I was just perusing facebook and was inspired by one of Wendy Smith’s posts. Actually, I’m inspired by a lot of her posts, but this one in particular caught my attention because it involved Coach John Wooden. Coach Wooden was famous as UCLA’s basketball coach when his teams won ten NCAA National Championships in a 12 year period. That included 7 in a row, which is still (I believe) a record. For those of you from Wisconsin, Coach Wooden ranks right up there with Coach Lombardi, you just may not know it yet.
I first heard about Coach Wooden when I was a kid playing basketball with my friends. His players such as Lew Alcindor (aka Kareem Abdul-Jabar) and Bill Walton were always on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But far later in life when I was looking for inspiration, I found Coach Wooden on the web. (When you are ready to learn, your teacher will appear!) His quotes or “Woodisms” are in every list of quotes worth looking at.
At the time, I thought so much of his words, I created a mini-poster for my children as they went off to college with the instructions to cover their eyes and poke at something to read every day. I’ve included an updated version here. At this point, I’ll let Coach Wooden have the floor…
