The Faith of Legendary Coach Dale Brown
My role in SLC is to assist you through the Holy Spirit’s leading by helping you reach your athletes and others through coaching. Most coaches love the assists. John Stockton, Wayne Gretzke, Drew Brees, Ozzie Smith, and Sue Bird are all some of my favorite professional athletes for just that reason. They dominated each of their chosen sport because they understood and mastered the art of sharing.
As a father, I have learned the best way to enjoy being a dad is to not come home plop myself down in a lazy boy, tell my wife to get me some sweat tea, and tell my kids to go outside and play. My human lazy nature tells me that would feel great after a hard day’s work, but what I have found out to truly bring me joy goes more like this. Come home and tell my wife how good she looks and how good the house looks, then toss the kids a piece of bubble gum before giving my wife a well deserved break by taking the kids out to play for a bit. You see, you will find your smile when you make someone else smile. I wish I could say I have always followed that formula, but like you I have failed miserably giving into human nature more often that I should. Our goal daily should be to help someone else achieve fame or joy, no better way than by leading them to Jesus. One of the best ways I can pass success, especially spiritual success, on to you is simply by sharing with you some of the wisdom and faith of coaches that came before us. I only ask that you share this wisdom with your God given platform as well.
The word Legendary is an interesting word to me. One could think that by calling Coach Dale Brown “Legendary”, I am stating that some of his accomplishments or some of the things he has said or written may have not been happened. I can assure you that is the farthest from my reasoning in calling Coach Brown “Legendary”. Legendary also suggests a level of supernatural or divine intervention. Coach Brown was kind enough to send me some of his testimony and advice to share with you in this blog. I think after reading it, you will believe as I do, Coach Brown belongs with coaching legends like Coach Wooden and Coach Lomardi. You may know him as ‘Shaq’s College Coach’, but to me Shaq is ‘One of Dale’s players’. I do believe God blessed Dale with the opportunity to coach Shaq, just like I believe God blessed Davidson Head Coach Bob McKillop with Steph Curry. You see I believe God blesses Godly men like Dale and Bob. He also blessed Shaq and Steph with some amazing Godly coaches. Below is a testimony Coach Brown sent me to include in the blog.
My Mom’s Effect on Me
I guess you could say that my story of faith started two days before I was born. Two days before I was born, my so-called father—I’ve always referred to him as “my mother’s husband”—left my mother, two young sisters, eleven and twelve years of age, and me, and he never returned. His departure put my mother in a difficult position. She had an eighth-grade education, came off the farm in North Dakota, and couldn’t get a job during the Great Depression in 1935. In the cold prairies of North Dakota, she had to do two things that were very unpleasant for her: she became a baby-sitter to earn money, and she had to put our family on welfare. We lived in a one-room apartment above a bar and hardware store, and I remember my mother getting $42.50 in Ward County welfare each month. She sat down and meticulously decided what breads and canned goods we could buy for the coming week.
Several times during these difficult times, my mother taught me a lesson that has stayed with me during my entire life. Two times, I saw my mother get on her winter coat, walk down a flight of stairs, and take back to the Red Owl and the Piggly Wiggly grocery stores 25 cents and 40 cents, because the clerks had given her too much change for the groceries she’d brought home. Seeing her dressing in the middle of winter, I said, “Mama, where are you going?” She said, “Oh, I’m taking this money back to the store. They gave me too much change.”
My mother followed the advice of St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century when he said, “Preach the gospel every day, and if necessary use words.” I saw other lessons in the life of this woman who had no PhD behind her name. Not once, after being abandoned, did I hear my mother talk negatively about the man who had walked out on us and never returned, never sent any money, never wrote. She didn’t drink, and she never smoked. I never heard her swear. She was never bitter, angry, or ever complained about her situation in life.
My mother’s Catholic faith was unbelievable. She brought me to Mass and Communion daily—not just Sunday, but daily. For me, the daily trip to church was a ritual. To my numerous fake illnesses and attempts to avoid going, my mom’s response was always, “Get up, Son. We’re going to Mass and Communion.” The spirit that grew in that little, one-room apartment we lived in, uncomfortable and cramped though it was, made it attractive.
Being a small place, the apartment never provided any place for me to get away on my own. So at night, I often went to sit above the alley on the fire escape. One night, the faith my mother instilled in me deepened when I came back in from sitting out there. My mom asked me to sit in her little rocker. She pulled up the footstool and said, “Son, I notice you go outside at night a lot. What do you think about when you’re out there, sitting on that fire escape?” I said, “Mama, I think of three things. I think of travel.” (We didn’t own a car, a bicycle, or any other form of transportation.) “I think of mountains.” (North Dakota is a very flat state, flatter than the top of a table.) “And I think about learning—I want to learn as much as I can.”
My mother hesitated just a moment and then said, “You know Son, I’m going to tell you something. I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I need to teach you a lesson. You know when these people come to pick me up to go baby-sit? I’m so embarrassed. There’s no husband in our house. We live in this little one-room apartment. I’ve just got an eighth-grade education. My clothes smell of mothballs.” (She bought her clothes at rummage sales.) “So I’m so worried about my image when these big shots come to pick me up. I look up big words in the dictionary, and then all the way to their house,” she said, “I inject these big words into conversation to try to impress them. That’s called making an image. When you sit out there on the fire escape at night, just you and God, that’s your true character. And Son,” she said, “If you spend too much time polishing your image, you’ll eventually tarnish your character and be an unhappy man.” That night, my mom taught me that being my true self was far more important than trying to impress people or pretend to be someone I was not. Your character is who you really are and your image is what you are perceived to be.
The Church’s Effect on Me
No matter how financially tight things got around the house, Mom always scraped together enough money for me to attend Catholic school. I learned a great deal over the course of the twelve years I was in a Catholic school. I learned that rules were important. Learned we all are on this earth to help each other.
Two particular lessons I learned stand out profoundly in my mind. One morning, I was standing with two friends by the radiators in the hall at school, warming up. We had religion class before school every day at 8:00 a.m., and we were out there before class, talking about the things kids talk about. One of the guys said, “Yeah, the Salvation Army, isn’t that funny what they do? You know, they’re outside ringing the bell, and they’ve got that little pot.” Not really making fun of the Salvation Army, but sort of jesting, like kids do. Well, the bell rang, so we went to religion class. Our religion teacher was Father Hogan. He called on the three of us who had been talking in the hall and asked us to stand up. He said, “You know, I heard you three boys out there talking about the Salvation Army. I wonder, do any of you guys know the motto of the Salvation Army?”
We each responded, “No, father.”
Father Hogan continued, “Well, let me tell you what it is. It’s to love those who aren’t loved by anyone else. The next time you good Catholics are going to make fun of something, remember that.” To this day, that lesson about compassion and sensitivity has stayed with me. Every year at Christmas, when I’m shopping with my wife or daughter and we encounter a Salvation Army volunteer with a red kettle and ringing bell, I walk over and put money in the pot. I also share with that volunteer what that wonderful priest taught me.
Father Hogan taught me a second lesson, on the importance of being prompt. There are rules. And rules are not to be bent, twisted, manipulated, or bartered with. The moment I learned this lesson is vivid in my mind. The sports teams at our tiny Catholic school played the biggest schools in the state. I thought I was a big shot athlete. I was the leading scorer in the history of this little school. I led the state in scoring, I broke the school record in the 440, and a star on the football team. I thought I was something! Getting a little full of myself, I felt some of the rules didn’t necessarily apply to me.
Every Monday afternoon by 1:00, we had to turn in an eligibility slip to play sports that week. One Monday afternoon, I took my eligibility slip down to the office and laid it on the desk of Father Hogan, who was the principal of the school. Holding my eligibility slip in one hand, he looked over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses at the clock on the wall. “Dale,” he said, “what time does that clock on my wall say?”
I had no idea where he was headed, so I said, “One-fifteen.” He held my eligibility slip in front of my face and he said, “What time was this due?” I said, “One o’clock.” “Ah-hah, that’s good you can tell time; and you knew when it was due in my office.” He started ripping my eligibility slip into small pieces. Then he deposited the pieces in the wastebasket and said, “Now get back up in your classroom and start learning promptness. This slip was due at one o’clock. You’re not going on the road trip this week.” I thought he must be joking. After all, I was the superstar. Well, guess who didn’t go on the road trip!
What Athletics Have Taught Me
Athletics gave me my first good self-image. I had a terrible inferiority complex, coming from a home with no father and surviving on welfare. Athletics helped me begin to see myself in a different light, as a person who is more than the circumstances into which I was born. From athletics, I also learned what true discipline meant. I learned teamwork. I learned respect for others. All these lessons gave me the opportunity to obtain a scholarship to go to college and get a higher education for which I am eternally grateful.
Athletics also allowed me to meet the man whom many consider the greatest coach ever to have lived and the finest man I’ve ever met, former UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden. Coach Wooden taught me the truth about success. He said, “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort in becoming the best that you are capable of becoming.” Of all the things I’ve learned in my life, this is one lesson I truly strived to teach the athletes I coached to help them prepare not only for sports but also for life beyond sports.
Four Hurdles
I used to share with our athletes my belief that we live in a world of paradoxes and that these paradoxes create many of the problems we encounter. To build a life that is meaningful and fulfilling we must see that so much of our life can be consumed with things that are not critical for our happiness. Getting rich or being famous has displaced the development of a meaningful philosophy of life and the more we are connected to the illusion of success, the greater will be our disconnection from finding true happiness.
So what can we do? To find happiness and success, we all must learn to negotiate over four hurdles. These are things we can’t con, cheat, barter, buy, or lie our way over. Instead, we have to meet them head on. All of us can get over these hurdles if we have commitment and the discipline to do it. Commitment and discipline are the spinal cord of true success. Until one is committed, there is hesitation. When our focus changes, our life will change.
It’s difficult to get over these four hurdles, because there are so many temptations that might distract us—the temptation to take the shortcut, to cheat, to manipulate, to maneuver, to not work hard. But when we face and overcome these four hurdles, we can achieve true success and find happiness.
Hurdle One: “I Can’t”
We don’t even scratch the surface of our greatness. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can do with commitment and perseverance. If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would astonish ourselves. It is easier, however, to make excuses about why we can’t do something or to blame others for making our success impossible. Once you blame others, you’ve given up the power to change. It’s easier to say, “I can’t,” so we have to learn to overcome that.
When we stop making excuses or looking to place blame, we can achieve amazing things. For example, Walt Disney was advised to pursue another line of work, because he’d never be a successful cartoonist or movie producer. Albert Einstein’s teacher told him he was not smart enough to pursue an education and should drop out of school. And then there is a young man I coached, Shaquille O’Neal. He told me once at our summer basketball camp, “People always used to tell me, ‘You’re not going to be anything.’ But I never gave up.” He was cut from his high school basketball team. His coach told him he was too slow, too clumsy, and had too big of feet, and would never be a successful basketball player; so maybe he should try to be a soccer goalie.
Disney and O’Neal plus countless others, had a belief system in them that they could do it. They were able to overcome hurdle number one and go on to do spectacular things. I suggest you read a poem written years ago by C.W. Longenecker called “The Victor”
Hurdle Two: Overcoming Failure
The second hurdle we have to overcome is failure. Success often is built on multiple failures. Until we learn to derive lessons from our failures, we’ll keep repeating those failures and keep digging ourselves into a deeper hole. The secret to success is in rising every time you fall and in never giving up. My dear friend Bob Richards told me years ago that your FQ (failure quotient) is more important than you IQ.
History provides us numerous examples of highly successful people who confronted many, and major, failures but who still made their dreams come true. Failure’s only a detour, and an opportunity to begin again. The most successful people I know, in almost every profession, have not been afraid to fail. When they have fallen down, they get back up. Adversity only visits the strong but stays forever with the weak.
In July 1954, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a wonderful speech called “What Is Man?” He said, “We know that man is made for the stars, created for the everlasting, and born for eternity. We know that man’s crowned with glory and honor. But so long as he lives on the low level, he’ll be frustrated, disillusioned, and bewildered.” Failure must not shackle us. The famous American writer Henry David Thoreau hit the nail on the head when he said, “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” So we’ve got to quit worrying about our mistakes. It doesn’t do any good. We’ve got to replace worry with positive action. We shouldn’t be afraid. We can do it if we fully commit ourselves.
Every day we walk this earth, our courage will be tested in some way. But if we approach life one day at a time, we won’t break down. There are two days we shouldn’t worry about—yesterday and tomorrow. When we live in those two eternities, we lose what is today and will not be ready to face the challenges it brings. Never lose faith in yourself. Faith can calm the stormy seas of our lives and the boldness of faith is so powerful that nothing can stop it.
Hurdle Three: Handicaps
Hurdle number three is our handicaps. Quite simply, a handicap is a disadvantage that makes achievement difficult. We all have handicaps of some sort, whether we recognize them or not. To succeed, we have to confront our handicaps and overcome them. You can learn a great deal about yourself when you are staring your handicap in the eye. You have the choice to respond by accepting your handicap as final and then giving up, or by accepting your handicap as another challenge to overcome and then fighting to achieve in spite of it.
Paul Anderson, was diagnosed with Bright’s disease at the age of five. Bright’s disease affects the kidneys and causes lifelong health issues. It can be fatal in some cases. Paul refused to accept the limitations of his condition. He worked every day to build himself up and become as strong as he could. He began to weight-lift competitively and went on to win the U.S. National Amateur Athletic Union Weightlifting Championship and the gold medal in the super heavyweight division in the 1956 summer Olympics. He also broke nine weightlifting world records. He was commonly called “the strongest man in the world.”
When I was a high school coach in North Dakota, I read that Paul was going to appear at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) camp in Estes Park, Colorado. I said, “I’m driving there. I’ve got to see this world record holder. I’ve got to see this unbelievable human being.” I wanted to know what made him do it and how he did it. I drove to Estes Park and sat in the front row anxiously awaiting to hear his secret to success. He walked onto the stage, not saying a word. Onstage were two saw-horses and a two-by-four board lying across them. Paul stepped back, took a ten-penny nail from a nearby podium, took a handkerchief, which he held in his hand, stepped back, and with one thrust of his hand, drove the nail right through the two-by-four. Then he looked at the audience and said, “Good morning, everybody. My name is Paul Anderson. I am the strongest man in the history of the world and I cannot live one day without God.” I learned that day that I can’t live one day without God either. Powerful and strong though we think we are, when we learn this wonderful lesson, as Paul did, we can overcome any handicap.
Hurdle Four: Knowing Yourself
The fourth and final hurdle is the struggle to know yourself. This is the hardest one for us all. Who am I? Where am I going? What do I want from life? George Bernard Shaw said, “People are one of three things: what they think they are, what others think they are, and what they really are.” When we really know ourselves, we begin to develop. Real confidence comes from knowing and accepting ourselves, knowing our strengths and limitations, as opposed to depending upon affirmation from others. The beginning of wisdom is being honest with ourselves.
The most noble and perfect victory is the triumph over one’s self. Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest boxer of all time, commented that he had achieved complete success by the world’s standards, but that success had not brought him true happiness. He concluded that the only sure way for people to be happy was to be honest with themselves and give their lives to God. (Yes, there is only one God, and only way to Him, through accepting His Son Jesus as your Savior)
“Pistol Pete” Maravich, whom I consider the greatest college basketball player ever, averaged forty-four points a game. He had everything in the world, but he said all of it—the money, fame, and other things—left him empty. Only when he totally submitted and gave his life to God did he find true success and happiness. For these men, and for us, as well, knowing ourselves means recognizing our dependence on God. Knowing ourselves means being able to say with confidence, “I can, and I deserve to, find happiness and success because I’m made in the image of God. So under no circumstances will I ever lose hope or give up, no matter what my failures are.”
You can’t cheat the man in the glass. Read the Poem by Dale Wimbrow
Being a Leader
If there was ever a moment in our history when leadership was needed, it is now. With all the greed, dishonesty, selfishness, evil, and bad things going on in the world, we need good leaders. A common quality of great leaders through the ages has been their mastery at articulating a vision of the future. They see something that is not yet there and can relay the image to others. In any leadership position, the most important aspect of the job is getting everyone to work together.
However, working together is only a beginning. The world needs leaders who find their strength in faith and character. Exceptional leaders will get their team members to feel they’re an integral part of a common goal. How is this done? This may sound odd, but the underlying theme of teamwork is our ability to convey a renewed sense of optimism. Teamwork doesn’t just happen – it takes a captain to steer it in the right direction. The role of the captain – whether it’s a coach, teacher, father, mother, or whatever – is to give the ship direction, purpose, and ultimately success. I read a saying years ago: “The role of most leaders is to get the people to think more of the leader. But the role of the exceptional leader is to get the people to think more of themselves.”
We need to make a difference, but we can do it only through the grace of God. I am convinced that we are capable of solving any problem, whether of race, crime, poverty, terrorism, pollution, drugs, or whatever plagues humanity.
You, with God’s help, are responsible for your future. You’re really free the moment you don’t look outside yourself for someone to solve your problems. You will know that you’re free when you no longer blame anyone or anything but realize you control your destiny and are capable of changing the world. People can be divided into three groups: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. We’ve got to decide which group we will be in.
The most important thing to God is our relationships with one another. God made us in such a way that everybody needs somebody. And God’s idea for success is a community, a group of people who are committed to each other and who strive to follow his will. Communities and nations will be transformed when humanity returns to God and his purposes. Humans have not advanced a centimeter in the history of the world by fighting, hating, killing, and competing. The only notable advancement humans have ever made is becoming brothers and sisters who labor toward a common goal. You see, the best potential of “me” is “we.” So the question in our life journey over the four hurdles is not whether God can bring peace, love and happiness in the world. The question is, can we? We are to be his tool!