Early Life
Rupp was born outside Halstead, Kansas, to Mennonite German immigrants, the fourth of six children. He grew up on a 173-acre (0.70 km2) farm which his father Heinrich homesteaded. After his father's death in 1910, Rupp's oldest brother Otto took over farming responsibilities. As a youngster, Rupp worked on the farm and attended a school in a one-room school house in the country. He first became interested in the sport of basketball at the age of six when Halstead won the first of two consecutive Kansas state high school titles. According to interviews, he and his brothers stuffed rags into a gunnysack which his mother sewed up to use as a basketball on the family farm. Later, after growing to a sturdy 6-foot-2, Rupp was a star on his Halstead High School team, averaging over 19 points a game in both his junior and senior years. Rupp also served as team captain and unofficial coach.
After high school, Rupp attended the University of Kansas from 1919–1923. He worked part-time at the student Jayhawk Cafe to help pay his college expenses. He was a reserve on the basketball team under legendary coach Forrest "Phog" Allen from 1919 to 1923. Assisting Allen during that time was his former coach and inventor of the game of basketball, James Naismith, who Rupp also got to know well during his time in Lawrence.
In Rupp's junior and senior college seasons (1921–22 and 1922–23), Kansas (KU) had outstanding basketball squads. Later, both of these standout Kansas teams would be awarded the Helms National Championship, recognizing the Jayhawks as the top team in the nation during those seasons.
Read more about this topic: Adolph Rupp
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)