The Reciprocity of Impact

Here's a text message I received from a player:

Hi Coach. Thanks so much for helping me out and getting me into lifting so I could be a part of football.  I really love the sport and its making a huge impact on my life.

   I'm not positive who sent it because there was no stated name.  But I have an idea.  At the end of practice yesterday one boy couldn't finish his conditioning.  He labored over his push-ups, and struggled to finish his sprints.  He made his way alone, the final player to finish.

   When I noticed him I yelled to his teammates.  "Why is he doing this alone?" I asked. "He's yourbrother."  They ran out and rallied around him, and finished as a group.  That young man works at a silent, steady pace everyday.  He wants to get better, and it shows.  He also lost his Father one year ago, to a sudden heart attack.

His Father was an invested Dad, and the boy could count on his steady support.  They admired each other mutually, and were allies in the world.  When the Father died the boy had to find his own way through void.  The consoling, repetitive phrases of reassurance were useless, and the mob of replacements was an insult.  The boy would run away from his home during memorial gatherings to preserve the Father he knew.  He was alone, and he knew it.

I often wonder if the boy hears what he deserves to be told, often enough.  I wonder if he's figured out how to be with his Father so he can share what only they had shared.  I wonder if he knows everything he's done has been witnessed in awe, even if there's no one to tell him.

When I read his text about how this game has made a "huge impact on (his) life", I reflect on the nature of impact, and how it depends upon two independent entities.  I reflect on how each of those entities has an intended trajectory before they collide, and how the impact of the collision renders both, futile.  I reflect on how the unanticipated intersection at the point of impact becomes the defining moment, not the orchestrated distance covered prior to it.  I reflect on how its the unforeseen moment, the unscripted event, that provides valuable insight.

And impact is an equal opportunity provider.  If you're part of it, you're gonna be altered.  I may have exposed a boy to something that's become transformative to him.  Observing how he's navigated through it has transformed me.  So I'm going to send him a text.  Here goes:

Dear Boy,

• Thanks so much for allowing me in when it would have been so easy to keep me out.  If you're able to accept help as an adolescent boy, you'll receive it as a man.  I didn't learn how to admit I needed assistance until I was forty, when it was too late to correct the course set by pride.

• Thanks for reminding me that the value of work is in the doing of it, not the acknowledgement of its completion.

• Boy, you're not part of football.  It's part of you.  It was never my decision to allow you in, or keep you out.  You said you wanted to play, and I welcomed you in, just as my coach did for me when I needed a home, and a family.  The torch is yours now. Pass it on.

• Boy, the way you've honored your Father made me admit to the fortune of having mine, despite his faults.  I can only imagine the emptiness you preserve for what only he could offer, and how you endure it to honor him.  I've sat in silence on occasion and told your Father what you're doing, and becoming, even though he already knows.

• Boy, I don't coach to teach a game, or a plan.  I coach because of the impact the ones who play it have had on me.  I owe you the thanks.  You help me more than I'm capable of helping you.

Thank You, Boy, for the impact you've had on me.

Kenny Chesney: Dont Blink:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpKBMywiEjw

I Hope You Dance:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK-RqS203Mc

Christopher Reeve & the Random Assignment of the Human Body

Each of the nine months that preceded the births of my three sons was a prayer vigil.  The joy of learning a child's been planted was met by the anxiety of probability.  Each ultrasound carried a pause similar to one that introduces a life altering jury verdict. 

Will he have ten toes and ten fingers?  

Are his arms and legs forming? 

 Can he see, and hear?  

Will his brain accomplish each delicate partition necessary to understand himself, and the world?

What seemed like a natural, considered act (making a baby),  had become an exercise in random occurrence, and luck.  Any control I thought I had over the design of my child was repealed.  The construction of his parts, and appearance, was subject to another architect's blueprint.  He would have to accept, or adapt, to the proportions he's given.  That was an enormous awakening for me. The chance I took with each of them, and the physical form of their creation, would be their burden to carry, alone.   I've never reconciled my desire to have a child, with the blind draw I agreed to when creating one.

The Human Body is a beautiful instrument.  It can convey emotion into movement.  It can become a symbol of perfection, and discipline.  It can become a vehicle that explores the depth, and potential, of mind.  It can become a mythology all on its own.  It can become the medium that transforms life from the observational, to the experiential.  

Or it can create obstacles to all of them.  

The boys playing freshman football get to play it on accident.  They get to play it because all their feathers unfurled as diagramed.  When you've been able to run and jump and throw and swim and catch since you learned to walk, it's easy to take your body for granted.  It's easy to feel entitled to your prowess, and accomplishments.  It's easy to feel satisfied with what you can already do, since what you already do is more than many others will ever be able to.

Or, you can view your ability as a Liaison between those with status, and those denied status.

And help them gain their own.

You were in the right aisle when athleticism was passed out.

You got stuck in traffic, and missed your flight, then read about your plane crashing.

You got accepted to college because your Dad was an alum, and missed the Vietnam War.

Like anyone who's been spared when others are taken, 

you're required to REFLECT.  

You need to ask yourself if you matter more than anyone else,

or if you've been entrusted to take care of those less capable.

You need to ask if anyone who put on a red cape, and blue tights, could become Superman.  Or if that boy from Krypton was chosen.

We use our bodies to merge with our surroundings.  If we have a fine-tuned body our surroundings feel like a playground, and we feel as if we belong.  If we have a body that gets in the way, that's deformed in some way, our surroundings feel less hospitable.   No one 'deserves' one, or the other.  We get what we get, and come to our own conclusions about 'why'.  

We celebrate the accidental bodies that surpass the limits of others.  We put the people who wear them on T.V., and in books, so they can tell us how to do something even they

aren't quite certain they can explain.  And we allocate one day per year for a 'Special' Olympics, or a few weeks for a Challenger softball season.  

We miss the real accomplishment, the real olympics. 

•  We never vacate the podium so we can hear about the courage summoned to enter the world, day after day, when you weren't constructed to fit in it.  
• We never ask about the isolation one feels when they're excluded from activities that compose a normal day.  
• We never ask if the 'different' ones have a better definition of Heroism than we do, a heroism that's engaged on a daily basis to navigate the stares, and pointed fingers, of strangers.  A heroism that poses the same unanswered question to the Creator: "Why am I the one who has to be different?  Why me?"
• We never ask the accidental body how he justifies a  $20 million shoe deal for shoes he never wore, or how catching a ball makes anyone a hero. 
• 
  

Christopher Reeve's accidental body, the one his soul got packaged in, was the living likeness of a cartoon Superhero.  He honed his craft of acting just like anyone, but his big break came because he resembled an icon.  Playing the part of Superman brought him fame, and fortune. He bought a private plane, and nice homes.  He bought a horse, and became an equestrian.  He was elevated from the masses.  And then he fell.  He fell off the horse that his accidental body provided him with, and broke his neck.  His accidental body was paralyzed.  Superman was a  quadriplegic.

That's when Christopher Reeve actually became Superman.  He pretended to be The Man of Steel with his accidental body.  He became the man of steel when he accepted his tragic loss with grace, and looked within.  He discovered that the body he'd worn was irrelevant.  He told us that his accidental body had actually distracted him from who he was.  Now that it had become a shell, he understood that's all it ever had been.  He expressed genuine joy with his circumstance.  And he experienced real love when he told his wife it was alright for her to leave, and she didn't.  It hadn't been about the body after all.

Even if most of us still believe it is.

Maybe our accidental bodies are assigned to help gain access to the world, and our place in it.  Maybe our accidental bodies aren't accidental, at all.  Maybe they're the perfect vessel for the spirit we're meant to become, and leave behind.

Every physical record will fall.

Every physical 'limit' will be broken.  

Every accidental body will grow old, and die.

So, what about you will remain?

 What's within you that you'll gift back to the world?

And how will it be known when all physical traces are gone?

Real Life Examples of Accidental Bodies bowing out for What's
Truly Deserving of Reverence:

•  7 year-old cancer victim scores touchdown for Nebraska:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvBi5bmCgJI
• Autistic Boy scores TD:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3GfMZfwL3A
• Boy with cancer scores for Cleveland Browns:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpnYf9EY91E
• 8th grade boy with Cerebral Palsy wrestles:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmzjsKV8Ps
• No arms, No legs, No Worries:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhcxOhIMAQ
• Disabled Player helped by Opponent:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCOyhqKRrv4
• Girl with Downs Syndrome makes her First Basket:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjIWi65LxsE
• Special needs boy scores varsity basket:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxemss0NDt8
• special needs boy makes varsity FB:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_0TtEAY8Qo
• 8 year-old down syndrome boy scores TD:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH0G6oO2g7w

Boundaries

We end each practice by having the boys take a knee in an informal huddle.  Coaches share observations, suggest areas that need improvement, and note where improvement has been made. Before we break, Coach Russo asks if anyone wants to acknowledge a teammate for contributions made on, or off, the field.

We have 60 players on our roster.  There were at least 3 identifiable, pre-existing cliques that composed the initial group that came to summer workouts.  The remaining boys were individuals making their entry into mainstream, organized sports.   During those summer practices those spaces, the ones established to provide identity, were etched on the turf.

Halfway through the season, with a record of 5-1, only one space remains.  It encircles the boys and creates a single, composite identity.  A boundary either keeps something you're afraid of out, or it keeps something you value in.  How you see the boundary will determine that.

Self-discovery is courageous, uncertain work for anyone, let alone adolescent boys.  It helps with someone at your side.   The lines previously drawn between them have been laid end-to-end to create the one that draws them together.
When you can admit to where you hide the act of being found begins.
When you discover that the depth of a person can't be measured  through the associations they hold, you can evaluate the purpose of your own.
When you realize what's lost through the judgement of others you respect the differences between you.

Every time Coach Russo asks for examples of contributions, the responses exceed the time allotted to voicing them.
Boys who previously ignored each other are acknowledging one another.  Boys who stand-out on the football field are recognizing the ones who stand-out in the classroom.  Boys accustomed to the spotlight,
turn it on those just getting to know it.

The idea of what is of value is being examined.
And re-defined.

Heroes

De La Salle High School in Concord, CA, held the longest football win streak in the nation before it ended at 151 games.  It lasted twelve years, between 1992 and 2004.  De La Salle has been named National Champs six times, California State Champs twelve times, and was the subject of two books in 2003.

That didn't stop teams from wanting a shot at them.  High schools across the country requested games, certain they were the ones to end the streak.  They became links in it.  De La Salle’s players took on superhero status.

The Real superheroes got wind of this, and they were pissed.  Teenage boys are a lot of things. They are NOT Superheroes.  Wearing a cape on Halloween doesn't teach obligation to others.  Pulling your underwear over your pants on 'crazy dress-up day' doesn't protect you from Sonar-Brain-Paralysis-Beams.  And football win streaks don't prepare you for anything.

Superman called a meeting, and a challenge was issued.  If De La Salle beat the real Caped Crusaders in a football game they'd be anointed Superheroes.  If they lost, they'd have to register as 'Villains', and 'Bad Guys'. They agreed.  Superman assembled his roster.

ROSTER:

• Batman
• Spiderman (Spidey)
• Hulk
• The Thing                                                                                      
• Thor
• Captain America  

•     Human Torch
• Mr. Fantastic
• Flash
• Plastic Man

Now, here's the thing:  You don't win 151 games in a row based on talent, when that talent ends, and begins again, every four years.  Something unseen is happening.  There's a mutation taking place in the souls of those boys, and it's happening long before they are freshman.  A covenant has been written, and entered.  If you don't want to be the one who ends the legacy, you better pay attention to the people who built it.  If you want to pass the legacy on to others, forget your name.  You're De La Salle now.  Take your place on the Team.


On Game Day, De La Salle took an early lead.  They worked methodically.  Each player had a unique talent, and used that talent to fulfill a role that helped the team.  Mental discipline provided an exacting focus on a singular objective.  No one engaged in any action to distract from

it.  Individual accolades weren't sought, or accepted.  They played to protect what other boys, boys they never met, had built.  The opportunity they had today was created by the selfless sacrifice of others.  That deserved to be protected, and they were honored to be the ones to do it.

The Superheroes stumbled from the start, and never regained footing.  Plastic Man played quarterback, but couldn't find his receiver, Flash.
"Dude, I'm open every time", Flash said.
"I'm sure you are'" the QB responded, "But if you don't slow down, I can't see you."
"Flash doesn't slow his roll for anyone," the receiver said.  "If I did, I wouldn't be FLASH."

The Hulk struggled to make a single tackle because he had to stay angry to stay green.  His anger required attention.  He re-visited every memory of being teased, or misunderstood, to fuel his Linebacker rage.  He built his rage to thundering levels, but kept asking the Ref who those people are, the ones over there, that kept running by.  Self-absorption doesn't hold much space for anything else.

Spiderman had six interceptions, but they were all overturned because 'stickum' is illegal.
"They're webs," he pleaded, but the Ref ignored him.
"Yeah?!" Spidey yelled at the Ref.  "How many kids dress like a Zebra on Halloween?! None!SPIDEY..."

They want to be
He was ejected.

De La Salle recorded their 152nd win, but agreed to keep it off the books, out of respect for their opponent.  They beat a group of superior individuals by dismissing their own ego's.  When it was over they collected autographs, and took pictures with their boyhood Heroes.  And refused to sign any of their own.

Discipline.  Focus.  Selflessness.  Execution.  Preparation. Teamwork. Legacy.
Those things mean a lot when attained as a unit.

Capes. Masks. Movie deals. Figurines.  Halloween costumes.
Those things are temporary, and superficial.

A legacy can't be sold, or packaged.
Only preserved.

You're part of one now.
Two years in a row,
undefeated in the
SCCAL (Varsity).


Up, up, and away........                                    

Cutting Back

I played my first year of tackle football in Los Altos, CA.  I was 12.  I'd been intercepting imaginary quarterbacks, and slicing up invisible defenses on my street for years.  It was time for me to put on pads.

My fantasy, Hall of Fame career was unknown to my new teammates.  They didn't know I'd picked off Len Dawson- twice - after last nights dinner, and taken them both to the house.  To them I was number 80, the skinny new Split End.  They showed me my place among them with our first live tackling drill.   I was to stand upright, outside the formation, near the sideline, and run an insignificant pass pattern on each play, while they worked.

That worked perfect for me.  I could wear the pads and helmet, and continue my Hall of Fame career between whistle blows.  I could run with exaggerated movement for the crowd, and then tell the Quarterback I was "wide open" if he felt like throwing one.  I could actually look like a football player without having to get hurt.  That was acceptable, since I was terrified.

Aside from discovering how to hide in plain sight, I learned two things in Pop Warner that I reflect on, still.

The first was courtesy of Karl Pribrum.  Karl was our Fullback.  He wore number 33 and had the same physical attributes of Barney Rubble.  He was short and thick and fast, and Coach would  hand him the ball for a dive up the middle whenever we needed a few yards.  He was hard to tackle, and he had the coolest hair I'd ever seen.  Karl and I became friends.  I still don't know if he liked football.

Karl would put on a Hefty Leaf Bag before every game, and run laps until he sweated enough to make game weight.  He'd run in silence for as long as it took, then he'd strip to his underwear and get on the scale.  His hair would be stuck to his forehead and his body would be glistening as they slid the weight down the scale.  If he'd made weight, he'd put his gear on.  If he didn't, he'd put his bag on and run.  He did the same thing every time.  He never complained, or cut corners.  And he always made weight.

During games, Karl had the same quiet confidence.  He'd charge into the line with determination, and get exactly what we needed.  He was a bull.  Sometimes I'd take a play off just to watch that kid run.  He was a football player.  No matter what happened, Karl would get up again, and take his place in the huddle.  Sometimes his hair was sticking out the holes of his helmet.  Sometimes his pads were turned around.  Almost every time, he was crying.  He'd stand there in back, tears streaming down his face, snot running out his nose, without a sound.  I don't know what drove him, or what he was proving to himself.  All I know is I wanted to be Karl Pribrum, and run through my fears the way he did.

The second thing that stuck was courtesy of my father.  My request to play Pop Warner was met with the first, prolonged interest my father showed toward me.  He talked about what he'd done as a quarterback in high school, in Aurora, Ohio.  He talked about his season at San Jose City College, and the two he played at Stanford.  It was clear, quite quickly, his interest wasn't in me.  It was in the game.  When he was around it he was beautiful.

I caught one pass that season.  It was a post route, and the quarterback hit me in stride.  I sprinted

toward the right sideline, and the Safety misjudged my speed. I cutback, untouched, and scored.  Sixty-five yards of extreme terror, and adrenaline.  After the game my dad was gushing.  He gave me his play-by-play, and when he got to my cutback he said, "Did you hear me scream 'Cutback!' to you?  You must have because at that instant you did. Wheeeeeew! What a run..."
I told him I did.  I told him I'd heard him, and planted my foot on glory.

I'd never seen my dad that happy, and I'd never witnessed him being proud of me.
It didn't matter that all I could hear as I ran was my heartbeat.  
It didn't matter that I didn't plan to plant my foot, or that instinct had taken over.
Part of my father was still alive.  Football showed that to me.

Whatever my father would be capable of sharing with me, would be shared here.
Whatever I'd discover about him would be discovered as I built the identity that would protect me from him.

Football gave the glimpse of the father I craved.
It offered a suggestion about how to know him, when he wanted to remain unknown.
Football had been my father's ticket out of Ohio, and away from his family.
Football would become my way into the family I was trying to understand.
Football would become a way to heal.

I'm the Father now, and I have three sons.

They allow me the marvel I feel as I watch them emerge.

They allow me the joy I feel when I hear their humility.

They allow the awe that overwhelms me each time I see parts they'd kept hidden, exposed.

They allow me to admit that the level of heart, and talent, in each of them,

already exceeds mine.

They allow me to forgive my Father,
 for not knowing how to be one.

"Dear Father"/Music Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFZ9rgN-oA

At The Half

We have a bye this week, and it marks the halfway point of the season.  We're 4-1 in our first five games.  Our remaining schedule is as follows:

• Los Gatos
• Sacred Heart Prep              
• Pajaro Valley
• Terra Nova
• North Salinas
• Seattle Seahawks   (I figure 'why not?', since we're already playing all the 'big' schools.  Russel Wilson's only 5'9")

When the seasons over, this freshman group will have completed what is, arguably, the most difficult freshman schedule this school has seen.  Their record will provide a form of measurement going into the off-season, and the real work will begin.

They'll know where they stand against teams they'll only meet in the playoffs of their varsity seasons, if ever again. They'll know that they can compete with anyone.  They'll know the mythology they hear about "Catholic League teams" is just that.  They'll know that football is just a game where they line up their eleven best against ours to see who wants it more.  And they'll know they possess the talent, as a team, to leave a legacy that becomes legend.

  That's a nice thing to determine early.

The challenge now is to forget.
The past doesn't determine the future, and what the past teaches appears in what remains unlearned.

- Reflecting on what was achieved provides the blue print for what's next.  

-Regrets about the just missed, the not enough, provides incentive to work harder.

 The admission that sometimes you chose the easy, when you had the chance to demand what was difficult, will make you more determined.

What if you ran every wind sprint with the goal of moving your pain threshold? What if you refused to go down every time you carried the ball?  What if you blocked two guys on every play, instead of one?  What if you focused on what you practice the way you focus on what you perform?     Then what?

The second half of the season challenges what you did in the first half.   The win/loss record isn't the story.   You're the story.  How you've developed, how you've focused, how you've contributed, how you've changed.  Those are the things that make up your story.  How 60 boys have done that together is measured in wins, and losses.


Have you told your story, or are you holding back?

                                
                       You'll know when it's been told.

 You'll know because you'll have nothing left to give.                      

    

History is full of stories about great accomplishments.
It's full of legends, and myths.  It's full of grasped opportunities,
and just missed potential.  

History is short on stories about men who ignored what they'd already done
to prepare for what  remains to be done.
Complacency is not an ally.

You are meant to become what's inside you.  Few actually do.  History is composed of the near-misses, and self-doubts, of a billion 'almost' Great Men, who simply ran out of time.   

There is not a single seed cast 

onto soil, without reason. 

All are meant to root.

 Your job, in this brief time,
 is to bloom.....

Step to the Pulpit

 I've helped coach freshman football for the past four years.  My initial experience wasn't what I expected, and each following year has adopted its own identity.

When I played at Aptos, in 1981,  I played for two reasons:

1. I loved the game. 

2. My family was failing to provide me with a sense of belonging. 

Being part of the team helped heal that. Especially being part of a football team.  Here's what it did:

1. For the first time in my life I was able to create my own expectations of myself. 
2. I was allowed to decide, for myself, the necessary, minimum effort, to manifest those expectations.
3. I was allowed to find my own depth (the one I wanted to test, and prove, and expand.)
4. And by being allowed to do those things I was allowed to be myself.

During my four years I discovered the expectations I had for myself were often higher than those put upon me by others.   I discovered that the work required to reach them didn't change, but my motivation to do so, did.  Football became the arena I used to test what was real.   My belief in what I felt inside?  Or the programmed criticisms of those I unknowingly threatened?  The stadium became another classroom.  The insights gained there, during adolescence, are the only ones that remain from high school, thirty years ago.

I know that being ignored, and criticized,  fail as measurements when measuring the human spirit.

 I know you can offset the doubts others voice about you with a determined effort to find out who you are, when you're alone.     

I know that if you want to find out if you have Heart, you'll have to exceed  the

limits of your body.

I know that one of the best things you can allow yourself, and others, is forgiveness.

And I learned all that playing a game. 

Coaching provides the same opportunity for insight.  It offers a unique opportunity for repair.  I need those.  Without them I become complacent.
I don't want to accept what others say brings happiness, as my own.
I don't want to agree to a measurement of success, if it leaves me feeling like a failure.
I don't want to abandon the life I want to live for the one that grants acceptance to the crowd.
I don't want to participate in diminishing others.

I haven't been successful at any of those things.  I'm not sure I will be.  I can accept that as long as I don't trade the pursuit of them, for comfort.

Football is just a silly game.  Just like a kitchen is just a place to prepare food,  or a salon is a place to get your haircut.  Unless the people working in them, emerge.  When that happens, it becomes Art.
  

When the arena becomes the outlet, 

who you are is acknowledged.  

It introduces you to what you've denied about yourself,

 and gives it back to the world.

That's when work becomes your pulpit.  It becomes your place.  

Sunday School

Our boys played Santa Teresa tonight, and almost handed them the game.

• We got the ball first, then immediately turned it over.  
• We had Santa Teresa stopped on their first series, then jumped offsides to give them a first down.  
• We repeated that action three more times to help move our opponent down the field for a score.  

Our mistakes, and their progress, ate up the first quarter.  Apparently, our boys figured they'd only need three, so they gave the first one away.  They're a charitable group. When you coach freshman the best game plan, and a solid week of preparation, aren't enough.  You need some Drama, too.

 Freshman like the rush of emotion that accompanies anxiety, and they like everyone around them to feel it.  It's like they've all been given, simultaneously, the keys to the car, and they're gonna take all of us on their first solo drive. I'd rather ride with a drunk octogenarian who can't see over the steering wheel, over Highway 17, in a rainstorm, on four bald tires.  At least he won't excuse his collapses with, "My bad".

The boys don't realize it, but the first 30 years of their lives played out before them tonight:

That first turnover was the rejection letter you got from your selected University.
The three first downs you gave them represented...

1. The dream job you wanted (but didn't get) cuz it went to the nerd from student government.
2. The shock of a real paycheck that's had taxes taken out, and
3. What you REALLY got yourself into when you said, "I do".

The fumble with two minutes left was the announcement your child made to inform you he's going to join a commune, because clothes and money and laws and responsibility are "for the man".

In Life, as in football, things seldom go as planned.  The sooner you accept that, the better.  What you've been planning for years, and dreaming of for a lifetime, is always a single moment from collapse.  The security we surround ourselves with is false.  Change is the only real thing you can count on.

At halftime, Coach Russo had all the coaches walk to the sideline.  He told the boys it was up to them to figure out what needed fixing, and how it would get done.  Then he walked over and joined us.  We have no idea what was said, or who said it.  But when the boys took the field for the second half they'd decided they wouldn't lose.  They'd decided that the mistakes they'd made don't have to be the outcome they'd get.  Kinda like the way you handle life.

This game marks the middle of our season.  We've played 5 out of our 10 games.  The lesson learned by 60 fourteen year-old boys is beautifully coincidental.  The conviction of 60 individuals, each setting his own limit, resulted in the first "character" win our team has had.  No one can question the talent this group has.  After tonight, it will be difficult to question their character.  You figure out how to blend those two things, and manifest them in puberty driven boys, you're doing something.  You're announcing a brotherhood.

My son, Aidan, initiated the last tackle to keep them out of the endzone.  He's struggled all year with psychological fear.  You see it when he plays.  On this play, however, he rushed forward and collided with the running back, and said, "No you don't".  I asked him after the game what was going through his head when he saw the play develop his way.  "Dad", he said, "I thought no way in hell he was getting in".  Aidan's always had internal doubts.  We all do.  Today, in the nanosecond of a game deciding play, they vanished.  It wasn't planned, and he didn't read a self-help book.

Instead,  he didn't want to fail the 59 boys who hadn't failed him.
At least a dozen boys had similar victories today.

 I coach my son in football.  I say prayers for him as a Father.  Watching him confront, and conquer, a lifelong hurdle is one prayer answered.

That's my kind of church.