace and double-tie their shoelaces. “Little things make big
things happen,” I cautioned them.
After
ucla won its first national championship in 1964,
I quickly reminded players who might be inclined to a sudden swelling of the ego
of the following:
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit
is self-given; be careful.
Is this poetry? Certainly, in my opinion. I have a book of poems on my
bookshelf by Billy Collins. The rules of poetry are and should be flexible; good
words in good order is good enough for me.
In 1962,
UCLA came within a whisker of winning a
national championship. A phantom foul called on Walt Hazzard perhaps kept us
from the championship game against Ohio State in which we would have been the
favorite. Our team had given it everything they had. And been outscored. I
reminded them of George Moriarty’s poem:
Who can ask more of a man
than giving all within his span?
Giving all,
it seems to me,
is not so far from victory.
A teacher never knows what stays with those he or she is teaching. You do
your best using the tools at your disposal. Poetry was one of my many tools.
Thus, even though I understood that Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and many
others on our teams may have raised their eyebrows at some of my maxims and
poetry at the time, things changed as they matured. In fact, when Bill had
children of his own, he began writing down some of my maxims on their brown
paper lunch bags before they left for school.
He tells me their reaction was about the same as his while he played center
at
UCLA. And says he hopes some of it sticks with them
like it did with him.
Poetry works its magic in many different ways."
CoachWooden.com
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