Charger Nation Game #1

Sign right outside the weight room painted in 2008

            Game #1 is here.  There was a little more intensity this week as we were preparing for an actual game that will count.  No: A lot more intensity!  Last week in the back of our minds we knew it was just a scrimmage and it didn’t count.  This week, we were working diligently to make sure every thing is perfect.  It was game week and everything matters!

            Tonight we have Morrow High School.  Morrow is an AAAAAA school and if you go back five years ago they were awful.  But recently they have become good and have some division 1-scholarship type players.  #1 and #3 are their highly touted guys everyone talks about.  Overall, I think their team speed is very good.  It is a great matchup for us.  It will be a challenge and that is just what we need. 

           

DEMAND EXCELLENCE…TAKE OWNERSHIP

       When I first got to ELCA these are the two things I would say and discuss all the time.  Twelve years later these are the two things I say and discuss all the time. 

As we prepared this week we demanded that players be at their best.  We demanded they do the little things right.  Practice film is critical for us so we can review the details of our technique and overall precision.  It’s either excellent or we are coaching how to do it so it is excellent.  There is 0 tolerance for anything other than perfection.  You get 11 guys pursuing excellence at their position and you will get precision. 

            But in order to get excellence, you need kids who will take ownership of the details of their position.  I love film because they can’t make an excuse.  They can’t lie about what happened.  It is what it is.  “Take ownership and do it right!”  As coaches we can’t go out there and do it for them.  All we can do is coach them to do it right and show them how they aren’t doing it right on film.  We have to demand excellence from them on the field and in film study and then they must take ownership of the process. 

            This is an all out war every week.  By our sinful nature, we are not naturally a people who want to demand excellence.  We want to talk about excellence cause it is such a pretty word.  But we do not want to demand it.  On Wednesday this week it was really hot.  The sun is beating down on us and we are all crumbling under it.  I’ll run 60-70 offensive plays in team at the back end of practice.  So at about play 40 I’ll start feeling sorry for the boys cause I know they are hot and tired.  I can see them hot and tired.  (Ya’ll don’t know this but I’m naturally a soft person. I am way to nice. I have a heart and that is a curse for a football coach.  I’ve prayed for God to remove my soft heart but he won’t).  But I know I can’t get soft on them.  I know I can’t feel sorry for them.  I know I must turn it up a notch.  I must get after them.  I must demand excellence from them.  I don’t want to yell at them.  I don’t want to make them keep going.  I feel sorry for them.  But I know, I know, if I get soft on them they will never become their best.  If I let them stop, they will.  If I let them fail, they will.  So I press on.  I demand excellence from them and they respond.  I honestly believe in the last 15 minutes of practice on Wednesday we made more strides as a football team than we have all off-season.  I could have folded.  I wanted to.  I felt sorry for them.  But we demanded excellence and the boys responded (they took ownership.)

            As I write the following thoughts below you have to understand that I feel as if I am your assistant dad with your boys.  When they fail, as you hurt so do I.  I desperately want them to do right and succeed just like I want my own son to do right and succeed.  Over 12 years I feel like I have raised 100 teenagers.  I know them and I know them well.  I know their little manipulative games.  And I know you and me, as a team together, we must have 0 tolerance for their excuses and demand excellence in everything they do if they are going to be successful.

            As parents as we raise our children we fight this battle everyday that I described above as a coach in the hot sun.   A coach and a parent fail in the same area: Softness and follow through.  We have high hopes for our children.  We even envision what they will be and how they great they will be.   We want excellence for our child.  But the problem is that child.  No offense to anyone because some of you think you have perfect children, but teenagers are a walking screw up (that is the best word I could use to describe what I deal with on a daily basis.)  Do not get me wrong:  I love them and they do things that are amazing at times.  But they are going to mess up.  They are going to do things to break your heart.  And this is where the talk of excellence and the demanding of excellence separate good parenting from bad parenting (just like good coaching from bad coaching.)

            To demand excellence you must require ownership.  Ownership of one’s actions and life is a lost value in the society we live in.  Everywhere you look people are griping and complaining.  People are making excuses and blaming others.  We do the same as parents.  When our child messes up it breaks our heart.  But instead of having our child own their mistakes and their screw-ups we blame someone else.   When they fail a test they tell us the teacher isn’t teaching and the class is too hard.  And we listen and feel sorry for them.  Then we are blaming the teacher.  Oh, we desperately want excellence but we just want the teacher to give it to them.  We want success for our children but we expect people to give it to them.  As you all know, that is not how the world works.

            Now understand this: I say a teenager is a walking screw up but make no mistake, they are very intelligent.  They are so good at what they do.  They manipulate us into thinking the teacher actually isn’t teaching.  They manipulate us into believing that their teacher actually has something out for just them.  Out of 350 students in high school that teacher just hates him for no reason.  They will convince us that there is this great injustice by the administrators at ELCA against just him.  They are masters at it.  Oh, they know:  If they can deflect the blame just a little bit and get your focus off them they can get out of the mess they think they are in.  And they do it because it works!

            But parents (and I am preaching to myself because I am soft on my own kid and yours sometimes), taking ownership is all about him.  If we are going to demand excellence then we must demand our child take ownership.  Ownership has nothing to do with what someone did or did not do to me.  Ownership has everything to do with me and how I respond to every situation.  If I raise up a football team that is allowed to make excuses and pass the blame, if I foster this environment, we are going to be weak mentally and fail in big time situations.  In the same way, if I raise up Uriah allowing him to make excuses and pass the blame he is never going to become a productive man. 

            And this is what it is all about: God has given you your son to make him into a man for Jesus Christ.  God has given football to us for it to be used as a tool to build your son into a man for Jesus Christ.  God has given us ELCA as a school to grow young girls and boys into Godly men and women who will shine as lights for Jesus Christ in this world.  Read the Bible: Nowhere does God allow anyone to make excuses and pass blame.  He demands and preaches ownership.  He rebukes grumbling and disputing.  He is Excellence and he demands we become like him.  He demands we take ownership.

            Praise the Lord.  I am soft and weak.  I am a sinner.  I don’t fully understand excellence and often times find myself not taking ownership.  But for those who are Christians, God has sent his Holy Spirit to live inside of us and convict us where we are wrong: To grow us up in Christ likeness.  I don’t know how to raise my child correctly as God would have me do it.  I don’t know how to coach these boys correctly as God would have me do it.  But the Holy Spirit leads me and guides me in the way I should go (Psalm 32:8).   Trust in the Lord, He will keep you and he will lead you.  Pursue Excellence.  Demand Excellence. Take Ownership from yourselves and especially your children!  They are the only investment God has given us that matters.  “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

Our boys are trained and ready!!

BEAT MORROW!

“The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”  Proverbs 21:31

Wholly for Christ!

Coach Gess

2018 Seniors after the Stockbridge Spring Scrimmage