OTHERS TOO, HAVE BRAINS

1. When coaching at UCLA, he took psychology classes to learn how to communicate better.
2. He attended practices of other coaches, including coaches of other sports. He learned time management by attending Frank Leahy’s Notre Dame Football practices.
3. He reached out and asked for help from other coaches. As a player, he interviewed opposing coaches on their techniques. While coaching at UCLA he asked for and received help on his defensive strategies from his rival Pete Newell, who was the head coach at Cal Berkley.
4. He attended as many coaching clinics as he could. When he was a guest speaker at a coaching clinic he would arrive before it started and stay until after it ended, sitting in the front row taking notes while listening to all of the other guest speakers.
5. He researched a different basketball topic each year by reading all the material he could find on it and sending a survey to the top performers in that category.
6. He read voraciously. Many of the hundreds of books in his personal library had key passages underlined in pencil and notes written in the column.

COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE

THE CHEAT

I cheated a good friend yesterday,
Kept what was his, and went my way,
Wronged him by silence-for in haste
I let a glad thought go to waste.

I had a word of cheer to speak,
To strengthen him when he grew weak,
To send him smiling on his way -
But what I thought I didn't say.

He would have richer been to know
That deed of his had pleased me so,
But oh, I failed to let him see
How much his conquest meant to me.

I cheated him of words of praise
Which would have cheered his troubled days;
In this a faithful friend I wronged,
By keeping what to him belonged.

The praise was his by right to hear,
To him belonged my word of cheer;
In silence, though, from him I turned
And cheated him of what he'd earned.

Edgar Albert Guest

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