Wooden: A Coach's Life Read Online Free
Naismith as a mentor per se, but the two were kindred spirits all the same. Like Wooden, Naismith grew up on a farm (in Ontario, Canada) where he learned the value of a hard day’s work. He originally intended to become a minister, but upon graduating from the theological college at Montreal’s McGill University, Naismith decided he could have just as much impact through athletics as he could through the ministry. In 1890, he began formally studying at the YMCA’s training school in Springfield, Massachusetts.
In those days, many religious scholars viewed athletics as a tool of the devil. A group of liberal Protestant ministers rebutted that way of thinking by launching a movement called “muscular Christianity.” In the summer of 1891, the head of the Springfield YMCA’s training school’s physical education department, Dr. Luther Gulick, assigned Naismith the task of creating a new game that students could play indoors during the winter. Naismith used a phys ed class as his laboratory, but his first few attempts proved futile. Gymnastics was too boring, football and rugby were too rough, and there wasn’t enough space in the gymnasium to play soccer or lacrosse.
Sitting in his office, Naismith tinkered with adapting a game he used to play as a boy in Canada called “Duck on a Rock,” where points were scored by lofting small rocks so they would land on a bigger rock. But he was still concerned things would get too rough. That’s when he experienced his eureka moment: there should be a rule against running with the ball! If the players couldn’t run, they wouldn’t be tackled. And if they weren’t tackled, they wouldn’t get hurt.
Excited by his breakthrough, Naismith sketched out thirteen rules using just 474 words. The rules did not include dribbling, so the players were stationary, and therefore safe. He then asked the building’s superintendent to fetch him a pair of eighteen-inch boxes to use as goals. The superintendent didn’t have any boxes, but he offered a couple of peach baskets instead. Naismith decided these would have to do.
The class consisted of eighteen students, and the first game featured nine men on each side. It was an instant hit. In the months that followed, Naismith continued to develop and modify his invention in the hope that other YMCAs and athletic clubs would adopt it in coming winters. He had two means of spreading the word. The first was the YMCA’s official publication, The Triangle , which was delivered to clubs across the country. The second was the army of clergymen who came to study under Naismith at the training school in Springfield.
One such missionary was a Presbyterian minister named Nicolas McKay, who was the secretary of the YMCA in Crawfordsville, Indiana, sixty miles north of Martinsville. During the winter of 1892, Reverend McKay spent several months observing the new game and engaging in long talks with its inventor. He took his notes and a copy of Naismith’s thirteen rules with him back to Crawfordsville, where he taught the game to his own students, including a pint-sized boy named Ward Lambert, who would later coach Johnny Wooden at Purdue University. Thus was a direct lineage established: Naismith to McKay to Lambert to Wooden.
The state of Indiana’s first organized basketball game was played at the Crawfordsville YMCA on March 16, 1894. The next day’s Crawfordsville Journal reported, “Basket ball is a new game, but if the interest taken in the contest last night between the teams of Crawfordsville and Lafayette is any criterion, it is bound to be popular.” That was an understatement. As it turned out, the state provided the ideal platform for Naismith’s game to lift off. Unlike neighboring Ohio, the Hoosier state did not have a bunch of urban manufacturing centers with schools that were big enough to field football teams. Rather, it was clustered with hundreds of small rural communities. The farming calendar was also not conducive to
In those days, many religious scholars viewed athletics as a tool of the devil. A group of liberal Protestant ministers rebutted that way of thinking by launching a movement called “muscular Christianity.” In the summer of 1891, the head of the Springfield YMCA’s training school’s physical education department, Dr. Luther Gulick, assigned Naismith the task of creating a new game that students could play indoors during the winter. Naismith used a phys ed class as his laboratory, but his first few attempts proved futile. Gymnastics was too boring, football and rugby were too rough, and there wasn’t enough space in the gymnasium to play soccer or lacrosse.
Sitting in his office, Naismith tinkered with adapting a game he used to play as a boy in Canada called “Duck on a Rock,” where points were scored by lofting small rocks so they would land on a bigger rock. But he was still concerned things would get too rough. That’s when he experienced his eureka moment: there should be a rule against running with the ball! If the players couldn’t run, they wouldn’t be tackled. And if they weren’t tackled, they wouldn’t get hurt.
Excited by his breakthrough, Naismith sketched out thirteen rules using just 474 words. The rules did not include dribbling, so the players were stationary, and therefore safe. He then asked the building’s superintendent to fetch him a pair of eighteen-inch boxes to use as goals. The superintendent didn’t have any boxes, but he offered a couple of peach baskets instead. Naismith decided these would have to do.
The class consisted of eighteen students, and the first game featured nine men on each side. It was an instant hit. In the months that followed, Naismith continued to develop and modify his invention in the hope that other YMCAs and athletic clubs would adopt it in coming winters. He had two means of spreading the word. The first was the YMCA’s official publication, The Triangle , which was delivered to clubs across the country. The second was the army of clergymen who came to study under Naismith at the training school in Springfield.
One such missionary was a Presbyterian minister named Nicolas McKay, who was the secretary of the YMCA in Crawfordsville, Indiana, sixty miles north of Martinsville. During the winter of 1892, Reverend McKay spent several months observing the new game and engaging in long talks with its inventor. He took his notes and a copy of Naismith’s thirteen rules with him back to Crawfordsville, where he taught the game to his own students, including a pint-sized boy named Ward Lambert, who would later coach Johnny Wooden at Purdue University. Thus was a direct lineage established: Naismith to McKay to Lambert to Wooden.
The state of Indiana’s first organized basketball game was played at the Crawfordsville YMCA on March 16, 1894. The next day’s Crawfordsville Journal reported, “Basket ball is a new game, but if the interest taken in the contest last night between the teams of Crawfordsville and Lafayette is any criterion, it is bound to be popular.” That was an understatement. As it turned out, the state provided the ideal platform for Naismith’s game to lift off. Unlike neighboring Ohio, the Hoosier state did not have a bunch of urban manufacturing centers with schools that were big enough to field football teams. Rather, it was clustered with hundreds of small rural communities. The farming calendar was also not conducive to
Readers choose
Loree Lough
Stuart Harrison
Amy Redwood
Jacob Huth
Claire Thake
Pamela Palmer
R. E. Pritchard
Patricia A. Knight
J.T. Ellison
Ginger Booth