“anonymous”

If I may beg your indulgence a bit, I have a love story of sorts.  Inspired in part by “anonymous”.

If you love the game:

     “…then life truly began when the season started.”  

Team dinners are the best sit down meal of the week.  

Hudl is your preferred form of social media

Bruises are your favorite fall colors

Wearing white to out of town events is still permissible after Labor Day

Tape has become your socks 

You accessorize with ice packs

Eye black brings out your cheekbones

And the hitch in your giddy-up later in life is still your source of pride and joy. 

If you love the game:

Having the opportunity to practice the day after a game is as big a deal as playing under the lights on Friday nights.  

Scout team is the ideal way to contribute. A golden opportunity to make the team maximize its potential and achieve its goals. 

A role on special teams may be your ticket to change the course of a game – or season – through superlative effort and will. 

If you love the game:

Then no matter what – A or B, JV or reserve, starter, or finish out the rout – “just get me on that field. “

Being wedded to a position will never supplant being bonded to a unit or the team.

Still being there for them though hurt casts a lasting impression.  

You can’t be hung up on the division.  Just play on in college.  

If you love the game: 

Embrace the blessings and needs of being a member of a large, multigenerational, extended family 

Depend upon the friends you found in the weight room, during speed and agility, at morning misery, during two a days, and with your back to the goal line.  

They are here for you now – and most likely will be later on in life. 

If you love the game: 

Stop an errant “brother”, diffuse a bad situation, console a friend in need, and raise another up even if you are down.

Invest.  Time given freely to another is a precious gift. 

Smile the most when accolades and attention for your team and teammates are delivered.   

Be humble; you are but one in a long line of fine athletes that came before – and will follow you. 

Commit.  Relentless effort, stellar character and extraordinary leadership regardless of your role is the best way to honor that big family.

If you love the game: 

Honor all of this for what it truly is; a rare and fleeting privilege.

Lean in.  A challenge of this magnitude – to work harder than you ever have at something, and then, work even harder than that  – is an extraordinary opportunity.  One that needs to be accepted with genuine and lasting gratitude.

Let go.  Giving up all of you for something bigger is a life-changing event.

If you love the game: 

Trust.  That all of them will honor the sacrifices you make on their behalf in kind. 

Respect.  Everyone has something in them that can make this team like no other – before or after. 

Affirm.  Prove their genuine worth to you through your thoughts, words and deeds. 

 Be accountable.  Yes, to the ones with the whistles.  

But more so to your partner in the weight room.  Those sharing morning misery. The one next to you on the bus.  Your teammates doing up-downs.  Your unit when you huddle.  The three-tech on the line of scrimmage.  And that guy next to you right here, right now.  

If you love the game: 

Make it about all of them by leaving all of you on that field.  

Because if you can love the game this much, then because of you, they will love the game too. 

Thanks for the inspiration,  “Anonymous”

I love it.

“Team Together”

“Standing at Hoop Camp watching my boys scrimmage. I overhear the coach in the huddle say “team” and the players say “together”. Makes my heart ache but at the same time fill full. If that’s possible😕‪#‎teamtogetherforever‬ — at Homestead High School (Mequon, Wisconsin). – Kira Chekouras Testin

Sometimes, an individual will come along that is the embodiment of a message. 

Living a life – as conveyed through their thoughts, words and deeds – that is meant to share and teach some essential and lasting truths. 

And individuals of that magnitude possess mass.  And it is the specific gravity of them and their purpose that inevitably draws others toward them.  

Like Coach Chekouras.

Both he, and what he still stands for – resonates.  

Perhaps this is what Kira felt today at basketball camp.  

….“cause Coach was there.  

His message  was certainly still reverberating through those coaches and campers.

Now someone once said that “every act creates a ripple with no logical end”.  

A statement, I believe, is  intended to describe the impact good – from a single point of contact – can exert on the world around it.

So just imagine the good of this individual.  An impact of lasting resonance yet today. 

Through not just one, but now, generational points of contact.  

Years, and years and years apart. 

Ripple, upon ripple,  upon ripple, upon ripple.    

Coach lived that message.  And even today, he yet lives within it.

Remaining to this day, its embodiment.  

Just ask those campers.  

For it resonates within all of them.  

“Team Together”. 

(Coach Chekouras entered eternal life in 2006. I came across his daughter’s reaction to the players response at a Hoops Camp, and shared this initially in 2015. I came across it and thought it worthy of a re-share.)

  .  

Pure joy.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. “

James 1:2-8

As we leave the old, the comfortable, the familiar and make our way into the new, disquieting and unseen that lay ahead, all of us will be tested in some fashion or another.  

We can decide to respond with fear, an attitude of avoidance  or ignore  these challenges altogether.  But then again,  we can choose to embrace them for what they truly are.  

Lessons. 

These  will come in all shapes imaginable, endless varieties of configurations, woven into  layers.  And over time, by actively embracing faith,  its sibling perseverance will come to fruition  and their meanings will become evident.  

It is not to say that these meanings are necessarily only an end result.  That  “ah ha !” moment.  Could very well be that they make themselves known in various forms.  

Perhaps as  the time it took to discern.  Maybe as a temporary setback.  Or set aside so that another more urgent lesson could be attended to.  

It could have been experienced as  changes that occurred within our being as we embraced these lessons.  How we came to grow and evolve into something we were intended to be.   

Deeper lessons still. 

All of which depend on our ability to  believe in what could not yet be seen.  

Faith.  

Resolutely sticking to it, with unfettered resolve, while letting go at the same time.  

Perseverance. 

All because we believe in what we have not yet seen.

Faith  and perseverance exist in a perfect union. The active act of patience – waiting for what you know to be true  – so that you can nourish the  persistence that enables you to make the journey .  Leading us to discover the life we intend to live.  

All so that you may be mature, complete and not lacking anything. 

And realize the product of your endeavor. 

Pure joy.

Desire

“Desire is the strong wish, longing or craving to do or have something truly important to you. 

It is something that originates deep within your core; the very center of your being. In some cases, it might be so intense, it becomes a welcome distraction. A sense to the extent that it can even be felt in a physical sense. 

We all know how important goals are. But if there is no hunger or urgency attached to accomplishing them, then they are nothing more than items on some generic bucket-list. An array of things merely meant to be crossed off.  

But what it really comes down to is the depth, width and breadth of your desire. Your passion. Your will to work. Sacrifice. Persevere.  Achieve.  And ultimately succeed. You need to have desire in such an abundance that the gain becomes worth overcoming all of the pain. 

If you choose, you can always pay lip service to your goals. You can elect to go through the motions just to check things off your list, so you can say that you did it or something. 

But if you have a burning desire, something that you are willing to sacrifice for and has become a part of you, then you have a desire that has captured your heart. You nor your spirit will not rest until it becomes yours. 

So take it off that  list.  

And make it your own. “

Pastor Ellsworth Freyer – CAO 

Chief Attitude Officer

“…grace under pressure”

Courage. Perseverance.  Intestinal fortitude.  Grit. 

Words you might choose to describe “guts” – a trait not readily grasped or easily defined.  

In 1929, when pressed by a reporter for his definition of “guts”, American writer, and Nobel Laureate, Ernest Hemingway responded in his typical, storied fashion, saying, “By ‘guts’ I mean, grace under pressure”. 

If you think about it, there are all sorts of moments in everyday life that call for “guts” – grace under pressure; walking to the podium to deliver a speech to an auditorium full of strangers, being the only one to stand up for what is right, admitting you have failed. 

Performing with “guts” – grace under pressure – illustrates the very essence of competitive athletics.  

History is made time and again when “guts” overtakes talent. Where the “can’t possibly lose powerhouse” is upended by an underdog, a team that literally scratched and fought their way past a supposedly superior opponent.  Over and over again, talent, preparation, strategy and reputation alone have succumbed to unrelenting effort, unbridled passion, courage and “want to”. 

Guts. 

More often than not, champions are forged solely and entirely on “guts” – grace under pressure.  Playing through exhaustion and pain.  Staring down fear and failure.  Performing on a plane that one never imagined existed. 

Dan Gable, a world-renowned collegiate and Olympic wrestler exemplified this when he said:  “Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.”

This team possesses that hard to find alloy.  

This team has guts. 

Time and again you have found a way to press on, to fight for one more point, to block one more shot, to come back one more time. You have faced the uncertainty that accompanies injury as well as the anxiety of knowing that the next serve could be the last for all of you as this team.  Despite all of the adversity – you have pressed on – playing with “grace under pressure”.  

Playing with guts. 

Once again, you will need to dig for that hard to find alloy tomorrow. 

You will need to mine the vein that runs deep within your team.  Find a way to revel in the moment that you have created for each other this season and make this day your day.   Find comfort and strength in the bonds you have forged and embrace the challenges you meet – “as one”.  

You possess the alloy of champions ladies.  

And your opponent will know it soon enough. 

(Happened upon this from 2009 during the WIAA Girls State Tennis Tournment. Homestead went on to win, capping an amazing season.)