Quiet Strength Read Online Free PDF Page B

building even after dark. My sister Sherrie often got upset because I usually stayed later than I was supposed to and didn’t seem to get in as much trouble as my siblings did for the same infraction.
    The problem I faced—which my dad understood—was that because I was so little, I rarely got picked for a team. The winning team stayed on the court to face the challengers, comprised of the guy whose turn it was to be captain (he had “next”) plus four guys he picked. If my team lost, I’d have to wait until my “next” came up and it was my turn to pick a team. Those were usually the times I came home an hour late, and my dad never seemed to get too mad.
    After we moved back to Jackson, where I attended junior high and high school, I began playing ball with guys who could drive. We’d drive to Ann Arbor or East Lansing (both about a half hour away) to play at the intramural buildings at the University of Michigan and Michigan State. During that time, I formed a lot of friendships with guys I would later play against in high school. When I got old enough to drive, I’d go anywhere I could find an open court and a game.
    It was during this time that I became friends with Bob Elliott from Ann Arbor, who later played center for the University of Arizona and the New Jersey Nets. He’d call the house with a cryptic message—“They’re playing in Romulus (Michigan, home of Detroit Metro Airport, an hour from Jackson)” or “Meet me at the MSU IM (the Michigan State intramural building)”—and I’d tell my mom I was going to play as I headed out the door. She always gave her blessing. She never thought I’d get into trouble; as the cheerleading adviser, she watched all the high school basketball games, so she knew most of the guys I was playing with.
    In the summer before our senior year, Bob put a team together, and we played in the high school division of the summer league—the most competitive of its kind—at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Detroit. A different division, open to players at every level, including the NBA, played later on. Those of us playing in the earlier games stayed to watch the likes of Dave Bing (who played in the NBA for twelve years), George Gervin, and others. Gervin was at Eastern Michigan at the time, and while most teams were pretty loaded with all-star lineups, he had surrounded himself with his high school buddies. But he carried them to wins most nights by scoring fifty or sixty points himself. When you’re the “Iceman” and go on to be third all-time in NBA season scoring titles, you can surround yourself with just about anyone, I suppose, and still win.
    Bob Elliott and I have remained great friends ever since those days of barnstorming any and every game we could find. But in today’s world, I can’t picture allowing my high school son, Eric, to drive from our home in Indianapolis to Lafayette or Bloomington by himself. I don’t think he’d even ask. Times were different then, which was good for a gym rat like me.
     
    As a kid, I wasn’t too much of a discipline problem, though I did end up sitting on the couch, not allowed to go out and play, more often than I would have liked. For me, that was much worse than a spanking. Usually my mom and dad were calm and gave us the whys and hows of the situation before they took away privileges.
    All four Dungy kids were disciplined in different ways. My folks knew that certain things would change my behavior but not Linden’s. So even though I’d moan about it, they did whatever they thought would work best with each child. My parents always looked at every situation individually, regardless of what seemed fair to us. That’s something that took me a while to appreciate, but learning to view each situation by itself has helped me in coaching. I know that I can have blanket rules, but blanket rules don’t always fit every individual. I need to treat everybody fairly, but fair doesn’t always mean equal.
    I apply that lesson