The Unsung Heroes

You may not always see them but they are always there.  They are there before the athletes arrive for practice or a game and they are the last ones out the door after a practice or a game.  They work hard and long and are always in the background seeing to the needs of the athletes.  They are the student trainers.

Throughout the years I just always assumed that like the athletes and the cheerleaders, there was someone or some group that took special care of the trainers.  After speaking with our athletic trainers I found out that that’s not always the case.  These students put in extremely long hours and give the team all they’ve got and they do it for little to no recognition in most cases.  Yes, they are recognized at the athletic banquets, but throughout the year they seem to be the unsung heroes.  

Other than sending candy bags for Halloween not much had been done for our trainers.  So this year, the coaches’ wives decided that it was time for a little thanks and recognition.  We started by following the trainers on Twitter and tweeting words of encouragement on game days.  During early morning two a days, we sent muffins up to the school so they could have a treat once they were done tending to the athletes. Once the season officially started several of the wives would send up cookies on Friday mornings and have our coaches drop the by the training room. By the time I'd get to work my phone and the phones of the other wives were ringing constantly with Tweets of thanks. 

So much was done for the football players and we wanted to make sure the trainers knew that they were appreciated for what they do for the athletes  They are a part of the team and without them it would be difficult for the players to do their jobs on the field.  Thanks so our trainers, the athletes were always hydrated, taped, bandaged and treated as needed.They provided contact solution, help stretching and anything else that was possibly needed.

But for the trainers it doesn't stop after football season.  Our student trainers are more than just a one sport and done kind of group.  They all have a second sport that they support and some even take on a third sport.  These dedicated young men and women are part of the program all year long.

Many of them are a part of the program for the four years that they are in high school. Two young ladies hold a special place in the heart of my coach and I know he holds a special place in their hearts as well.  As freshmen, Zoe and Chandler adopted my coach and his safeties and their special group. These girls followed my coach around and made sure he and his players stayed hydrated. The stood by as drills were run in practice and every Friday night they were standing beside him as the boys warmed up to take the field.  For four years these girls were there every step of the way.  Zoe and Chandler had declared that no other trainers were “allowed” to work with the safeties and my coach. This group belonged to them and to them only.  The boys knew it, the trainers knew it and my coach knew it. 

As the regular season was drawing to a close and it was the last practice for Zoe and Chandler as seniors a moment happened that they will never forget.  As they were standing there ready to watch the drills begin, my coach handed them the ball and simply said “Run it.”  The girls looked at him with surprise and he said “You've seen me run these drills with the guys for four years. Now it’s your turn to run it.” The girls grinned with delight and giggled as girls do, and then they begin to run the drills.  Zoe and Chandler have graduated but they still talk about the time Coach let them run the drills.

These kids deserve the same kind of support and encouragement that we give to our athletes, cheerleaders, band, drill teams, etc. So as you’re out there cheering for the team, don’t forget those unsung heroes that are standing on the sideline.  They are there and ready to jump into action when needed and to make sure those athletes have everything they need.  Cheer for your student trainers and it wouldn't hurt to send them some cookies every now and then.  They really seem to love them.

Cheering you on,
Laurel

Happy Signing Day!!!

         

To most people in the world Wednesday was just another day, but to those involved in high school football it was one of the best days of the year. At our house we say that it’s our favorite non-holiday holiday.  Wednesday was Signing Day also known as National Letter of Intent Day.  The day high school football players from around the country commit to playing football on the college level.

My coach has been coaching for 17 years now and each and every year we have been blessed to be a part of a program where at least one player has signed on Signing Day. This year was a very interesting year as one member of team also happened to be one of the most recruited players in the nation. Solomon chose not to declare where he was going to school until Signing Day. Because of that, ESPN was in the house to show on national TV where Solomon intended to play ball and most importantly where we intended to graduate from with a degree in hand.   Our day started at 7:00 am in the school auditorium with a room full of media, friends and family all waiting to see what Solomon had to say. As with everything he does, Solly did it in style and announced to the nation that we was going to play ball and graduate from Stanford University.

From there we headed into the school gym where ten tables were set up for all of our boys who were signing their letters of intent. The tables were decorated with balloons and banners showing where each player was headed next fall. The boys were introduced by our head coach and proud parents smiled and took photos as the letters were signed.

Every year signing day is special but this year it took on an even greater meaning. This year we were asked to be a special part of signing day for two special players, one at our school and one at a competing school. At our school we were asked to sit as a part of the family for one of my coach’s position players. Chris has played for my coach for four years and it’s been a joy and pleasure to watch him grow into the young man that he has become. Our families have become one and family photos on game night and other special occasions always involve both sets of parents. 

After our signing day was over we were invited to an opposing school to be a part of their special day as well. A family friend had a son also signing his letter of intent. Since our schools were in the same UIL District we have had the pleasure of playing against Braelen and his school for the past several years. Braelen played the same position that my coach coaches so it’s been fun to watch him grow and develop and there’s a special bond between the two of them. We were blessed to be asked to come watch him sign his letter.

As the wife of a coach this day each year is one of my favorites. I’m so proud of the boys and all that they have accomplished on the high school level. I’m proud of my coach to see all of his hard work and countless hours that he has poured into those boys pay off. It’s fun to watch him hug, shake hands and take photos with his boys and congratulate them as they head to the next level. He’s had a part in that and while talent plays a major role in getting to that level, so does coaching. Helping those boys define their talents and skills and encouraging them to reach deeper and work harder is what it’s all about. I’m also proud to watch those young men say thank you to their coaches for believing in them, working with them and yes, even yelling at them to help them achieve their goal of playing college ball.

If you’ve never attended signing day, I encourage you to do so. It’s a special moment to see it all come together off the field. You see the coaches and parents beaming with pride and joy. You see the boys excited about the upcoming opportunities in their future. Watching those boys sign those letters is one moment in time where we can see it all come together between the athletes, the parents and the coaches. It’s a magical moment and every year I’m blessed to be a part of it.

Happy Signing Day!

Cheering you on!

Laurel

I Think I’ll Move to Australia

One of my favorite books growing up was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  After a particularly hard day at school, I’d get in the car and say to my mother, “I think, I’ll move to Australia.”  That was our code for today was awful and I need it to get better.  My mother would always find a way to brighten my day and sometimes she’d offer to move with me.  Now that I’m an adult I still have those days.  I call my mother on the way home from work and just say “Call me Alexander.” She laughs and then listens to me talk about my day and she usually finds a bright spot to make it better.

Yesterday was definitely one of those days when I wanted to move to Australia.  It was a particularly hard day at my office and then my coach had a difficult day as well. Things are changing in both of our work worlds and some uncertainty lies ahead.  

My coach had a late booster club meeting at school and I needed someone to process my day with me.  As I was driving through the neighborhood I called my friend Jennifer and asked if she was busy. She knows me well enough to know I needed to talk and she offered a glass of wine and hot out of the oven snicker doodles and apple crisp. I was in her driveway in a matter of seconds.   Jennifer was just the right person to give me the comfort I needed.  I’m blessed to have a great friend who happens to be part of the pastoral staff of our church and has kids in our school district. She’s able to see both my personal life and our coaching life on a daily basis and that along with her job in ministry gives her a unique perspective. She helped me process the events of the day. We cried, we laughed and after a couple of hours I left feeling better.

One of the things that we discussed while I was there was to remember to focus on the good things.  When we are going through difficult times it’s easy to turn from the positive and immediately focus on the negative.  Then those negative thoughts turn into fear and fear leads the imagination to run rampant and that doesn’t do anyone and good when that happens. 

The phrase “do not be afraid” is written in the Bible 365 times.  I love the fact that the Lord gave us a verse for each day of the year about not being afraid.  The key is to remember these verses on a daily basis and sometimes it might be an hour by hour or minute by minute kind of thing.

While writing this, my phone rang and it was my mother checking in on me this afternon. She said that she was praying for me and reminded me of what I had told one of our football boys just last week.  The Lord is in control. We need only to be still and listen and wait.  His plan is better than anything we can imagine.  We just need to pray and listen for His answer and He will guide us.

Remembering that is way better than letting fear and my imagination run rampant. Right now I’m praying for peace and to be able to walk without fear.

John 14:27

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

So for now, I won't be moving to Australia and I'll stay right here and see what the Lord has in store.

Cheering you on,
Laurel

It’s Not the New Year I Expected

 I realize that it’s only the fourth day of the New Year, but it’s already been a whirlwind that I was not expecting. These past four days have come with some unexpected costs and some unexpected losses all of which were not on my radar for 2014.

New Year’s Day I was in the kitchen prepping my ham and black-eyed pea stew when I turned on the faucet and it cracked and began to leak down into the cabinet.  Neither my coach nor I were happy about it but we stopped what we were doing and headed out to buy a new faucet. I picked out a one that I liked but wouldn’t break the bank and headed home. T-minus 3 hours till eight people were headed to our house for dinner and football.  My coach quickly got to work on switching out the faucet only to discover that someone had welded the faucet to the sink.  Who does that sort of thing?  OK – we are now T-minus 2 hours and my coach is off to buy a new sink.  I quickly call Chris, the handyman, and beg him to come over on New Year’s Day and install my new sink and faucet.  I’ve now got the handyman coming in the front door and my coach coming in the back door with my new sink.  My coach is fabulous!  He picked out a sink that I love! 

So here we go.  T-minus 1 hour and the work begins.  Poor Chris the handyman is quickly learning that nothing is easy at our house.  What should take an hour or so was taking much longer. Friends are coming in the door to watch football and eat black-eyed peas.  They are also getting to meet Chris who is lying in the middle of the kitchen floor underneath the sink. We begin telling him the score of the game and asking if he too would like some black-eyed peas.  I’m so grateful it was our close friends who could roll with the flow of the night. Everyone was willing to eat off paper plates and paper bowls and drink out of Solo cups.  After nearly five hours and a trip back to the hardware store, Chris declared he couldn’t finish till the next day.  At least he was able to turn back on the water for us. He and our friends left. Baylor was losing and I gave up and went to bed.

While in the midst of all the sink fiasco my coach and I also received word that one of our favorite former vice-principals and a mentor to my coach had passed away.  On Thursday I received word that one of my favorite college professors had also passed away.  This year is not starting out as I had hoped. I think we all get so caught up in the hype of its’ a new year and things are going “to be different” that we forget that we live in a world where it’s not always going to be easy and things aren’t always going to go the way we want.

I need to stop and remember that I am not the one in control.  My Lord and Savior is in control. Things might not be turning out as I had expected but that doesn’t mean that they have turned out bad. Two men who loved the Lord are now walking with Him in Heaven. I have a beautiful new sink and faucet that I’ve been wanting since I moved into this house. I have been reminded that my friends love me for being me and not for having the perfect football watching party. I have a husband who only wants the best for me and works hard to provide what our family needs when we need it.

2014 may not be off to the start that I was expecting but then again only the Lord knows what my future holds.  “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

Praying that you have a wonderful 2014 and that you rely on the plans our awesome God. I know I will be!

Cheering you on,
Laurel

Christmas Cards

Christmas time is the only time I look forward to receiving mail.  Eleven months out of the year all I seem to get are bills and junk mail, but for one magical month, the mail is FUN.  I love receiving Christmas cards from friends and family and seeing how their families have grown and changed over the year. I also like to keep the cards for the year and pray over one of the families each week.  Then the next year I set those cards aside and begin again with the new cards I’ve received. 

About ten years ago I decided to start sending Christmas cards with pictures of our family on them.  We always sign the card from Karl, Laurel and the boys.  The first year I did it my grandfather called me in a full on panic thinking that Karl and me were crazy enough to adopt seven teenage boys.  I explained to him that we didn’t actually adopt them but we do consider them our own.  Each of those sweet boys over the years holds a special place in our hearts.  They are our family and our boys. 

Throughout the years, just like family dinners the upperclassmen teach the younger ones about family photos.  We do them twice a year, once on media day and then once during the season after a game.  The after game one seems to be the one we use for our Christmas card.  The boys line up and ask if this is the Christmas card picture.  If I say yes, then all of the sudden the uniforms get fixed, the hair gets a little straighter and the smiles get bigger.  It’s fun to see them so excited over the family Christmas card.

One year our team was marching through the playoffs and I just knew we were going to make it all the way to the state championship so I held off on the photo.  We lost in the quarter-finals on the last play of the game and there I stood with no photo.  I put a picture of just Karl and I on the card and boy did I hear about it. I got calls and comments from everyone about the boys not being on the card.  It had become a tradition and I messed it up.  Now I take the photo during the regular season just in case I need it. But, know that when we do make it to the state championship, I’ll be sending out New Year’s cards instead of Christmas cards.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, 

which is Christ the Lord.

Luke 2:11

From our family to yours Merry Christmas!

Cheering you on,
Laurel

The Last Supper a.k.a. Family Dinner

Each December when the season ends we have our boys over for dinner.  The rules are you must play safety and you must be on varsity.  This may sound harsh but for our boys it’s a goal.  They aim to play safety on the varsity level and they look forward to dinner at our house.  I was once asked by another player how come his brother got to come to dinner and he never did.  I said “Daniel, it’s simple. You play corner and Jacob plays safety. Therefore, he gets to come and you don’t.”  He laughed and said, yeah, you’re right.

At dinner, the menu never seems to vary.  I let the seniors vote and each time they vote for the same meal: poppy seed chicken, green bean bundles, scalloped potatoes and sopapilla cheesecake for dessert. I tell the boys that I can cook other things and that I’m actually a pretty good cook.  Each time I’m met with “Why Mrs. Pointer, why would you make something else, why?” I laugh and say okay. You want it. You got it.

On Tuesday night we held the annual end of season dinner.  Eight boys eagerly arrived at my house. They arrived with presents in hand including flowers, a sweet little nativity and a football ornament for the Christmas tree.  I love when they bring the flowers.  I really loved when Chris, a senior, turned to one of the juniors and reminded him that next year he was to arrive with flowers when they came to dinner.  These boys have been trained well by their mothers. They are all so polite and so sweet and I look forward to having them in our home.

Dinner on Tuesday had me laughing from the moment they lined up to fill their plates.  Two of the seniors were first in line and they helped themselves to servings that could feed three or four normal people.  I asked why they were taking so much and they replied because it’s our last supper.  I tried to explain that they were just graduating and not dying but I was met with some resistance. One of the sophomores offered up that they could simply come home after finals in college and join us again for dinner.  At that rate I’ll be making poppy seed chicken for 20 plus. 

One player that graduated several years ago still asks about the “life changing” green beans when he is home on break.  I love cooking for these boys. Even the pickiest kid I’ve ever met seems to find enough to eat at this dinner.  As he was going through the line I could hear the boy behind him saying “Just try it.  If you don’t like it, I’ll eat yours and mine both.”  He ate most of it without help from his neighbor.  These boys make me feel like I’m the world’s greatest chef and all I’m doing is making chicken and green beans.

The dinner conversation always includes breaking down the past season and looking forward to next year.  The seniors start referring to the other boys as “y’all” and “next year’s team.”  I try to remind them that once a Cowboy always a Cowboy (or wherever we are at the time) and they quickly remind me that to talk in the present as “we” makes them sad. Once again I say, you’re graduating not dying and I’m met again with “this is our last supper.”

I love these boys and as I watch them grow up and graduate I too, get a little sad. But I always remind them that it’s still family dinner and not their last supper.  They will always be our boys. They will always be family and they are always welcome for family dinner.  It’s never really their last supper.

Cheering you on,
Laurel

When it all Suddenly Stops

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post.  It’s taken that long to let the events all sink in and get to a point where I could express it all.  Two weeks ago today we were in AT&T Stadium (Cowboys Stadium) and we were within moments of a huge victory.  We went into the game as the underdogs to most of the world, but our team and coaches knew we could win it.  We knew that this was our year and that we were going to march our way to the state championship.

We were less than 40 seconds away from upsetting the team that had knocked us out of the playoffs the previous year.  We could smell victory. Our fans were ecstatic and there was a hush on the other side of the field.  Then it happened.  The tide shifted and they scored with just seconds to go to take the lead. We lost by four points.  We stood there numb and speechless and there was nothing we could do.  We couldn't even get to our coaches and our boys and console them or hug them.  The next two teams were already taking the field for their game.  We simply had to wave from the stands and try to express our love and consolation as we were asked to exit so the next set of fans could come into the stands.

By the time my coach got home. He was tired, frustrated and still in a bit of shock. You see, we had been this close before just a couple of years ago and literally lost on the last play of the game.  Here we sat revisiting that moment all over again.  It seemed surreal, but yet, that’s part of football.  It only takes a second to change everything.  We managed to go to dinner but there was little conversation. There wasn't a lot you could say other than I’m sorry.  My coach scrolled through the Twitter feed of the game to analyze every play.  He spent time texting his players to make sure they were okay and to let them know how much he loved and respected each and every one of them.  We both received texts from players and parents and we responded back to them.  It was the best way to start the recovery process from the pain and frustration we were feeling.

If you’re reading this and questioning the words recovery and pain, you’re not alone and you’re probably not that tied into sports.  If you understand those words then you get it. You understand what it means the season to just suddenly stop.  You get that there is a void in your week where practice should be. Your coach is now home way earlier than is to be expected at night and that your life as you've known it for the past few months, suddenly and without notice takes a different shift.

Throughout the past couple of weeks several friends and community members have remarked to us that we must be “relieved that the season is over” or that I must be “excited that my coach is home.”  Neither could be further from the truth.  My coach and I both try to explain, that no we are not happy or relieved.  We were stopped short of our goal. We are going to miss time with our seniors and our players.  All we wanted for Christmas was a state championship.  I tried to explain to one friend when he said “you must be relieved that it’s all over”, that in his world that would be me like me saying to him, “you must be relieved that you almost closed that deal, but you didn't quite make it and your competing vendor won the contract .”  He just looked at me like I was a bit crazy.

So it’s been a couple of weeks and playoffs are going on without us. We are now cheering on our friends and fellow coaches that are still in the hunt for that state championship. We are also still working on letting the pain and frustration of a season stopped short go away. The Christmas decorations are up and the world is continuing to move ahead. My coach has already started the conversations with his head coach and other coaches about personnel for next season and what off-season has in store for them.  Life moves and so must we. Our boys are coming to dinner this week and I can’t wait to have them all around my dining room table as we talk and laugh about the past season. I’m excited to hear their perspective on the season.  I’m also sad that it will be the last time we gather with this group of seniors as part of our family, but more on that next week.

Cheering you on,
Laurel