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Issue 473 - "Can't Is Not A Word In My Vocabulary." (C. Vivian Stringer Part One)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 10	Issue 473
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"CAN'T IS NOT A WORD IN MY VOCABULARY." (C. VIVIAN STRINGER PART ONE) John Wooden Video Clip (70 sec.): Coach Wooden recites his poem "Don't Look Back" C. Vivian Stringer is the head coach of the Rutgers University Women's Basketball Team. She is the first coach in NCAA history to lead three different women's programs to the NCAA Final Four: Rutgers in 2000 and 2007, the University of Iowa in 1993, and Cheyney State College in 1982. She is the sixth winningest coach in women's basketball history and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in September of 2009. Coach Stringer's career is filled with many seemingly impossible feats. It starts with her mantra: "Can't Is Not A Word In My Vocabulary." Coach Stringer's father Buddy Stoner was a coal miner and a musician. He is the inspiration for her attitude. One-night when driving home from a gig Buddy cut his big toe when he dropped a gas can on it. In her fantastic autobiography, Standing Tall, Coach Stringer describes what followed: "That toe never healed. Eventually, the doctor had to amputate the toe, and then the foot on that side, and then the leg just below the kneecap. Ultimately, he lost both of his legs up to the knees. My father didn't take the easy way out. Before he got sick, he'd had perfect attendance at his job in the mine. After he lost his legs, he could easily have sat back and collected disability. But he didn't take a day more than he needed. Instead, he had our beat-up car fitted with hand controls so he could drive himself to a job in the mine office. I never once heard him complain, though many times I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear muffled moaning coming through the walls; my father lived with great pain. But he never talked about the hurt or the inconvenience in front of us kids. In the morning, he would slide down the stairs, sit at the table, and put on his prosthetic legs, cracking jokes as if he'd slept like a baby. When people in the community would ask him how he was, he'd always laugh and say, "I'm kicking, but not too high." My father's example inspires me every day of my life, and I use it to inspire my players. He went back to work at the coal mine even after losing both of his legs, so you can imagine how I feel when I hear some gifted nineteen-year-old at the peak of her physical condition tell me that she "can't" do this or do that! Can't wasn't a word in my father's vocabulary, and it's not one in mine. All things are possible as long as you've got breath in your body." How's your attitude? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 473. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 473. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE What I Call Living The miser thinks he's living when he's hoarding up his gold; The soldier calls it living when he's doing something bold; The sailor thinks it living to be tossed upon the sea, And upon this vital subject no two of us agree. But I hold to the opinion, as I walk my way along, That living's made of laughter and good-fellowship and song. I wouldn't call it living always to be seeking gold, To bank all the present gladness for the days when I'll be old. I wouldn't call it living to spend all my strength for fame, And forego the many pleasures which to-day are mine to claim. I wouldn't for the splendor of the world set out to roam, And forsake my laughing children and the peace I know at home. Oh, the thing that I call living isn't gold or fame at all! It's good-fellowship and sunshine, and it's roses by the wall; It's evenings glad with music and a hearth fire that's ablaze, And the joys which come to mortals in a thousand different ways. It is laughter and contentment and the struggle for a goal; It is everything that's needful in the shaping of a soul. Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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