So You Want To Fight?
So You Want To Fight?
I was sitting at the long table in the school cafeteria, my plate now pushed aside, staring at a single sheet of paper, the sparse notes of my speech scattered haphazardly over the page. In a few minutes I was to give the keynote speech of our Fall athletic banquet.
On either side of me, my team mates sat engaging in loose banter and laughter. I did not join them.
Rather, I glanced at the large man sitting with other parents at a table across the room. He was the board member who was proposing cutting the athletic program from our small school. I knew what I was going to say in defense of sports, and I was certain he wouldn’t like it.
The future of many young people was hanging in the balance. If the athletic program was cut, they would not have a chance to fight and compete as I had over the last five years since I went out for football in the eight grade. I couldn’t remember why I joined the team then. It was probably due to pressure from my older brother who had been a star athlete in high school.
I was five foot, eleven inches tall in the eight grade. Big kids were expected to play sports; the whole community seemed to expect it. If you didn’t, you were considered a “sissy boy.”
So I went out for football and excelled. In my sophomore year I beat out two seniors for the starting position at end. I lettered that year and the next. In my senior year, I received an all-conference metal in football, and earned honorable mention for all-state.
Now, here I was. My coaches and my team mates were expecting me to achieve as much with my words and my thoughts. Could I do it?
Before I knew it, my coach was announcing my name to the crowded room of parents, townspeople, and school teachers and staff . . . not to mention the team cheerleaders. Kathy, a pretty blond sophomore had always asked to wear my letterman’s jacket at every football game, as the cheerleaders cheered us on from the sidelines.
It had not been a pretty year in football. We lost our first seven games . . . but we never gave up. We were not expected to win our last game either, facing a much bigger team from Cass Lake, Minnesota.
But we were not about to lay down and quit. The battle was tight all through the first three quarters. The score was 14 to point 12 going into the fourth quarter. Then when we didn’t convert on third down, Greg, the quarterback drew a daring play out of thin air, one that wasn’t in our playbook.
I was the punter and it was fourth down. “George,” Greg said. “Fake the punt. I’ll run down as if I’m covering and fade to the left. When I get open, hit me.”
Whoa! We had never practiced this play . . . and now we were to pull it off? But the huddle was breaking and I didn’t have time to think about it.
So I faked the punt and I watched Greg speed down the field and fade to the left. He was open. With all my might I heaved the ball down the field to the spot he was headed for.
. . . And he caught it . . . a fifty yard gain.
That sealed the game. Though we were the underdogs no one expected to win, we did it. We won 20 to 12. In the coming days, we learned the rumble had gone all over Cass Lake. “Why did you let those scrawny guys from Kelliher beat you?”
Well, it was now or never! As I got up from the table, I caught the sight of Greg looking up at me. “We’re counting on you, George. Speak for the team. Give us a victory.”
I cleared my throat, greeted everyone, and launched into my speech. Once I got going, the words just kept on tumbling out, gathering steam and momentum, because this was important to me. I wanted to fight . . . to fight for team sports and the countless young men who would miss out, if I failed to prove my case.
I talked about competition, about training, about never giving up, about building character . . . character that would start a young man out on the right foot for all the many future challenges of life.
I won. The board member lost. After the ceremony, many parents crowded around him, angrily asking him why he wanted to cut sports.
“I don’t want to cut sports,” was his reply. He was cornered, outnumbered, and he knew it. He recognized the odds were against him and, I guess, changed his mind while I was filling the room with accolades about the value of sports.
So, not only did I have the privilege of competing in the games, but I also was given the stage where I could passionately defend what I believed in. And I won, the team won, the coaches and parents won, and the community won.
The opportunity to fight and win served me well all through my life and up to the present. I am still fighting, fighting for young people who have been estranged from the church, young people who have been victimized by Woke ideology in the schools, young people who are often misunderstood by the adult population.
As I write this article, I look back on the week and I have to say Lorraine and I have made some progress. We called on five schools, introducing a dynamic youth speaker that we place in schools, and we had some success. Two of the schools are taking further action to plan an event with Jesse Paul Smith, a friend and premier youth speaker who gives hope and energy to the dreams of young people.
Why do we do it? Because we can.
We can bring Jesse into the schools, and when we book him, we know we will together change the lives of many students who may feel they have been left behind, have fallen through the cracks, have given up on being successful and making a difference in the world. Jesse’s words give them hope, and isn’t that what it’s all about? Hope?
Every human being must have the opportunity to hope, to hope for a good life, to hope for opportunities to excel, to fight and win the challenges of life.
We can touch them. Every life is of supreme importance to God. Why shouldn’t that life, then, be of importance to us . . . to the point that we do something about it?
I want to encourage each and every reader of this article to pray for the young people of our nation.
As one youth pastor said, “Young people are our greatest natural resource.”
They are. They are also our hope for the future of the nation.
Fight! Fight for our young people. If you haven’t figured out what you can do, then stop resting on the sidelines, and figure it out. Pray! Then get busy doing what God wants you to do. With an open heart, you can learn and understand what that is.
Then do it! Fight for our young people and fight for freedom and liberty in our nation.