As I walked off the court having just won a hard-fought tennis match over David Khan, Dr. Phil’s entertainment manager, at the Calabasas Open and NTRP championships two weeks ago, I heard the news. John Wooden had passed away at the age of 99. I wasn’t sure exactly how to feel, but the next day, having already read They Call Me Coach and studied so much Coach Wooden material, I purchased another gem, A Game Plan For Life, at Borders and spent the last couple of weeks leafing through it. I highly recommend doing the same.
If you don’t know John Wooden, please get on Wikipedia immediately. Widely regarded as the greatest coach in basketball history, everyone in sports and at UCLA has their favorite Wooden fact or statistic. At the moment, mine is that he met his future wife, Nell, at age 16 in 1926. They were married for 53 years, from 1932 until her death in 1985. Coach still wrote her love letters regularly after her death, and would talk about how he was still in love with her. Still in love with her in 2010, 84 years after they first met!
I met Coach in June of 2004, when I was 24 and he was 93. I was a TA for Dr. Tara Scanlan’s sport psychology class at UCLA, and at the time Wooden made an annual guest-speaker visit to the class in the spring. I was lucky enough to ride in the car with Dr. Michelle Magyar, who was a post-doc in Dr. Scanlan’s lab at the time, and a chosen student (Shantal Lamelas) to pick up Coach from his modest condo in Encino, and drive him back over the hill to Westwood. I was instructed to call him ‘Coach’; it was what he preferred.
A few memories stand out from that day. The first was when we were sitting at the stop light waiting to turn left onto Sunset Blvd. from Church Lane, to head into Westwood. I was in the backseat with Shantal, Michelle was driving, and Coach was in the front passenger spot. Coach was quietly reciting a poem, as he frequently did in conversation. Shantal and I could barely hear him, and just as we were straining our ears to do so, a car went by on our right, laying on its horn for what must have been at least five seconds. Surely Coach would be distracted; what bad timing and how rude of that driver, I thought! But when the car was gone, Coach was not only free of distraction, but we realized he had continued reciting the poem the entire time. By that point, I doubt even Michelle had any idea what he had said.
It didn’t fully sink in until later, but as it turned out, I had experienced one of Coach’s famous lessons firsthand: don’t let that rude driver bother you, just stay calm and keep doing your thing. I remember that sometimes when I inevitably encounter a crazy driver on the LA streets.
A couple of minutes later, Michelle made a rough lane change on Sunset, cutting someone off as I recall. Memory fails me on what exactly I said, but it was something along the lines of ‘good job driving, Michelle,’ to make fun of her. I wasn’t sure if Coach had heard what I’d said or even understood what had happened, but I thought it was funny either way. Little did I know, Coach Wooden’s own smart-aleck habits were well-documented by then.
After his guest appearance in Dr. Scanlan’s class, complete with the Bruin spirit squad and mascot Joe Bruin to introduce, it was my job to give Coach a ride two blocks from Franz Hall to the UCLA faculty center. As he sat down next to me in my ’98 Ford Escort ZX2, he looked over at me and paused. Again, memory fails me on exactly what was said, but it went something like this:
Wooden: Oh... (pause)... YOU are driving?
Me: (afraid for my life)... uh... yes?
Wooden: Are you sure you are going to do a good job?
Me: (gulp) uh... I think so...
Wooden: I’m just kidding.
He smiled, and patted me on the hand. It was clearly a reference to what I had said to Michelle earlier, something which, at 93 years old, he had not only remembered, but also fully understood the irony of. I had been made fun of by the greatest coach in basketball history. It was awesome!
At the end of that day, my most immediate reaction was that Coach was just a normal, cool guy who would be fun to hang out with. At 93 years old. Wow.
Having pored over his books and his Pyramid of Success in the six years since our meeting, I would probably be even more intimidated to meet him now than I was then. Alas, now I will never have that chance. But it’s alright. Coach Wooden talked in A Game Plan For Life about how he was mentored by Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa, despite never having spent time with them in person. I was lucky enough to spend parts of one day with Coach, but his influence on me has reached far beyond that.
In a nutshell, if I have a moment of weakness in life, sometimes I will ask myself, what would Coach Wooden do? Read one of his books, and then try it yourself. Trust me, it works pretty well.
If you don’t know John Wooden, please get on Wikipedia immediately. Widely regarded as the greatest coach in basketball history, everyone in sports and at UCLA has their favorite Wooden fact or statistic. At the moment, mine is that he met his future wife, Nell, at age 16 in 1926. They were married for 53 years, from 1932 until her death in 1985. Coach still wrote her love letters regularly after her death, and would talk about how he was still in love with her. Still in love with her in 2010, 84 years after they first met!
I met Coach in June of 2004, when I was 24 and he was 93. I was a TA for Dr. Tara Scanlan’s sport psychology class at UCLA, and at the time Wooden made an annual guest-speaker visit to the class in the spring. I was lucky enough to ride in the car with Dr. Michelle Magyar, who was a post-doc in Dr. Scanlan’s lab at the time, and a chosen student (Shantal Lamelas) to pick up Coach from his modest condo in Encino, and drive him back over the hill to Westwood. I was instructed to call him ‘Coach’; it was what he preferred.
A few memories stand out from that day. The first was when we were sitting at the stop light waiting to turn left onto Sunset Blvd. from Church Lane, to head into Westwood. I was in the backseat with Shantal, Michelle was driving, and Coach was in the front passenger spot. Coach was quietly reciting a poem, as he frequently did in conversation. Shantal and I could barely hear him, and just as we were straining our ears to do so, a car went by on our right, laying on its horn for what must have been at least five seconds. Surely Coach would be distracted; what bad timing and how rude of that driver, I thought! But when the car was gone, Coach was not only free of distraction, but we realized he had continued reciting the poem the entire time. By that point, I doubt even Michelle had any idea what he had said.
It didn’t fully sink in until later, but as it turned out, I had experienced one of Coach’s famous lessons firsthand: don’t let that rude driver bother you, just stay calm and keep doing your thing. I remember that sometimes when I inevitably encounter a crazy driver on the LA streets.
A couple of minutes later, Michelle made a rough lane change on Sunset, cutting someone off as I recall. Memory fails me on what exactly I said, but it was something along the lines of ‘good job driving, Michelle,’ to make fun of her. I wasn’t sure if Coach had heard what I’d said or even understood what had happened, but I thought it was funny either way. Little did I know, Coach Wooden’s own smart-aleck habits were well-documented by then.
After his guest appearance in Dr. Scanlan’s class, complete with the Bruin spirit squad and mascot Joe Bruin to introduce, it was my job to give Coach a ride two blocks from Franz Hall to the UCLA faculty center. As he sat down next to me in my ’98 Ford Escort ZX2, he looked over at me and paused. Again, memory fails me on exactly what was said, but it went something like this:
Wooden: Oh... (pause)... YOU are driving?
Me: (afraid for my life)... uh... yes?
Wooden: Are you sure you are going to do a good job?
Me: (gulp) uh... I think so...
Wooden: I’m just kidding.
He smiled, and patted me on the hand. It was clearly a reference to what I had said to Michelle earlier, something which, at 93 years old, he had not only remembered, but also fully understood the irony of. I had been made fun of by the greatest coach in basketball history. It was awesome!
At the end of that day, my most immediate reaction was that Coach was just a normal, cool guy who would be fun to hang out with. At 93 years old. Wow.
Having pored over his books and his Pyramid of Success in the six years since our meeting, I would probably be even more intimidated to meet him now than I was then. Alas, now I will never have that chance. But it’s alright. Coach Wooden talked in A Game Plan For Life about how he was mentored by Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa, despite never having spent time with them in person. I was lucky enough to spend parts of one day with Coach, but his influence on me has reached far beyond that.
In a nutshell, if I have a moment of weakness in life, sometimes I will ask myself, what would Coach Wooden do? Read one of his books, and then try it yourself. Trust me, it works pretty well.
