John Wooden Research Paper

Leaders are what shape the society that we live in today. Leaders are able to bring together the people around them in order to achieve greatness in ways that many people follow. Leaders are able to inspire individuals to be the best they can. People are able to see many examples of leaders throughout our history and in today’s times. People that are leaders in today’s society are our coaches, teachers, mentors, and even our parents. One great coach that many will tell you is a great example of a leader is the UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. John Wooden was the first person to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach and a player. As a coach, he won 10 NCAA championships with UCLA. It wasn’t because he had the tallest basketball

As John Wooden was a coach, he possessed a fierce quality that a leader should possess, which is competitiveness. Competitiveness is something that most people possess to be successful. People with a competitive nature are mainly our leaders in today's society as they want to be someone in today’s times. Although, John Wooden had a coaching strategy that was “...misconstrued...that Wooden didn’t care about winning”. That was far from true.”(Paragraph 2) By him being competitive it gave him the ability to possess determination in his players. He installed the ability to want to be the best that they can be, which is what a true leader inspires. Competitiveness also strives to get up when things are down, not wanting to give up no matter the win or the loss. An example of this in today’s times would be the one and only Tom Brady. Yes, Tom Brady wasn’t a coach for the New England Patriots, but he was the heart of the team as he led them to multiple Super Bowl championship wins. Brady was a very competitive player, which made him one of the greats. By being competitive, he worked hard to accomplish his goals of being the best quarterback that he can

Talent is what drives people apart from the rest in sports, but that is not always the case as we see with John Wooden, who inspired his players to have grit and determination to accomplish the task of victory. John Wooden “...work[ed his players] hard to make sure he is in better condition than his opponent.” He knew that it was going to lead him and his team to great victories. (Paragraph 3) Leaders work hard to accomplish their goals and not give up in the process. By working his players to be better than their opponent, he was able to install a unique nature of determination in his players to never give up in games to work as hard as they can until the final result of the game. Also, even outside of sports, the people that are the leaders in our lives inspire us. Teachers, for example, inspire us to learn and comprehend knowledge, even if we believe that we aren’t able to do it. Teachers help us with preparing us for life by inspiring us to write essays, even though we may think that we aren’t able to do it. They also inspire us to go out and explore challenges academically, such as writing essays to try to get into an advanced class to take the following year for their