The Genesis
UCLA won ten national championships while I was the basketball coach, and Mr. Lawrence Shidler played a role in all of them. How big a role did he play? Let me tell you a story and then you can decide for yourself.
Mr. Shidler was a math teacher back at Martinsville High School in Indiana when I was a sophomore. Occasionally he discussed topics other that mathematics. One day in March he instructed the class to write a paper defining success. Mr. Shidler wanted to get us thinking about the concept of success and whether it just meant getting rich or famous or beating somebody in a ball game. Well, this got me thinking hard about the subject, and I continued thinking about it for a long time after I completed Mr. Shidler's homework assignment. In fact, I reflected on it for decades.
Later, when I entered the teaching and coaching profession after graduating from Purdue, the question continued to intrigue me because I found myself a little bit disillusioned with what seemed to be expected from youngsters under my supervision in classrooms.
