Claremont is mad for youth sports. The $10 million-plus Padua Sports Park is one example, but the community spends a lot of money on other sports-dedicated parks as well: College Park (Little League) and La Puerta Park (AYSO).
As we've previously noted, this spending may be a little short-sighted. Between the 1990 U.S. Census and the 2000 Census, the under-18 segment of Claremont's population grew by only 6. During the same period, the over-65 demographic grew by 23.3%, from 4,026 to 4,966--a trend that is likely to continue as babyboomers age and hang onto their Claremont homes and existing homes appreciate beyond the affordable range for many young families with children.
Yet, the current city council majority (Mayor Peter Yao and councilmembers Sam Pedroza, Ellen Taylor, and Linda Elderkin) are oddly wedded to the idea that we are facing some sort of baby boom--something the data belies.
Why do people cling to false information and failed ideas? Perhaps it's simply human nature. This current council, led now by Ellen Taylor (not Mayor Peter Yao), give a lot of lip service to "thinking outside of the box", but they're really not doing much besides building new boxes. They're not even making better boxes.
We suspect the percentage of people actually capable of stepping outside of their own preconceived notions and prejudices is quite small and is unrelated to factors such as level of education or income.
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Since we're on the subject of sports and it is March Madness time, we thought it might be a good time to take a brief look at the career of someone who had an amazing capacity for stepping outside of himself. We speak, of course, of former UCLA baskeball coach John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, still going strong at 96.
Wooden is the antithesis of everything someone like Ellen Taylor stands for. For all of Wooden's success (the Bruins won 10 NCAA basketball titles in 12 years and seven in a row at one point) he was and is remarkably humble. In contrast, a person like Glenn Southard was a arrogant blowhard who used every opportunity to tell you how great a city manager he was and how indispensable his services were.
This week's issue of Sports Illustrated featured an article by Alexander Wolff that noted that Wooden coached for 15 years at UCLA before he won his first championship. As the Wolff article pointed out, those 15 years weren't wasted years. Wooden had to fail as a coach in order to grow, but doing that that meant having the ability to examine himself and discard the things that didn't work.
It's no coincidence that one of the signs posted in Wooden's office read: "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." Sadly, in Claremont, we have an over-abundance of know-it-alls. Can you really imagine Linda Elderkin, for example, admitting she was wrong about something?
The other trait that Wooden possessed (and which has also been in short supply in Claremont) was that he learned to accept the necessity of having contrarians around to bring in fresh ideas. The Wolff article noted:
Shortly after he announced his retirement in 1975, in the aftermath of his final title run, Wooden confided to a young alumnus that he had blundered badly in his career by associating too much with yes-men. "Whatever you do, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you," he said.
The Wolff piece attributed Wooden's unprecedented title run partly to the coach's willingness to listen to a "smart, argumentative assistant coach" named Jerry Norman. (Norman, as the article notes, coached basketball for Wooden's brother, who was the principal at West Covina High School.) It was Norman who suggested installing the 2-2-1 zone-press defense that led to the turnovers that fueled the Bruins high-scoring offense.
That willingness to listen to what you might not want to hear is a rare commodity indeed. That is why no one else besides Wooden's teams have dominated college basketball for such an extended period.
And that rarity extends to other arenas as well. Southard was notorious for surrounding himself with yes-men (and women) like Jim Lewis or Bridget Healy. It is also why someone like Ellen Taylor or Linda Elderkin wants to see 5-0 votes and seek "consensus", why they use catchphrases like "teamwork". They're really closed to dissenting points of view and seek to discard anything they don't already know. As a result, their range of options on many issues is severely limited.
They really need, tattooed on their foreheads, the coach's advice: "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
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