theblackdostoyevsky

What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?

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I attended high school from 2000-2004 at a 26-5A Texas high school football powerhouse, Converse Judson, home of the Rockets. From 1983-2002, Rocket Pride hoisted six state championship trophies and was one of the most recognized football programs in the state for winning and excellence in the sport. Even today in Texas, an inordinate number of great players, collegiate and professional, come out of Texas and/or commit to Texas university football programs, every year. Alabama has Alabama. Florida has the Gators and the Seminoles. Ohio has Ohio State. But Texas has UT, Texas A&M, TCU, SMU, Baylor, Texas Tech . . . you get my point.

I was never a great football player. I’m a basketball player who happened to attend one of the best football high schools in the country, so I played football. I was a part of “the program.” Anyone who has played football in Texas or at any collegiate level knows what I mean when I say “the program.” Every major school’s got one, and the quality of the program is evidenced by its trophy case. There are horrible programs that are still considered programs. There are good programs, like schools that yearly make the playoffs but never win the chip. Then there are great programs, who are perennial playoff contenders but only have one or two championships on their resumes, often from a couple decades back. Then there are legendary programs. When I attended, Converse Judson was a legendary program. When I attended Baylor University, whenever I told anyone who knew anything about football where I’d gone to school, eyebrows raised, followed by a gentle nod of respect. They knew my pedigree; a pedigree that was stamped upon me by “the program.” Okay, enough with the quotation marks.

The program is a simple concept: it’s a school’s way of doing things, regarding the product they put on the field. Good programs maintain all the basic elements: a classroom phase, off-season workouts, spring ball, a running program, weightlifting, padded and unpadded practices, training and recovery. The greater the program, the more meticulous their way of doing things. At Judson, there was a system for checking-in and checking-out equipment, for putting decals on helmets, for cleaning shoulder pads, time clocks for practice segments, for film study, individualized binders for classroom phase, a two-week boot camp that, for its rigor, landed us a local news spot. From locker organization to grade check procedures, from pickle juice slushes for cramps to the yearly Rhodes test, you name it, there was a right and wrong way to go about it. Every day for four years, the soundtracks from all four Rocky movies were piped into the locker rooms and hallways of the fieldhouse. No exceptions; no deviations. You can ask anyone who’s ever attended Judson to sing you the lyrics from “Eye of the Tiger”, and he’ll belt them verbatim, complete with ad libs, beat boxing and mouthed instrumentation. This was a high school.

Our coaches didn’t care much for recruiting. I never saw college scouts at our practices. In fact, that was the one gripe a lot of the players had with our program, that the coaches never advocated for their players at the collegiate level. I remember the mother of one of our better players filming practices of her son to send his tape, herself, to schools she was interested in him attending. Otherwise, our coaches were more focused on the day-to-day grind of running a yearlong football program that was churning out yearly playoff berths and championship teams nearly every four.

I can recall days being on campus, dressed in shorts and shirt for workout, 120 teenage boys lined up in pristine rows in the mat room at 6AM, for workouts before school. Showers were required before school and after athletics because teachers had begun to complain about the stench in their classrooms twice a day. And we still held practices after school. On the day of 9/11, in actual 2001, when the entire nation took the day off to sit astonished in front of the television watching the same footage on repeat, the Judson Rockets were outside on the field, getting a day up on the competition. Think what you want, I loved and still love that program. I wish Converse Judson were, today, what it was back then, because I’d consider moving back home to San Antonio from DFW just so that my children would have the opportunity to learn the true meaning of hard work and determination, how to work to earn, to deserve, victory, in all phases of life.

It’d be impossible for me to explain all of the details of what made Rocket Pride the brotherhood that it was, and now, the pride and joy of thousands of men across the world, young and old. But I think it might be possible for you to understand why it had the impact that it had by sharing with you the mantra and philosophy of the program. Now, I don’t know how our coaches got away with this back then, because you surely wouldn’t be able to do it today. They used a Bible verse as the foundation for the entire football program, and they called it “The Formula for Progress.”

When I coached middle school, I tried to do the Lord’s Prayer with my teams after games, something I learned at Judson. At Judson, we’d recited the Lord’s Prayer after every game and every practice, every day, as long as I was there. Knowing the impact of our program, I tried to recreate as many of the same elements in the middle school programs I ran as a public education teacher as I’d had facilitated for me as a Judson Rocket. One time, my assistant principal witnessed our team saying the Lord’s prayer together and pulled me aside.

“Listen,” he began, “I’m a Christian, too. But you can’t do that. Somebody might be offended.”

“But they’re all doing it. Nobody’s told me they got a problem with it. We’ve been doing this since football season.” It was basketball season, then.

“What if you get a Muslim parent, or someone of another religion, and they complain? That could go badly for you. For the school. You can’t do that.”

We never prayed as a team again.

Maybe times were different back then. Or maybe the success of the Judson program compelled the powers that be to turn a blind eye. Lord knows how these institutions depend upon ticket sales and merch to prop up their institution’s budget shortfalls. Either way, the Formula for Progress is found in the book of Philippians, chapter three, verses thirteen and fourteen, and these two verses have, in ways perceived and unperceived by me, been the catalyst not only for what I choose to do in my life but for how I go about doing it.

“No dear brothers, I do not count myself as to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are ahead, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

And no, we didn’t drop off the part about Christ Jesus. We said that part, too. And we meant it, and we knew our coaches meant it, because discipleship into manhood was a part of the program. I remember those men leading us in Bible studies through the local FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) chapter, and them being vulnerable and honest with us, mere children, about the burdens of manhood, of marriage, of fatherhood, and of responsibility. Now, to this day, whenever I encounter a difficulty, or I’m working out and wanna bail on the last few reps, or my wife and I are in a spat and I want nothing more than to isolate and avoid, or when I’m overwhelmed with anxiety and uncertainty and want a swift return to the bottle, I remember the formula for progress. I remember that I have not yet achieved anything, but that today is another opportunity for my reach to exceed my grasp, as I stretch forward for the greater, higher calling in my Lord, forgetting whatever mistakes I made yesterday, or even the successes I experienced, because yesterday is forever gone, and tomorrow will never come, and the moment I allow myself to believe that I’ve arrived I shortchange His supernatural life within me and begin, at that point, to die. Because there is no standing still in this life. Life is on a slope, and we’re either climbing or sliding.

So, get busy living, or get busy dying.