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.....