Whenever we undertake a new venture, be it coaching basketball
, some kind of business startup, a hobby or whatever�we usually need help.
Help could come in as simple a form as a brochure, but if we�re really starting something that is taking us into our own unchartered waters, we will be better served having a guide, rather than trying to figure out how to do whatever it is we�re trying to attempt.
Henry Ford, in running his company, had a bank of buttons on his desk. When he needed advice on accounting, he pressed a button to call in his accounting guru. For engineering, he pressed another button. Henry Ford was successful, in part at least, because he knew that he couldn�t know and do it all by himself. He kept a stable of mentors-gurus who were knowledgeable in areas where he wasn�t.
Most of us don�t have the luxury of having gurus at our beck-and-call. However, in this computer age, we are closer to being able to reach out for a mentor
, anywhere in the world we may be, and anywhere in the world a mentor might be.
We can go one-on-one with someone who knows what we want to know without ever leaving our home.
I was in a group with a financial mentor who told us to, �find someone who has what we want, do what they did, to get what they got�. I�ll admit, I tried that, but didn�t get quite the results I�d aspired to, however I learned a lot. This method works for some highly dedicated people, but most of us average folks may come up short, as I did.
I�m ready to retire, and want to have a renewable income source to keep me financially secure for the rest of my life. I decided to take everything I�d been doing for more than fifty years in basketball and market it to the world.This would have been extremely difficult for me in the 70�s, 80�s and 90�s, but now in the new millennium, I can accomplish this via the internet.
Cool. I�m ready to go. Now, exactly how do I go about this? My computer knowledge and abilities are minimal. So, I got a mentor
. That got me started. Now I have three mentors, and have gone through a couple of others. Because I need new information all the time, I can keep reaching out there into cyberspace to find the help I need. I ask, �what do I need to do?� and they tell me what to do and how to do it. Do I pay for this? Yes. What�s the alternative�going to school for years to hopefully gain some of the knowledge they bring to me immediately, or use the trip-fumble-stumble method of trying to do it myself?
When I first started out as a basketball coach
, I was a nineteen year old and college student running an after-school recreation program at an elementary school. Even though I had played basketball in high school, I was by no means qualified to teach it.
Upon graduation from college my first basketball coaching position. was at the middle school level and I found quickly that I needed more education.
During those formative years of my coaching I searched for as much help as I could get and found it from some of the most talented people of that era.
In the 1960�s, I fell in love with teaching basketball defense
after reading a book entitled, �Mosquito Defense�, written by Al McGuire, Marquette University�s coach. I used his methods of swarming defense successfully for many years, at the junior high and then at the high school levels.
I worked hard at teaching myself how to coach basketball
and each season I improved, but it was a slow process.
A few years later, and with some seasoning behind me, my journey to �teaching-coach� moved up a notch from just reading about basketball to becoming proactive--attending clinics, seminars and camps. Among the clinicians to whom I owe much of what I know about teaching defense
was Bobby Knight. This was in the 70�s. Knight, at that time, was the acclaimed guru of defense. His approach to playing defense and how to teach it, was innovative and genius to this young coach from California. His man-to-man defense philosophy and techniques gave me the ability to teach individual defense
and then be able to build this knowledge right into my team defense . What I learned from Coach Knight, combined with my early success with �Mosquito Defense�, enabled me to develop my own brand of defense and my �Giant Killer� defense emerged. Defense was to become my hallmark as a coach and later as an international consultant and lecturer.
These talented �mentors� inspired me to want to be more than just a successful
high school coach. I read what they wrote; took notes on what they had to say at coaching clinics; I participated as a coach in their camps; I even took my players and my small sons to listen to them speak, to attend the camps as players, and to watch their teams practice. None of these �mentors� knew my name or would remember me, but they influenced my early growth in becoming the teacher of the game into which I evolved.
Now I�m a basketball coaching mentor
for others. Oh, certainly not like Bobby Knight, Abe Lemons, Pete Newell, or John Wooden. But, I bring my teaching DVD, e-Books, basketball coaches tutoring, monthly newsletter and more to a special niche market. My more than 50 years of basketball playing
and coaching experience have been successful, by won-loss standards and in the number of coaches and players I�ve helped to develop all around the world.
My focus is on the niche market where new, aspiring coaches venture into the sport without much more of a clue than a 19 year old boy in California had in getting started. I work with these �newbie� basketball coaches, with coaches who have some experience but are still learning, and even with more experienced coaches looking for a splinter of information which might give them the help they need to get to the next level of basketball coaching success. I work with high school players, whose goal is to play college ball,and teach position specific skills to help them be successful. My goal�and my promise�to each coach or player I work with, is that I will take them to a higher level of teaching and playing than they were at when we got started together.
The role of the mentor is to teach and guide the student to a higher level of understanding and skill, no matter what the field of interest may be.
Are you looking for a higher level of success from where you are? Who is your mentor?
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Coach Ronn Wyckoff has spent more than fifty years in basketball, as a player and coach. As an international consultant, his programs have reached hundreds of players and coaches around the world. In forty-plus years of coaching, he has coached from school levels to national teams, winning over 70%. Go to
