John Wooden was the coach of the UCLA Basketball team that won ten national championships in twelve years and seven in a row. His TED talk on true success really defines him as a person, a coach and a teacher.
John Wooden starts his TED talk with a story about his experiences as a high school teacher in 1934; he tells the audience that all the parents wanted their children to get an A or a B in his class to succeed. He followed up by saying that in his book, all the students can’t get an A or a B, but they perform at their best ability to achieve success. He also talks about the topic in a different perspective, as a coach. Relating success to coaching and teaching provided a strong connection to the audience; it allowed them to see his character in the classroom and on the court. He segways into his definition of success with a pyramid he calls, The Pyramid of Success. It allows people to see the traits that make up successful players; to live up to his definition of success, the players need to have the traits from the pyramid. Wooden was very humorous at times, especially when he called his students and players youngsters. Another amusing comment was his description of the player's attitudes after late practices; he says, “And I tell them, "Don't run practices late. Because you'll go home in a bad mood. And that's not good, for a young married man to go home in a bad mood." When you get older, it doesn't make any difference.” Wooden comes across as a hero on and off the court, but a hero also has his own heroes. Wooden gives inferences of his heroes through quotes and stories about his father and his god. In the seventeen minutes I watched his TED talk I felt the bond of a hero connecting me and his words, but his bond between god and his father lasted a lifetime, which makes him the character he is. 
Success in a team sport takes courage and willingness from the whole team, but it is the individual who sacrifices his ego to allow the team to play like a team. In sports this happens all the time and in my experience on the Arapahoe fresh-soph soccer team we carried out that attitude of team. Coming into the last game of the season we were 9-1 and the next game would decide the winners of the league. But it was no easy task; we would be going up against the undefeated Cherry Creek sophomores. From what I had heard they were a cocky group of boys the kind of team that will lose a game in the warm up. From the first five minutes of the game it obvious how cocky they were; they talked trash, mocked the ref and did everything they could just to be a nuisance. With less than two minutes to go, the score was tied 1-1, and we had a free kick near the half-line. Creek was getting sloppy and were committing fouls off their frustration. We took the kick and put the ball in the box; then one of our forwards headed the ball into the bottom corner of the net. Many kids from the other Arapahoe teams were there along with some parents so it was a loud cheer when we scored the winning goal. The final whistle sounded shortly after and the Creek players did not take the loss lightly. They went over to the ref and started complaining to him and even starting pushing us around. Their ego got the better of them.
Success isn’t always winning or getting an A, but it is always doing something to the best of your ability. In 7th and 8th I ran the mile in track, I never won a single race, but I gave my best effort and left everything on the track. In the nine meets I participated in, I ran the mile every meet. When I heard my time as I crossed the finish line, it felt like I had won because I knew I had beaten my time from the last meet. Although in some races I only increased my time by one or two seconds, I had the mentality that I succeeded because I kept to my goal.
Wooden said that all the parents wanted their kids to have an A or a B in his class, but he stated that not everyone can. Although Wooden said that the students could still succeed if they performed to the best of their ability. Many kids in school get bad grades because they don’t try and complete their homework on a daily basis. Last semester one of my friends told me that he hadn’t done his homework in 41 days. I was shocked and didn’t really want to respond to his comment. I just thought where his attitude to succeed went because in the beginning of the semester he was telling me how much of an improvement he had made from middle school. I’m sure he’ll realize his mistake in a year or too. All the kids who don’t put their effort in to school all regret it at the same time, when they have to apply for college.
Today segregation is over, but that doesn’t mean racism is, many people of different ethnicities are constantly stereotyped by the color of their skin. African-Americans have equal rights and freedoms in the United States, but are still targets in the Deep South. People still fly the Confederate Flag, which lost its value (if it had any before) in the Civil War almost 150 years ago; the people of the south say it is part of their culture, but they are expressing their racism toward blacks. Racism isn’t just a national problem in the United States it is a big global issue as well. Religion is also an issue of racism, as there is still Nazism in Europe and Muslims are commonly stereotyped. Racism will never come to a resolution, but many organizations are making an effort to succeed in stopping it. FIFA (soccer) is promoting themselves against Racism in their attempt to stop racism on and off the fields. Soccer is a very ethnic sport, so if fans see all the players unified, then the fans will become unified as well. FIFA may not be winning the world conflict on racism, but they are doing everything they can to succeed.
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