Wooden feels kinship with Kondos Field

The voice on the phone was familiar, if a bit weak.

It's been a tough year, John Wooden said, reluctantly, because he doesn't like to make a fuss. He was in his Encino condominium, and had just been asked about the flu he'd fought off in January and the bone-breaking tumble he'd taken soon after.

"It's been a bit hard, but I'm getting better," he assured. "Now, if Val's team performs to their abilities this week, that would put a smile on my face."

Val would be Valorie Kondos Field, coach of the ninth-ranked UCLA women's gymnastics team, which today opens its quest for another national title at the NCAA championships in Athens, Ga.

Wooden seemed more concerned about gymnastics than his own frail health. He said he planned to spend today waiting for word on how the Bruins fare. "It's because of my friendship with Val," he said. "We're just very close."

As with all of the men who followed him at Westwood, it is widely known that Wooden keeps in good contact with men's basketball Coach Ben Howland. But few know that of all the coaches at UCLA, the iconic Wooden's tightest bond is not with Howland, but with Kondos Field.

She dotes on him: calling, driving him to restaurants or appointments. Or, along with her husband Bobby Field, UCLA assistant athletic director, driving to dinners at the home of Wooden's daughter, Nan.

He dotes on her: mentoring, coaching, and giving a shoulder to lean on. Most of all, providing perspective.

"If we'd never met, I might not be coaching right now," says Kondos Field, a 48-year-old spitfire who in the anonymity of women's college sports has guided her team to five national titles. "More than that, if I'd never met coach Wooden and become his friend, I'd know a lot less about life."

After a few years as an assistant, Kondos Field took over the gymnastics team at UCLA in 1990, never having been a head coach. She'd grown up a ballet dancer, not a gymnast. She couldn't do a handstand, but she was a master of teaching fluidity and flow. With her artist's sensibility, she quickly grew so disillusioned with college sports' laser-like fixation on winning -- simply to gain bragging rights -- that she nearly quit.

Then, in the mid-1990s, she picked up a copy of one of Wooden's books and, as many readers of this column surely have, poured over his simple, profound, old-school maxims.

There's nothing stronger than gentleness.