During my time as a student, player, and coach at UW-Eau Claire, I had the pleasure of learning from UW-Eau Claire Women’s Coach Tonja Englund. I was extremely fortunate to have Coach Englund be my advisor for my coaching minor and consider her to be one of my mentors. She is one of the hardest working people I have ever met, but always made time in her extremely busy schedule to answer questions or give me her thoughts on everything from classes to coaching philosophy and much more. She regularly let me watch her practices and provided huge amounts of material and information to me. Her insight and advice has been priceless to my development as a coach, student, and person.
Coach Englund is a tremendous Coach and Teacher who leads by example. She holds her players to the highest standards not only on the court, but in the classroom and community as well. Her teams have won three conference championships and have participated numerous times in the NCAA tournament over her tenure as head coach. More impressive is her team’s academic success. Last season her team produced a team GPA of 3.47, which was 12th highest in the nation.
On the first day of all her classes, Coach Englund gives each student the following poem by Charles Osgood. The poem was given to her at and early age by one of her former coaches and has been the theme that has driven her from that day on. I want to share this poem with you, and hope that it helps you understand that, pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.
Pretty Good by Charles Osgood
There once was a pretty good student
Who sat in a pretty good class
And was taught by a pretty good teacher
Who always let pretty good pass.
He wasn’t terrific at reading,
He wasn’t a whiz-bang at math,
But for him education was leading
Straight down a pretty good path.
He didn’t find school too exciting,
But he wanted to do pretty well,
And he did have some trouble with writing
Since nobody taught him to spell.
When doing arithmetic problems,
Pretty good was regarded as fine,
5+5 needn’t always add up to 10;
A pretty good answer was 9.
The pretty good class that he sat in
Was part of a pretty good school,
And the student was not the exception:
One the contrary, he was the rule.
The pretty good school he went to
Was part of a pretty good town,
And nobody there seemed to notice
He could not tell a verb from a noun.
The pretty good student in fact was
Part of a pretty good mob.
And the first time he knew what he lacked was
When he looked for a pretty good job.
It was then, when he sought a position,
He discovered that life could be tough,
And soon he had a sneaking suspicion
Pretty good might not be good enough.
The pretty good town in our story
Was part of a pretty good state
Which had pretty good aspirations
And prayed for a pretty good fate.
There once was a pretty good nation
Pretty proud of the greatness it had,
Which learned much to late,
If you want to be great,
Pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.