Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) Read Online Free PDF

captaining the high school tennis team, as I did, would certainly help. But as a loyal Bruin, when I was asked in May 2010 to speak at the luncheon where the UCLA Alumni Scholarships were announced, I couldn’t help but poke fun at our crosstown rivals by reciting the questions “purported to be asked” on the “Application for Admission” to the University of Southern California:
“Have you read a book this year? If yes, why?”
“Name five of the United States (for instance, California, New York, Texas, etc.)”
“Are you a football player? If yes, skip to the last line of this application.”
    To all my Trojan friends, “Just kidding!” (At least, that’s what I told the Bruin Alumni Scholarship recipients.)

“FAILURE TO PREPARE IS PREPARING TO FAIL.”
—COACH JOHN WOODEN
    In my first year at UCLA, I joined my Zeta Beta Tau fraternity brothers in a Bruin tradition, the annual Spring Sing competition. We performed pretty well singing George Gershwin’s “’S Wonderful,” but it was one of Tom Lehrer’s unmistakable songs that brought out the best in our male chorus. The Harvard math professor turned lyricist and nightclub performer created such satirical tunes as “The Old Dope Peddler,” “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,” and “The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz.” In the Spring Sing we performed “Be Prepared,” the Boy Scouts marching song.
    We didn’t win any prizes at that Spring Sing, but it was part of my introduction to university life. At UCLA, we freshman were often in classes with veterans who had just returned from the Korean War. And graduate schools, like the UCLA Law School, were often populated by those who had fought in World War II; their undergraduate years, aided by the GI Bill, began in 1946 or 1947.
    For me, a key reason to join a fraternity in 1952 was to have a place to live within walking distance of the campus. There were no, zero, men’s dormitories at UCLA at the time (the first was opened in 1959), and only one women’s dorm, Mira Hershey Hall. UCLA in the 1950s was definitely a commuter campus.
    I wanted to be a sportswriter. When I entered Kerckhoff Hall in hopes of becoming a staffer at The Daily Bruin , I brought with me some high school newspaper credentials. I was editor of the paper at Long Beach Poly High School and also wrote a sports column called “Sklargazing.”
    You have to pay your dues as the kid reporter; my first assignments were covering swimming and water polo. But I soon graduated to track and field, and, in 1954, to football in the fall, followed by basketball for the 1954–55 season. What an amazing opportunity.
    The 1954 UCLA football team, coached by Henry “Red” Sanders, was co-national champion with a 9–0 record. They were “co” because sportswriters for the Associated Press and United Press International split the vote between Ohio State and UCLA. I traveled with the team to Lawrence, Kansas; Corvallis, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and Berkeley, California, to report on Bruin victories that season by scores of 61–0, 67–0, and 72–0. And 34–0 over our crosstown rival, the Trojans of USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
    But it was the opportunity to cover basketball and get to know Coach John Wooden that became the touchstone of my UCLA years. I learned about being a leader from the very best. Yes, the Bruin hoopsters were good; in the 1954–55 season, Coach Wooden’s team had a 21–5 record, 11–1 in the Pacific Coast Conference—and split two games with the eventual NCAA champion, the University of San Francisco, with their two dominating stars, Bill Russell and K. C. Jones.
    Coach Wooden’s remarkable record of ten national championships in twelve years would not begin until ten years later, in 1964, but what I learned by observing Coach as a teacher (his preferred term) has lasted a lifetime. At practice, the organization was obvious; Coach Wooden planned out every minute each day, and after each drill—no matter how