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Milwaukee Bucks Jake Voskuhl, Carolina Hurricanes Glen Wesley, former MLB player Alvin Dark, FCA President Les Steckel
When sports fans think about hockey—and in particular the NHL—there’s no telling what imagery might come to mind.
For some, hockey is all about the pinpoint passing skills. For others, it’s the forceful nature of the slap shot. Some might even reference the catlike prowess of the ever-alert goalkeepers, and their distinctive protective gear and colorful masks. Of course, most can’t talk about hockey without mentioning the bone-crushing cross-checks into the boards or those legendary (if not mandatory) nightly brawls.
Hockey Chat: What if you were to get to spend a month with Wayne Gretzky (or Martin Brodeur for you goalies) and they spent day and night giving you tips and coaching? That would make you pretty great. But if the month was over and you went back to playing your way and forgetting everything you had been taught, losing your talents you had been just gained. It would seem foolish. Like a waste of a great opportunity.
Coach Sleepy Thompson was one of those coaches that everyone wanted to play for. He not only knew how to win football games, but also how to develop young men. As my high school football coach, I remember him as an encourager—a coach that instilled life into his players. We walked a little taller as a result of his living out one of his favorite sayings, “Accentuate the positive.” A day would not go by without Coach Thompson reminding us of that principle. It was short and sweet and yielded powerful results. He stressed accentuating the positive at every practice and made it an essential characteristic of our team. He focused on the good in players instead of the bad; the future instead of the past. His words gave us purpose and meaning.
When you walk onto a court to play a game, do you immediately think that you’re going to lose or that you’re going to win? Do you stare at your opponents while they warm up and begin to wonder why you even laced up your Nikes, or do you focus on giving your all? Do you see obstacles, or do you see opportunities?
In Numbers 13, the spies were sent into Canaan to check out the land. God had already given them great victories in battle and rescued them from tough situations. During the 40 days that they were evaluating the land, they could have seen a great opportunity, but they didn’t.
Sometimes we think we are doing the right thing only to find out we were really off track!
In 1982, the Miami Dolphins football team faced the New England Patriots at Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Snow began to fall during the game, and by the fourth quarter the wintry conditions had contributed to a scoreless tie. But late in the game, the Patriots drove down the field and came within field-goal range, where a successful kick would likely win the game. The New England coach ordered a snowplow to clear a spot for the kicking team, enabling the kicker to set his foot firmly on the turf. As a result, he kicked the game-winning field goal.
Alvin Battle, a member of the 1983 North Carolina State college basketball championship team, talks about how God is still using what took place in his life more than 25 years ago to bring glory to Christ.
By most accounts, Kay Yow shouldn’t be one of the greatest women’s basketball coaches of all time. History alone presents many reasons why her rise to legendary status was improbable at best.
There’s something about purpose, something about buying into the concept of destiny that inherently evens the odds.
Nowhere will you find more examples of this principle than in the Bible, where unlikely heroes saved entire nations. Moses was a self-conscious exile with a speech problem, yet God used him to free the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. David was an undersized shepherd boy living under the shadow of his strong, able-bodied older brothers; still he was empowered to kill the mammoth Philistine warrior Goliath and rescue his people from certain defeat. Mary was a teenage girl from a nondescript lineage, but God called her to be the mother of Jesus, the Savior of the world.
In 2003, LPGA golfer Annika Sorenstam became the first woman in 58 years to compete with men in a PGA tournament. Although she missed the cut by four shots, she had a respectable tournament and finished as well as or better than several of her competitors. “I tested myself from start to finish,” she said afterward. “That’s why I was here.” Sorenstam put herself to the test to find out just how good she was.
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