Winning Forever

This is an article I wrote for an ECS publication called Flight that came out this month. 

Our former Headmaster Mr. Steve Collums for as long as I can remember referred to athletics at Evangelical Christian School as “co-curricular.” I always had the picture in my head that he meant for athletics at ECS to “run along side” of academics in an effort to aid, enhance, and complete its mission beyond the classroom setting. Never in all my years at this school did it occur to me that winning should trump the lessons and relationships that come through the daily strivings of practice. Winning alone, even winning them all, cannot be co-curricular.

In 1999 as the last seconds rolled off the clock securing a 13-0 state championship season, I stepped across the white sideline and onto a field of wild, jubilant, mayhem. Players, coaches, and fans swarmed the field high -fiving, hugging, shouting, cheering, crying …displaying every possible emotion in the immediate aftermath of that victory. That kind of scene floats in the dreams of every high school player. It had floated in mine as a coach. We all came to know it as the “The Dream Season”. And that day, dreams became reality on the turf of Vanderbilt Stadium.

Yet, twenty minutes into the celebration, I distinctly remember asking myself, “Is this it?” The power of the moment had fled almost as rapidly as it had burst out at the expiration of the clock. Glory proved fleeting and it would only pause for a very short while before it dashed on leaving behind the sobering recognition that we would have to do it all again the next year if we wanted this feeling.

Fast forward to 2013. Once again I found myself treading the turf of Vanderbilt Stadium, only this time our team wouldn’t be playing there for a championship. We were walking through … practicing. We were on our way to another stadium and yet another state championship game.

 The tunnel, the turf, the stadium ambushed me. I found myself walking alone on the same sideline I had walked 14 years earlier but now with tears streaming down my face. I sat on a bench and wept. I wept because the game of football had revealed the character of those young men to me and I missed them. I loved them. I loved the process of coaching those boys and watching them grow into men.

Frankly, that’s what we do in athletics at Evangelical Christian School. We love the process. Winning just doesn’t last long enough. Winning is just window dressing for the process called coaching. Our Athletic Director Geoff Walters seems cagey to some people when they ask him about the prospects of our teams and he replies, “I’ll tell ya in about 15 years.” What he means is that the success of our athletic program has nothing to do with wins and losses but has everything to do with the process of helping young people live lives of integrity and influence for Christ.

A recent conversation with Bill Edwards (’00), member of that 1999 Dream Season, confirmed yet again the long lasting power of an athletic program committed to the process of growing young men and women of integrity. “We had a group of godly men who invested in us not only as athletes but in life!  The coaches at ECS spoke truth into our lives and modeled for us what it means to be a godly man, husband, father, etc..”  Bill went on to say  “The influence that the coaches had in my life and many others is absolutely priceless, and I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to be a part of that community.  You just don't find that same commitment at the next levels.” Having played D-1 college baseball and spent a good deal of time in the minor leagues, he’s encountered plenty of coaches.

Kelsey Huggins (‘11) explains that the chief lesson of her ECS athletic career centered on grace. “The most valuable lesson I learned was one about grace. Our coaches not only taught us the skills and strategies to succeed on the field, but they showed us how to play with humility and walk away from a game with dignity.  Looking back, I don't remember the games we lost or the good plays I made.  Instead, when I look back on my recent days as an ECS athlete, I remember the grace and love my coaches and teammates showed me.” Kelsey has gone on to share those lessons of grace while working in Africa and Guatemala over the past year.

Early in May, Palmer Albertine (’00) delivered the chapel message centered on his relationship with his best friend and teammate from that 1999 team. Palmer’s passionate retelling of Brandon Fitzhugh’s (’00) tragic death was a powerful example of the same grace that Kelsey mentioned. His love for Brandon, whose life was spiraling out of control, was forged on the athletic fields of ECS and in an environment where Palmer was certain that “…their (coaches) real concern wasn’t about winning games, but about winning the eternal game.” That eternal perspective finds Palmer as an elementary PE teacher and coach at Presbyterian Day School where he is now investing himself in the lives of young boys and keeping the process that began at ECS going.

Countless other examples of the impact of the ECS athletic program live on in the likes of Barrett Jones and Morgan Cox, but theirs is a big stage. However, many more former ECS athletes play on smaller stages all over the world. Some of them are PE teachers, restaurateurs, preachers, missionaries, soldiers, cadets, moms and dads. Some sell stocks and bonds and some of them raise chickens in Africa. What they do doesn’t matter so much as why they do. And the why comes from an understanding that all of life is practice for eternal life. And practice matters.

I think the tears that clouded my vision last fall at Vanderbilt served as a fitting prism to see clearly once again that we are about something infinitely more important than a winning season. We are about winning people. Forever.