The Arrangement

 

The Arrangement

In our WCS basketball camps, we always try to talk about other things in the teaching process besides basketball. Leadership is one topic. The following is from 6-21-06.

The game is Team Competitive and it is one of the contests we use at our basketball camps. The rules are uncomplicated. Lines are formed at each elbow. (Elbow refers to the place where the free throw line and the lane intersect.) Each line has one basketball. The player at the front of each line shoots once, chases the ball, and returns it as quickly as possible to the next person in that same line. Games continue until one team has seven baskets and is sitting with the ball resting with the first person. Penalty points are deducted anytime a team member fails to mimic, or shoot an imaginary shot concurrently with the shooter. I am blessed with two great groups of girls this week. After lunch, my team is named the LONGHORNS. So far this week, the LONGHORNS have struggled. Several of the girls have the chance to be good shooters but we have not fared well when shooting versus other teams. It was announced thirty minutes into our session that we were going to have a camp wide Team Competitive shootout. Honestly, there was no reason to think the LONGHORNS would win any matches. Before we played our first round opponent, one of the girls asked me a question. Allyson inquired if they could line up in the order that would give them the best chance to win. You might think logically that would always be the way they approach a competition but it isn't. My answer was in the affirmative. As a result, the girls arranged themselves from one to nine, with one being the strongest shooter and nine being the weakest. It also meant the better shooters were likely to take more shots and the poorer shooters were likely to take fewer. Early in the week, I talked to the girls about finding ways to win. I mentioned lining up your best shooters first. (In a camp setting, I don't array the kids by skill level but I was thrilled they were listening.) There is also the risk someone will get their feelings hurt; no one wants to be last. After we finished, I made the point that if they did not want to be at the rear of the team, there was an option- improve. Guess what happened when the contests started? The LONGHORNS won elimination games versus three other squads and lost a close match to a boys' team in the finals before the entire camp. I really like these kids. They are good listeners and have shown much improvement this week. The biggest improvement came from Allyson. Some of the other girls might have been thinking it would help to align by ability. Allyson is the youngest girl on the team, a sixth grader, AND the only one brave enough to verbalize the obvious. When the opportunity presented itself, she took a position of leadership.

The hardest part of coaching girls is finding leaders. It is much easier to find skilled players than players who willingly fill leadership roles. My belief is that young ladies are so afraid of teammates' reactions to them that they will bury their talents rather than risk being criticized. But what I've found is that players will enthusiastically follow a good leader, someone who puts the well-being of the group ahead of their own interests. In the end, the best interest of the team is the best interest of the leader. Probably the finest leader I've ever coached was Karie Stewart, a marginal player at her peak but one who commanded the attention and respect of every other girl in the locker room. She would encourage, push, instruct, and take a stand if the situation demanded it. I wish you could bottle it but you can't, just like you can't force someone into the responsibility. Families, businesses, schools, and especially churches are dying for someone to step out and be extraordinary. Read any history book- read the Bible- and see that it isn't always pleasant to be out in front. But the rewards for the group can make it more than an acceptable risk to take. Ask Allyson. She has talent and she proved this afternoon that she's not afraid to set herself apart in a positive way. She has a chance.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Effective leadership is putting first things first."
Stephen Covey

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The New Normal

 

The New Normal

I waited too long in life to get out of my shell in any number of ways. This is from August 2, 2013.

I’m typing this somewhere on the road between Abilene, Texas and Houston. I’m with my fellow teachers returning to Westbury Christian following a two day Texas Christian School Association inservice hosted by Abilene Christian University. I’m not sure where we are but we just passed the Hamilton County Courthouse if that provides any perspective. I've been home from Vietnam ninety-six hours and I’m sleeping well but I’m not back to normal. This morning, I was reading the Sports Illustrated website and looking at yesterday’s scores and I caught myself thinking, ‘What time is it in the US?’ It hit me that I’m back in the US. Then at breakfast in the motel, as I sat with Kenneth Okwuono, my trip roommate, I was enjoying a blueberry smoothie. Kenneth very kindly informed me I was drinking a cup of waffle batter. I did think it tasted on the doughy side.

My timing of the last five missions I've taken, all to China and Vietnam, coincides with the beginning of inservice which is much earlier than when my teaching career began. The school has been gracious and has let me miss some days of inservice when needed. When you buy international tickets, you really deal with availability, even making reservations four months in advance as I usually do. I could get back earlier but it would make my trip shorter. I can't go in June because of basketball camps and every other summer we have a 4th of July Chesshir family reunion. I don't leave myself recovery time but it's OK- I need to return to the part of my life that's most familiar.

In the presidential campaign of 1920, Warren G. Harding ran for the White House with the slogan a return to normalcy. The US was only two years removed from World War I and even then, folks were longing for the good old days. Part of me when I come home wants the comfort of my routine, the part of my life where I feel at ease. But I found myself thinking as I was riding down the back roads of Vietnam on the back of a scooter that my life was somewhat boring before I went on my first mission trip to Honduras in 1998. It was a wonderful life but there was something missing and I didn't yet know it. Here, I'm not even speaking of the spiritual aspect of the trips which is the reason for their existence. I just found out that there is so much of the world I never dreamed of growing up in small town Nebraska and that walking down the streets and alleys of these exotic places would change my perspective and make me a better teacher. Honestly, I need to be kicked at times to stretch myself and it took a big boot for me. Each year, I have my students memorize Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10:
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do."
Maybe for most of my life I missed the opportunity of those good works by making sure I didn't stray too far from home. Over the years, I've come to redefine the word normal. Definitions in our language can be fluid. So, too, can be the boundaries of our lives.

Applicable quote of the day:
“I didn't want normal until I didn't have it anymore”
Maggie Stiefvater

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Price Of Ben Franklin

 

The Price Of Ben Franklin

Coincidentally, I am meeting with Ann Stone several hours from now as I prepare for this year's mission to Vietnam, # 14! This entry is from June 27, 2018.
I met yesterday morning with Ann Stone who is our church accountant. All the money that comes in to help my mission trip to Vietnam goes through Ann for both tax reasons and transparency. We have a number of things to work through this week on both hers and my end. In my initial missions to Honduras and Haiti, I was with groups so there was no money to spend but that has changed since I began venturing out on my own, and by my own I certainly do not mean without the Lord! Changing money in other countries is not always easy. I remember my first trip to Honduras seeing these men with big stacks of money willing to turn our dollars into their lempera! For several years in Vietnam, we dealt with ATM machines which is sometimes a roll of the dice and often time consuming. We've improved our methods in recent trips but that a still leaves changing the cash I carry into dong, the currency of Vietnam. Hai, the preacher, usually takes me to a pawn shop instead of a bank because the rates are slightly better. Last summer, while at the pawn shop, the girl at the register was very apologetic when I went to convert a $100 bill. She explained that since the bill was older, she could not give me full credit for it. I really at the time had no other options so I took it gratefully. It cost me about one dollar in the exchange versus the full price I would have received with a new bill. I have so much to learn!!

Since the Lord expects stewardship out of His children, I thought the least I could do this summer would be to take all my US currency in fresh, crisp hundreds. Yesterday afternoon, I dropped into my local Chase bank and requested a chat with the customer service folks. A wonderful young lady who has helped me before took on my request. She told me that new hundred dollar bills are very rare and the banks usually only get them around Christmas time, in her opinion, for gift envelopes. But she didn't leave it at that. Picking up the phone, she called five or six other Chase locations and with one exception, they had no new hundreds. Since I still had to make a decision on how much I wanted to take in cash and get the check printed from Ann, I wasn't able to take advantage of that one exception. I'm going in to Chase tomorrow to get my old, worn out hundred dollar bills but I did learn two valuable lessons. One is that I don't know much about currency and two, stay with a business that goes the extra mile for their customers.

You may have seen that illustration in church where the preacher crumples up a twenty dollar bill, stomps on it, and asks, "Who wants it?" Of course, everybody does because we understand its value is not connected to its appearance. But we know that's not the way everything in the world works. Like the pawn shop in Vietnam, and I'm not criticizing their policy, higher worth in society is placed on things that look new and flawless. Fortunately, that's not God's standard. Our value is not weighed on the scale of physical perfection. We are made in God's image, even if we aren't Brad Pitt or Miss Universe. The best known Bible verse, John 3:16, doesn't say God so loved the lovely or the brilliant or the rich or the talented. In that scripture quoted in every Sunday school class, Jesus Christ says, "For God so loved the world......" And we realize the exchange rate for the world- the death of the Father's only son. That rate won't rise and fall due to inflation or the Federal Reserve or the price of a barrel of oil. It's set for eternity and praise God that it is.


Applicable quote of the day:

“You’re not a one hundred dollar bill- not everyone is going to like you.”
Meg Cabot

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Shawn Bradley Is Terrible

 

Shawn Bradley Is Terrible

Perceptions are everything and often wrong. In January of 2021, Shawn was in a bicycle accident which left him paralyzed and in a wheel chair. This is from June 8, 2014. 

Last Thursday during our basketball camp, I asked one of the young men who played for our WCS boys' team what he thought of ex-NBA player, Shawn Bradley. Without hesitation, he answered, "He was terrible, Coach!" I countered with several facts. Bradley is 16th all-time in blocked shots in the NBA. He had a 12 year career and was the 2nd overall pick in the 1993 draft. On top of that, he made seventy million dollars playing the game. I could have also thrown in that Shawn Bradley once led the league in blocked shots for a season but I would have been wasting my breath. The young man would not be swayed. "He's terrible, Coach!" You know, that's a pretty common assessment of Shawn Bradley. From a town of 1,000 in Utah, Bradley, who is 7'6", played at Brigham Young University and served a two year mission in Australia before making himself eligible for the NBA draft upon his return. There were a number of basketball experts who predicted professional stardom for Bradley, some even foreseeing his revolutionizing roundball. It was not to be.

If you're wondering how all of this Shawn Bradley interest came up, it coincided with my watching an ESPN 30 For 30 twelve minute documentary on Bradley called Posterized, the title referring to the famous dunk shown at the top of this entry. In that famous sequence, the Houston Rockets' Tracy McGrady is shown jamming the ball over the much bigger Bradley, which turned out to be a common occurrence if you look on YouTube. The director, Andrew Jenks, was unable for months to arrange an interview with Bradley so much of the interaction comes from talking with the delightfully acerbic coach of the Rockets at the time of the play, Jeff Van Gundy, who was in the background of the dunk's film version. JVG, as he is often referred to in basketball circles, gave some intriguing analysis of Bradley as a player, comparing him to three other formidable big men he coached; Dikembe Mutombo, Yao Ming, Patrick Ewing. Van Gundy was much more charitable to Bradley than our WCS player and offered observations on his career which were fascinating. But I still wanted to hear from Bradley himself.

Finally, Andrew Jenks was able to set up an interview with Bradley and it made me really appreciate the ex-76er/Net/Maverick. He was apologetic for putting off Jenks but made the comment that the media had often been critical of him. He told a little bit of his life story in and out of basketball, including his devotion to his family and his church. I really liked what he said about his wife, that his greatest accomplishment in the NBA was staying married in an arena where gorgeous women make themselves available to the players non-stop. He told about how the front office of the Philadelphia 76ers set up a players-only dinner with the location being a topless bar and how he refused to go, even at the threat of a $10,000 fine. Our world would be so much better if all of us, let alone celebrities, held ourselves to high standards of conduct.

How do we want to be remembered? One of the film/sound bites of the 30 For 30 came from Sixty Minutes clips made while he was still in college. Bradley was asked if he'd ever been interviewed and not been asked about his height. His response was that he wasn't sure if anyone had ever spoken to him without his height being mentioned. Near the end of the ESPN show, Bradley tells how he researched and thinks he is one of only thirty or so folks on the planet who are his size. Imagine, never being able to blend into a crowd anywhere on earth! And maybe that's why his basketball career was such a disappointment to some- that tall and yet that, and I hate to use the word, average. As the Bradley piece was winding to a close, they talked about some things most folks don't know about him. How he and his wife have worked in leper colonies in India. How he has made multiple trips to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to support our troops. How he now works as a principal in a high school for at-risk kids in Salt Lake City, helping turning their lives around one step at a time. And how he serves as a volunteer soccer coach for his daughter's team. And how he and his lovely bride have surpassed twenty years of marriage. Still, to many in the world who enthusiastically follow sports, Shawn Bradley can be defined by one word; terrible. I only wish I could be that bad. 

*Note: I talked to Trey Austin, our WCS boys' coach and camp director, about what I was going to write. Trey, a Westbury alumni, played major college basketball and professionally overseas. He told me how easy it is to fall into the trap of not thinking NBA players are good. He talked about playing against bench players in the NBA and how unbelievably talented they are, but the fan cannot always see that side of it.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Whose to judge him? Look at all he's accomplished. You're judging him on a twelve year period. He should be judged over the course of his life and what he's able to bring to this world."
Jeff Van Gundy (Speaking about Shawn Bradley on 30 For 30)

To watch the ESPN show I wrote about, copy and paste this link. It's well worth twelve minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntvUNeceOgM

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

# 118- SAY GOODBYE TO BETSY

 

# 118- SAY GOODBYE TO BETSY

This entry from June 25, 2018 is about the relocating of one of my favorite colleagues!

I used to make lists all the time but now I'm down to basically one per year. In nine days, in fact, from this moment, I take off for Can Tho, Vietnam by way of Manchester, Singapore, and Saigon/HCMC. To get from POINT A to POINT Z requires, in my case at least, a list. I'm at 143 with more to come. Some are easy- set dates, buy ticket, get a VISA. Some can only be checked off on the last day- clean the apartment, no food left in the refrigerator. Others are in between- stop mail, pay rent for July, wash the car. You can see from the shot above that I'm sloppy in penmanship and that some entries would only make sense to me. Some you can't see are advice to myself- less time on the laptop, read good stuff every day, etc. and some have nothing to do with the trip but have to be done before I get the airport like oil changes and car inspections. I actually re-read the lists from the past several summers to make sure I haven't forgotten anything important. Life has to go on while I'm preparing. No life is lived in a vacuum. All of us have numerous story lines we're acting upon each and every day so in a sense, we are all actors!

Which brings me to # 118 in the picture. For the past several weeks, I've transported campers between our WCS camps which are held on our two campuses, several minutes apart. Invariably, when I would come in the front lobby, Betsy would be seated at a table right in front of the door handling the children in our ASAP program, making sure they were signed in and dispensing the required name tags. I've known Betsy for less than two years. She came here to teach third grade right out, I think, of Harding University in August of 2016 and was recently married. I saw early that year she was FACEBOOK friends with my cousin Hannah, the kind of connection I always find fascinating. Over time, I grew to deeply appreciate Betsy, and our other third grade instructor, Jackie. For two years, and I don't know how it started, my afternoon junior's Gospels class has adopted our combined third grade sections.  We've colored Bible artwork and designed Honduras/Haiti bottles and sorted pennies and shared snacks. I've watched Betsy love on her kids unconditionally, and that sometimes is the tough love variety, and seen the resultant growth from still little ones who face battles I've never fought. Much of the success we've had the past two years in our fundraising efforts for children in Haiti and Honduras can be traced to the untiring efforts of Betsy and Jackie. My schedule is easy to manipulate to create these special times but it isn't for third grade teachers. But they did it because they love their kiddos and by doing so, they love me and my classes and differences were made.

Betsy gave me the bad news last week. She and her husband have bought a house and are moving to The Woodlands which is technically in Houston but might as well be in Louisiana, I was taken aback. Changing jobs and leaving schools is part of the education landscape, maybe even more in private schools than in public. I know from experience. Twice, I've left schools and moved to other states and it's never easy. Some miss you and some don't and you start a new chapter in your life, regardless. I guess I just thought Betsy would be here a very long time and I'm sad for the children who will miss out on her gifts. She's got a new job and will bless her new kiddos and colleagues immeasurably..... but we will miss her. That's why she showed up in my Vietnam list. I've got another week but leaving without saying goodbye would make as much sense to me as leaving without packing. The old Civil War song mourned, "We will meet but we will miss him, There will be an empty chair." I wonder if the apostles set an extra place for Jesus after He went back to heaven? Knowing Betsy, she'll be back to visit and hug the children she nurtured for two years and it will seem in that moment like she never left. That's the way the Lord made us, with traits of loyalty and memory and the ability to re-establish the ties that bind. Those kind of ties are unbreakable and praise God that they are.

Applicable quote of the day:
“Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn’t work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.” 
Charles M. Schulz

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Correlation

 

The Correlation

Some things we believe are related are not in actuality! This is from June 24, 2018.

Recently, a number of my entries have been about basketball even though it's the summer time or it has been since June 21, three days ago. It's basketball camp time all across the USA which is where my topics come in. Every year since I don't know when, I've put on a free throw clinic for the camps I've worked, including the eleven I put on with my high school team in Tennessee. The first part of my presentation is a bit of advice on how coaches view players and how to better your chances of not getting cut; don't always be last in line, don't dribble or talk when the coach is speaking, being funny doesn't get you a uniform, etc. I also give some examples of great free throw shooters and poor ones. I talk about kids who have played for me and circumstances we saw on the free throw line. I mention Rick Barry who shot underhanded and was one of the great shooters of all time but no kid will shoot that way because they would be mocked. I talk about dropping rocks into Grandpa Chesshir's well and never missing. I always conclude with a teaching tool I learned from legendary coach Don Meyer on the six steps of shooting a free throw. Over the twenty years I've been here, I have done it at least one hundred times so a number of our long term campers could give it for me!

Every week of camp, I try to read some about free throws on the Internet just to keep from getting stale. This year, I read a New York Times article about free throw shooting over the years. Did you know that national free throw percentages in men's college basketball has remained unchanged since 1965 while almost every other stat or measurable score/time in sports has improved? Also, there is an across the board 10% drop off in players' free throw percentage between practice and games, undoubtedly do to fatigue and practice (and maybe shooting in a foreign gym as well). The one item which would surprise many fans from the article was that in 2009, only one team in the top twenty-five free throw percentage rankings also was ranked in the top twenty-five of the NCAA polls and that was North Carolina. The point was that there is no correlation, or at least very little, in being a great free throw shooting team and a winning on the court team. (The piece mentioned Memphis was 38-2 and lost in the 2008 NCAA finals despite being a horrible team from the line.) I discussed it with our boys' coach, Tyler Guidry. He thinks it's because the best teams have the elite athletes who play such good defense it makes it so difficult to score but these same players might not be the best free throw shooters. My thought, similar to Tyler's, is that the teams most likely to win at a high level are more likely to have excellent post players but many post players also shoot a very low free throw percentage. It's a discussion for another day but I do think a number of folks who casually follow college hoops would be shocked that good teams, at least from limited data, don't excel at the free throw stripe.

There have always been perceived correlations in our world including stories in the Bible. The Israelites believed you were rich because God loved you and poor because He didn't. The Pharisees were beloved by the common people and seen as right with God because they excelled  in fasting/giving/teaching/praying, which are all important in our walk. The problem was they wanted everyone to know that they were good at fasting/giving/teaching/praying- Jesus saved some of His harshest criticisms for these pillars of society. In one of His most powerful statements in the Gospels, Jesus speaks out in Matthew 7 against the perception that doing miracles alone will get one into heaven, despite what the folks in Jesus' teaching believed:
 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
We're pretty big on correlation-speak in school. Study hard and you'll make good grades! It's good advice to hit the books but the outcomes don't always match the effort. Practice hard and you'll be a great player! Some of  the hardest working kids on the court I've ever coached struggled to compete due to physical limitations. We see Biblical characters rejoicing over the wrong things- Jesus told some missionaries to be glad their names are in heaven and not because demons submitted to them. We have to remember we are only righteous because of the blood of Jesus and not due to what the world perceives as righteous acts. Jesus says here in the Sermon on the Mount that obedience to the Father's will is paramount. I better make sure I know what that will is and then obey it. According to the Savior, that's a 100% correlation.

Applicable quote of the day:
The biggest thing is just routine. I think that's the biggest correlation between golfers and basketball players. 
Stephen Curry

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Comment

 

The Comment

My international students have told me in the past the Google Translate is not always accurate. It's better to trust someone you know who understands the context of what is written than a computer program. Sometimes, you find out you would rather not have known. This is from January 10, 2010.

I love to wake up in the morning and find comments on my devotional of the previous evening. (I post my entries at night.) Hopefully, you understand I am not begging you to leave your thoughts but comments serve as a reminder that someone is reading. Several mornings ago, I checked and found two comments on the most recent post. One came from Jon, one of my former students. The other had a name listed in English but the message, which was fairly long, was in a language that was definitely Asian. I would need a translator! As we began my first class period that day, I asked Jeewha, one of my senior students, to look at it and tell me if the communication was in Korean. Jeewha informed me that it was not; it was Chinese. So, I called Bella, who is from Taiwan, to my desk and asked her to interpret. Bella took one glance and it was obvious that she was embarrassed. She, in so many words, told me I did not want to know. I asked if it was from a person or website; it was some sort of website and I probably can guess what kind. I immediately deleted the comment and my site is free again from impure thoughts from the outside world.

On Friday, I had Mint read the Parable of the Sower to my senior Bible class which is covering the same passage. None of them understood. You see, Mint is from Thailand and she read the scripture in her native Thai. The others heard the words but the words had no meaning. I could have just as easily had it read in Korean or Chinese, as I mentioned earlier, or even in Portuguese, using the voice of Eduardo. But, unless, you understand Korean, Chinese, or Portuguese, the story would have been just as intelligible. Jesus struggled in the same way when His audiences did not comprehend his message. In John 8:43, the Savior asked the religious leaders ,
'Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.' 
He went on to say that their father was Satan and the native language of the deceiver is lying. In Acts 28, Paul quotes Isaiah 6:9,10 where the prophet tells the people the reason they don't understand is that their hearts have become calloused. My seniors, as I noted earlier, are working through the Parable of the Sower in which the four soils where the seed lands represent the hearts of the hearers. I'd say that lines up with Isaiah just fine. This morning, we had a baptism in our English service but it was conducted in Mandarin. Johnny, the boyfriend of Pauline, one of my Chinese students, put on Jesus as his savior. Our Chinese minister, Vito, took Johnny's confession of faith in front of the congregation in his native tongue. Those of us in the pews must have been listening with our hearts because we understood perfectly everything that transpired this morning. And this time, I didn't need Bella to translate for me. The meaning was written on Johnny's face.

Applicable quote of the day:
''Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.''
Johann Wolfgang Goethe

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1