Several years ago a “Future Hall of Famer” [color]Dr. Glenn Wilkes[/color] of Stetson University came up with a very unique idea.  He said let’s get 8 college and one pro basketball coach together that don’t play one another and meet in the Atlanta Airport Marriott for three days and nights. We will meet behind closed doors and it will be totally a private meeting with a planned agenda regarding what is going on in the present and future of basketball across the world.  All of these men that were selected were a very [color]passionate and dedicated[/color] group of fine outstanding young men.
 
We all had some knowledge but the knowledge had not matured into wisdom.  So Coach Wilkes felt that if we could “[color]honestly share[/color]” with one another that we could all grow individually in our respective universities and throughout the country. We met and decided to call ourselves [color]THE SELF-IMPROVEMNENT CLINIC[/color] (Members only) this group met every year for over [color]25[/color] years religiously. We felt we were “[color]Game Changers[/color]“.
 
To me personally it was the most [color]incredible experience[/color]I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. It was like adding another Master’s Degree to my resume. I’m sure all of them today will tell you the exact same thing, let me give you an example of how we ran our clinic.  [color]Coach Glenn Wilkes[/color] was chosen the year before to be the leader for the following year and it was his job to put together the agenda and get it to each of the coaches prior to our meeting.  Usually our meeting was the last of august or the first of September.  On the first day at 9:00 AM the subject was “attacking the box-1 defense” each coach had to go to the board and present his thoughts.  Everyone had to take his turn at the subject so you had to do your homework. It also kept any one person from dominating the discussion    Each subject took ½ hour to 45 minutes.

It was very interesting that each coach had a specific passion for a certain phase of the game….mine was the 2-game and peer pressures drills, Sonny Smith was the offensive box set games, Bill Foster and Bobby Hussey was Yankee, Glenn Wilkes and Del Harris knew more than anyone in the room about any subject, George Raveling was our specialist on all phase of rebounding, Murray Arnold was brilliant on all technically phase of the game and taught us the art of fouling late in the game to catch up etc.
 
After several years of meetings Coach Wilkes decided we should bring in one time visiting speakers to help enlighten us on other subjects such as finance and motivation.  We even brought in Jimmy Taylor for a night of humor.

After some 20 years of coaching and outside coaches begging us to join we decided to expand and invited Jim Calhoun

Here is the bottom line to you young coaches …you should take this concept of [color]SELF IMPROVEMENT CLINIC[/color] concept and start more of the clinics around the country.  You will never be sorry I promise.
 
In closing I believe that all of these young coaches who were “knowledge seekers” became [color]men of WISDOM.[/color]

Our [color]knowledge [/color]turns into [color]wisdom [/color]through life experiences

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