Better Than You Found It

If you read this often, you probably know that I grew up in Nebraska and like everyone else, was a huge fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team. If you follow college sports, you know that after this weekends' game, the Huskers own an eight game losing streak, longest in school history. I was reading an article on the Omaha World Herald website about how a coach, in this case Scott Frost, goes about changing a losing culture. Frost, a quarterback who led NU to the national title as a player, is in his first year at the helm. The writer referenced how last season, under the departed staff, the team left trash all over the chartered plane on an away game. He contrasted that with ARMY'S heartbreaking loss last week in Norman to the Oklahoma Sooners, a game in which I was unabashedly cheering for the underdog CADETS. In spite of a crushing defeat in overtime, the West Pointers left their visiting locker room spotless as shown in the picture above. My guess is that many or most squads would leave the dressing quarters trashy without a second thought. Not ARMY. They are tremendously disciplined both on the field and off and it shows. Here's another tidbit from the previously mentioned article. After the Cornhuskers throttling last weekend at the hands of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the charter flight was clean when Nebraska deplaned. That's a step of progress.

I worked fifteen years for legendary basketball coach Don Meyer at his summer camps at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. One point he hammered on was to always leave the locker room better than you found it when you play on the road. We used that on my high school teams when I was a varsity coach. You can't control talent but there are things you can control and the way you carry yourself in someone elses home/gym is one of them. (In middle school, we come dressed to play so it's not an issue any more- but we do clean up our bench!) It's that way in life as well. I wrote a blog a number of years ago which used the illustration of someone coming into the room with dog doo-doo on their shoes and everything is downhill, even when they leave. I contrasted that with our Febreze Day when I spray the kids shoes or backpacks with the best fragrance ever so wherever they go for the rest of the school day, the place is better than it was before their entrance. So which are we? Do we make places better or worse? Do we clean up our messes with apologies or leave it to someone else to do the dirty work? Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount that our salt and light make the world a better place. Salt gives taste and preserves while light shows the way to go. Neither salt nor light are unattainable talents. Neither is picking up trash off a locker room floor. GO ARMY.

Applicable quote of the day:
Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable, procures success to the weak, and esteem to all. 
George Washington

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com