A Moment of Glory

Sports writers tend to be cynical men and women who ridicule athletes and coaches for speaking in rah rah platitudes and clichés.  They call it “coach speak,” where you ignore the truth of the situation and throw out inspirations and positive hope against the reality of the situation.  This is of little value to the hardened sports writer who needs a lead story with guts to it for a pending and ever closer deadline.  I often wonder if these bitter writers ever had a moment of glory of their own, or if they only wrote about the glory of others.

I was a young boy of eight years when the U.S. hockey team captured Olympic gold in Lake Placid while Al Michaels asked, “Do you believe in miracles?”  Really, that’s the reason we watch and play sports.  We are after that one miracle, that moment of glory.  This is a story of a moment of glory.  It’s not really my story, even though I was a part of it and your narrator.  It’s really about team, effort and well rah rah platitudes and clichés. 

It was my junior year of high school football and it was homecoming.  We were going to face Saginaw High who was ranked #1 in Michigan.  As I walked across the courtyard from my first hour class, Mark LeVasseur a senior trumpet player in the marching band stopped me to talk to me.  He asked me to get a victory.  He told me that we had never won a homecoming game while he was in high school and this was the last chance.  I looked at him, smiled and said, “We’ll do our best and get a win for you Mark.”  In other words, I lied!  I turned to an athlete’s last hope, rah rah platitudes and clichés.

No matter what you may think, athletes are not mindless idiots who live on hopes and dreams.  They are realistic of the challenges they face and put forward anything positive that they can cling to in order to succeed.  In my heart that morning, I thought we would lose that evening.  I wasn’t going to tell Mark that though.  I wasn’t going to tell him, because then I would have been telling myself that.  Sometimes you have to lie to yourself to overcome your fears.  When you overcome your fears, often you will be amazed by the outcome.

I was a starter, but I really don’t remember doing anything special that evening.  I showed up, got taped up, went through the pregame warm-up and prayer, then worked hard and did my job.  Everybody on the team did.  When the first half of the game was over, we were not only in it; we took a lead into the locker room at the half against the #1 team in the state.  Homecoming halftimes are long, so the coaches did their best to keep us calm and then build us up to go out for the second half.

When we came out of the locker room, it was a sight that I couldn’t have imagined.  The student section had come out of the stands to form a human tunnel for us to enter the field through.  There was an electricity that could be felt, as if something great was about to happen that night.  I was so amped up; I would have run through a brick wall to win that game.  We continued to hold on to our lead, and then we mounted that final drive.  It was a slow, grinding, long drive that could seal the victory.  With each first down, the impossible seemed more possible.  There was unity in the huddle and quarterback Eric Hayhurst was our leader taking us to victory.  It was a moment of destiny.

We did it!  We beat Saginaw High.  We won our homecoming game.  Mark would get to celebrate one homecoming victory while he was in high school.  The student section poured onto the field, it was complete mayhem.  The chaos was hypnotic and for a moment we were on top of the world.  It was a time of celebration, joy and victory!  As luck would have it, that was the only homecoming victory of my high school career.  The next year we lost a heartbreaker to Saginaw Arthur Hill by one point in overtime. 

The lights have faded away.  So too have most of those memories except the few I shared with you today.  There are one or two memories that I kept for myself.  Some things you should hold on to and keep as your own.  The world did not change that day.  There was no life altering experiences, no Hollywood ending.  We won a high school football game, nothing more and nothing less.  Albeit, we won a game that we were suppose to lose against the #1 team in the state.  It was one small moment of glory.

There is a point to this story, a reason that I would take the time to share it with you.  As we get older, it is increasingly easy to become cynical.  We live in a nation that is divided and sometimes the world can seem hopeless.  That’s why we hold on to our successes, those small moments of glory.  There is a lesson to be learned in every one.  You see, there are a million reasons to quit and stop trying.  There will be doubters who will fill your ears along the way and tell you it can’t be done.  But there is only one reason to keep going.  That reason is because sometimes, even against all odds and expectations, you actually succeed.  And that is the only reason we ever really need.  “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”