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.