News
More than Football
Jacob Spenn
August 13, 2011
The 2011 football season has arrived. Many are taking note of the talent that will take the field for the Warriors this season. Some big name colleges have made visits to campus and the Houston Chronicle has once again predicted great things for the Warriors. You can click here to read the news story and the coverage of our on-field abilities is greatly appreciated, but it is not what makes football at Cypress Christian a little different.
This season, we have a renewed focus on building team. This, of course, goes perfectly with our philosophy of building men. We have added a few new segments to our practice. One is that our team is now broken up into small groups. We meet in our group for a small segment of practice on Tuesdays. Each group is made up of members of different grades and positions. The groups provide our seniors with a leadership opportunity as well helping to build bonds and hold each other accountable. It has been a small thing that has done wonders for simple things like taking attendance at practice.
We have also started to do something we call "Crazy Love." It is a team building activity like the football version of Duck-Duck-Goose that we played or the arm wrestling tournament. We have shot water balloons off the top of the grand stand, scrimmaged the volleyball team, listened to a short story read by Travis McGrath, moved furniture and mulch to name a few things. One of the most significant things we did was to put on a football camp at the Faith Center. We sent our football players to knock on doors in a world quite different than theirs. They invited young kids to come out and play a little football and eat as many hot dogs as they could which in at least one case became how many they could carry home. In the video clip below, you can see one camper running a play with our starting offense against a helpful defense. Yes, we lost a day of practice, but in God's providence, we had exactly one donated football that we sent home with every kid that came out to our little camp. We had exactly the right number of extra camp shirts from our last high school camp to give away. Players and a good number of dads were impacted. Our team got something that we could never get out of a 7 on 7 period or a tackling drill.
We try to end each Crazy Love period by picking out two or three players that 10 to 15 players share what they love and appreciate about them. It is amazing to see what that does for a team. We want to be a team of men that are committed to living radically for Jesus Christ. We will be good on the field, as well, but it will be a result of true success in the things that really matter. When we serve together as a team, we build bonds that will matter in the fourth quarter, for the rest of life, and even for eternity. Being more than a football team is what makes football at Cypress Christian special.
