The Value of Sport

   I just got home from football practice.  No...seriously, I just got home from football practice.  What is a 57-year-old guy recovering from cancer who is 25 pounds underweight doing at a football practice?  Don't be alarmed.  I didn't wear the pads or the helmet and didn't even participate in the non-contact portions of the practice.  My friend Tim, the head football coach at a local high school, asked me to come talk to his team during an extended break in the two-a-day practice schedule and share my story of faith and the role it played through my cancer experience.  I never say "No" to such an opportunity because ultimately my story is not my story but God's story through me.
   Tim is a good coach.  He gets it.  Football is important to him, but its importance has very little to do with wins and losses.  The sport is an allegory for life, a tool that is used specifically for building boys into men.  I am not referring to the stereotypical grunting/scratching/burping kind of men, but Tim is very intentional about training these kids to become men of faith, men of courage, and men of character.  Unity, togetherness, and leadership all are important for Friday night's contest, but they become more important for the rest of life.
   As I think back on my life, I learned a lot in school, but I learned a lot more about myself and my potential as a leader from my coaches and sports.  These lessons are far more defining of who I am today than lessons about the origin of World War One or diagramming a sentence with a dangling participle.  I am not bemoaning a classroom education, but instead I want to assert that sport, when led well by a coach with the proper perspective, can be life-altering for a young man.  I learned lessons in perseverance and teamwork through sport.  I learned the ideals of trusting my guys and admitting when I am wrong through sport.  I learned how to handle disappointment and to deflect the tendency to blame others through sport.  I didn't have to memorize wise sayings like, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going;" I lived it through sport.
   When I took my now-teenaged son Tem on his first backpacking trip soon after he arrived home from Ethiopia seven years ago, I reminded him to never ever quit.  Over time this slogan has become our phrase.  We use it together all the time.  I love that.  In the last few months, those words have come back to me as well, and I hear them in Tem's little seven-year-old voice.  Keep going!  Don't quit!  You've got this!  Push through!
   This is the value of sport.  Have a great year, Northpointe Christian High School!  You've got this.  Remember the lessons you gather along the way.  They will make you strong regardless of your wins and losses.  "Never ever quit!"