500 TICKETS AVAILABLE TO HEAR JOHN WOODEN SPEAK IN ABERDEEN

April 27, 2002

Wooden

ABERDEEN, S.D. - No one is more recognized for teaching life lessons through basketball than legendary coach John Wooden. The hard court philosopher will be in Aberdeen as the keynote speaker for Don Meyer's Coaching Academy June 6-8.

Meyer is the head men's basketball coach at Northern State University and brought his nationally-known coaching academy from Lipscomb University (Nashville, Tenn.) to Aberdeen and NSU last year with Pat Summitt as the keynote speaker. This year, Wooden joins featured clinician and former Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett to headline Meyer's Academy.

There are 500 tickets available to the general public for Wooden's speech June 6 at the Johnson Fine Arts Center on NSU's campus. The talk will begin at 6 p.m. and last about an hour. Cost for the tickets is $10 per person. To purchase tickets, call NSU's athletic office at (605) 626-3336.

The only person to be inducted to the National Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and coach, Wooden was a three-time all-American and the 1932 national player of the year. Nicknamed the "India Rubber Man" at Purdue for how quickly he bounced back to his feet after being knocked to the floor, he led the Boilermakers to the 1932 national title. As a coach, Wooden led UCLA to 10 NCAA championships in 12 years and helped the program set a bevy of records that redefined the term "sports dynasty." After retiring in 1975, Wooden became kept busy as an author, sought-after speaker and lecturer. Today he is nothing short of a living legend to the countless people he has influenced by his work and his approach to life. His Pyramid of Success - life principles formed in the blocks of a pyramid that reveal his definition of success and how to achieve personal fulfillment - is a well-known and often-used philosophical structure for people from all walks of life.

At 91 years of age, Wooden doesn't travel to speaking engagements as much as he used to. But he was eager to make the trip to South Dakota for a good friend. Wooden and Meyer have known each other for almost 10 years after meeting briefly at a camp in Baton Rouge, La.

"From the first time I met [Coach Meyer], he made an impression on me," Wooden said. "I've always enjoyed his company and have a tremendous amount of respect for him."

Meyer's Coaching Academies always draw some of the biggest names in collegiate basketball. But no name has quite the same appeal as Wooden.

"It's great to have probably the best coach of the century coming to give the keynote address at the Academy," Meyer said. "But he's so much more than just a coach. He's a guy from the heartland who proved that the basic values and work ethic forged from growing up in rural America could work in one of the biggest cities in the world. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for most of the coaches attending the academy and it's also nice to have the community get a chance to come out and see him. He's a special person."

Northern State University is an NCAA Division II program in Aberdeen, S.D. The Wolves compete in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. In his third season at NSU, Meyer led the Wolves to a conference championship and was named the league's Coach of the Year. Prior to Northern, Meyer spent 24 years at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. There, he became the fastest coach in the history of collegiate basketball to reach 700 wins. Meyer's current win count of 749 games ranks 12th on the all-time men's collegiate basketball coaching wins list.