32 pages • 1 hour read
John Wooden, Steve JamisonWooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Bellarmine Medal
The Bellarmine Medal is a humanitarian award conferred by Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. The award honors people who exemplify charity, justice, and temperateness in facing adversity. Even with the countless awards and achievements in Wooden’s career, he lists the Bellarmine Medal as a special honor; when he received it in 1987, it had never before been awarded to anyone from the world of sports. Likewise, Wooden is especially proud of receiving it because Mother Teresa, a woman whom he respects greatly, had been a previous recipient (70).
Final Four
The Final Four is the name given to the semi-final round of the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournament. While the NCAA has trademarked this term because of its widespread association with the men’s NCAA Tournament since the 1970s, it has been commonly used to describe the final four teams surviving in single-elimination tournaments from a variety of different sports and levels over the years. Wooden led the Bruins to 12 Final Fours during his career at UCLA and advanced to win the national championship 10 times.
Indiana State Teachers College
Indiana State University was known as Indiana State Teachers College from 1929-61. Following his service in World War II, Wooden became the head basketball coach and athletic director there while also teaching and completing his master’s degree in education. In his two seasons there, he compiled an overall record of 44-15 before accepting the head coaching position at UCLA in 1948.
NCAA Tournament
The NCAA Tournament is a season-ending, single elimination tournament that has been played every year since 1939 for men’s teams and every year since 1982 for women’s teams. The size of the field has expanded over the years, from eight teams in the tournament’s early years to its current size of 68 teams. Some invitations to play in the tournament are determined by conference championships, but there are also many at-large invitations for teams who have had successful seasons but did not win their conference title.
Pauley Pavilion
Pauley Pavilion is the UCLA-campus sports arena that has been the home court for the Bruins men’s and women’s basketball teams since it opened in 1965. Wooden acknowledges that, when he accepted the head coaching position at UCLA in 1948, he had been led to believe that the team would soon have a new arena, but it wasn’t built until 17 years later. He argues that when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the most highly recruited players in history, began showing an interest in attending UCLA in 1964, the school’s athletic director expedited the arena’s construction so that it would be ready when Jabbar joined the team (91).
Pyramid of Success
The Pyramid of Success is Wooden’s iconic, triangular diagram created in 1948 that identifies 15 traits that contribute to his own definition of success, which sits atop the pyramid. The genesis of his pyramid was a high school homework assignment asking about the definition of success (167). He reflected on the question for years after graduating high school and spent many years of his early teaching and coaching career identifying the necessary traits that would serve as building blocks in his diagram. These traits include: industriousness, enthusiasm, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, self-control, alertness, initiative, intentness, condition, skill, team spirit, poise, and confidence.
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