Through My Eyes Part 3

Chapter Six.

Overcoming.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to G.o.d. And the peace of G.o.d, which surpa.s.ses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

-PHILIPPIANS 4:67.

Homeschooling allowed us to pick my next school much in the same way we'd picked Trinity all those years before, and it didn't take long for my family to start looking around for another school where I could play quarterback.

Dad visited several select schools and spoke with their coaches. Some coaches weren't interested in taking a homeschool player, and some coaches and schools didn't seem as though they would be a good fit. Dad was talking to people about the types of offense that schools were running, the character of their coaches, and other pertinent matters. To him, the goal was trying to match my pa.s.sion for playing football with a situation that would more fully develop my abilities. He likened it to when my sister Christy showed a pa.s.sion and apt.i.tude for playing the piano. For quite some time, they saved money and eventually bought a piano for her, so she could practice, learn, and more fully develop her G.o.d-given abilities. The way my dad and mom looked at it, finding the right situation at the right school was a matter of being a good steward of my talents. They felt like it was always our responsibility to identify and fully develop the abilities, talents, and gifts G.o.d created within us.

That and the fact that I couldn't stand playing linebacker anymore.

Dad looked at schools in Jacksonville and even considered schools in south Georgia and Ocala, Florida, trying to find the right setting for me to play.

Dad called Kerwin Bell, the former University of Florida quarterback and current head coach at Jacksonville University, who ran the BMW Camp that I had attended and who at the time was a very successful head football coach at Trinity Catholic High School in Ocala. Coach Bell told us that he was very interested in having me come to play for him at Trinity Catholic. My parents were considering and exploring the significant challenges involved in my playing at a school that was a couple of hours from our home, when Dad also asked another good friend who he would recommend I play for.

He was clear and direct in his response. "Craig Howard," he said, "who has just been hired for the Nease High School head football coaching position, runs a wide-open, creative offense." When we met with Coach Howard, we knew in three minutes that he was the right coach.

Because Nease was a public school, Dad started checking into the Florida statutes, as well as the Florida High School Athletic a.s.sociation (FHSAA) rules and the rules of partic.i.p.ation governing play in St. Johns County. Under Florida's homeschooling law, homeschoolers can play at the public school within their district. However, as it turned out at that time, if you lived in St. Johns County, you could partic.i.p.ate in sports at any one of the four high schools in the county, regardless of the particular district the school was located within.

It also happened that my dad's sister Sharon was just finishing some work on an apartment in St. Johns County that was meant to be for their parents' use in the future. Apparently the future was now, and she made it available for us to use so that we lived in the same county in which Nease was located, even though we weren't in its district.

My mom spoke to her good friend, Brenda d.i.c.kinson, whose deceased husband had auth.o.r.ed Florida's homeschool law in 1985. In 1996, Mrs. d.i.c.kinson, now a Florida homeschool lobbyist, wrote the legislation that allows homeschoolers to partic.i.p.ate in extracurricular acitvities. She carefully went over every necessary requirement with my mom.

Dad spoke to the head of the FHSAA and four different lawyers to make sure that our understanding of the law and governing rules was correct and that we were doing everything in an above-board, upstanding, and legal manner.1 We were a.s.sured that we were. Dad knew that if I enjoyed any success, some might move to challenge my eligibility. Sure enough, challenges came from two quarters: one expected and one that was not. The one we expected might be forthcoming was from one of the other three high schools located within St. Johns County. The other one that had some people making some noise (though it never grew to a formal challenge of my eligibility) came from Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy, the school we had just left. That was hurtful-we had wanted to stay.

We helped my dad's sister complete the work on the apartment, and then Mom and I moved there to live in order to make me eligible to play. By then all my siblings were off at college or married, and Dad was traveling a good deal, so this worked out well for Mom and me to live in St. Johns County. On the weekends we headed back to Jacksonville to visit with Dad, but during the week we did all our homeschooling in the apartment in St. Johns County.

Convenient as it was, it was still quite a change and transition for us. I missed life on the farm and regularly being around our dog, Otis. Dad was traveling both to the Philippines and within the States a great deal, so while we missed him, that wouldn't have changed even if we were home. Plus, I was staying so busy each day-schoolwork, workout, practice, workout, schoolwork, bed-that it was probably tougher on Mom than on me. Once I started taking recruiting trips, however, even many of those weekend trips home ended.

In this transition, I could see both my parents playing different yet vital roles for me, roles that have always been crucial to my success-whether in school or on the field. My father is fiercely loyal and helped us to pursue our pa.s.sions. My mom, meanwhile, is more nurturing, and a peacemaker. She always told us to never let the sun go down on our anger, but rather that we should address our issues before bed, if not earlier.

And then there was the team itself. I started at quarterback my soph.o.m.ore year, and I was surprised by how much strength training and overall improvement we needed to make as a team. That first year, we played in six homecoming games-every one of our away games was for some other school's homecoming. One of the games was for ours, but we were everyone else's homecoming opponent-not ordinarily a sign of respect for a school's football prowess. It didn't seem to bother my teammates as much as I thought it should have. After all, they had only won two games the year before, and they seemed a little too willing to accept this as normal.

We quickly improved, however, at least on offense. We had one of the best offenses in the state, but we had an undersized defense. We lost a number of high-scoring games, scoring 45 points in a loss to St. Augustine, and losing in triple overtime to Palatka, the number one team in the state. That Palatka game, a much bigger and faster opponent, and that year as a whole, were both important from the standpoint of building confidence. We realized we could play with anyone.

They had no idea what they were in store for-after all, I was the nutty kid who would watch football whenever I could. I certainly didn't intend to be a part of a team where being every other school's homecoming opponent was accepted.

I worked as hard as I ever did and did my best, through my words and my example, to challenge my teammates to reach for something much more for themselves and the team. I even pushed one of my receivers when he mocked my use of the word lackadaisical (directed at the receivers, I might add) as "a pretty big word for a homeschooler." I didn't mind jokes about going to school in my pajamas, but I didn't want anyone to say I was soft. I probably shouldn't have pushed him, but I could see a change that day in how he viewed me. He wanted to pigeonhole me as this soft homebody. He realized soon enough that I wasn't. Before long, though, we were all on the same page.

Chapter Seven.

Philippines, Football, Faith, and Otis.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

-PROVERBS 3:56.

When you're younger, every birthday feels like a milestone, and the summer of my fifteenth was no different. For many reasons, I was excited to turn fifteen, but perhaps the most important was that turning fifteen meant I was old enough to go on my first Mission Trip to the Philippines the following summer. For years, my dad had been leading a mission trip to the Philippines in July, and finally I'd be able to go too.

That's how we were raised, with a joy in getting to tell people about Jesus. For as long as I can remember, this was instilled in me: to have fun, love Jesus and others, and tell them about Him.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

MATTHEW 28:1920.

It was a real and integral verse within the life of our family. Even more than that, it was a way of life for our family.

Though I'd grown up with Dad's frequent trips back to the Philippines and with hearing news about Uncle d.i.c.k's orphanage, I hadn't been back to the Philippines myself since we'd moved to Florida when I was three. But when I was fifteen, I was old enough to go to the Philippines, and so I took my first trip back to help spread G.o.d's Word.

This was not the first time I'd done mission work, however. Just as I was entering high school, I'd gone on a mission trip to South Florida. A small church down there had invited, and made the arrangements for, some of us from Jacksonville to come. They were looking to reach the surrounding neighborhoods in the area where the church was located. Kevin Albers and I, along with our friend, college student Joey Hamrick, all roomed together with an elderly couple from the host church that was kind enough to open their home to us for the week.

Every morning, after we ate the biscuits and gravy the couple made for us, we'd head out for the day. As Kevin, Joey, and I went door to door in trailer parks and other neighborhoods, we watched G.o.d use our inadequate but sincere intrusion into the area as almost thirty people committed their lives to the Lord. It was awesome yet humbling to see G.o.d work in that way-through our simply taking part in this church's outreach into its community.

The church simply turned us loose in our small groups. These days they wouldn't do it that way; instead, they would probably send adults along with us. We needed to be back at the church each day at a certain time, but we missed it every time, so caught up in the pa.s.sion of our visits in the neighborhoods and trying to speak to as many people as we could. Much like my approach to working out-if something's important and a little is good, a lot is better, so why stop at a little?

In the process of doing that each day, I had a chance to give an impromptu talk to a randomly gathered group of people for the first time. We were walking past an arcade, filled with kids playing all sorts of games, when Joey, who had been trained by my dad on a trip to the Philippines, told us to gather all the kids together. So we asked-actually I believe it might have been more appropriately characterized as shouted-the kids if we could have their attention for a moment. We waited while they all finished up whatever games they were playing or whatever else they were doing. I guess they were curious, and we must have looked harmless, because n.o.body really resisted, and moments later they all formed a group.

That's when Joey turned things over to me. Looking back, since he was the one with the training, I'm not sure why I was the one speaking, but I remember being pretty intimidated, seeing those kids looking at me as I stood there totally mute for what felt like a very long moment. Then I began to speak, first sharing something from my heart. It must have gone okay and it must have been sufficient for G.o.d to use, because I spoke for a few minutes about the good news of the gospel of Christ, and we ended up praying with seven or eight kids to accept Christ right then and there.

That experience was amazing, a crucial step helping prepare me for the difficult task of talking about G.o.d with people I meet-something I would do a lot later in life.

For this reason, I knew that going to the Philippines would be a challenge, but what I did not expect was that it would change my life. My dad's Filipino and American staff works hard for months to put together a solid schedule for the Americans on the summer trip. America and the Philippines have had a long friendship; in fact there is a Fil-Am day every year, celebrating the relationship. Because of our friendship, Americans are very welcome in the communities and schools, and received with a great welcome.

With the permission of regional and district superintendents, and princ.i.p.als of schools, we tie into the moral and spiritual values program already in place in the schools. It is a non-sectarian program emphasizing the love of G.o.d and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and drug abstinence.

When possible we have an a.s.sembly with the whole student body, such as at their morning flag ceremony. At an a.s.sembly we have a short 10 to 12 minute message of the love of G.o.d in Christ. If we are unable to have an a.s.sembly, we share the same message cla.s.sroom by cla.s.sroom, which is much more speaking but more intimate. We almost always have a minute to shake hands and high-five students, which is a special time. (Perhaps this is where my tradition of high-fiving Florida fans after each game began.) My dad gets us up early each school day, around 4:30 a.m., to get ready and fix breakfast; and then we get on the road often covering a good distance to get to the first school. We usually have two or three Americans on a team with two Filipino staff. The staff drives, does most of the talking to the princ.i.p.als and then translates the message to make sure everyone understands all parts of the message. We work hard all day until school is out. It is fun but exhausting. In a typical day a team will speak in six to ten schools, depending on distance and other factors. Sometimes less and sometimes a few more. When I am speaking I usually open with comments about being born in the Philippines. That creates a great connection with students.

Then I talk about the gospel. The word "gospel" means "good news." So I'll ask, "Do you like good news? The good news is that G.o.d loves you! He loves you so much that He sent His son Jesus to die for you. He made you special and wants to have a personal relationship with you and give you eternal life. But our biggest problem is that we have sinned. Because G.o.d is a Holy G.o.d, He can never have fellowship with sin. Sin makes a wall between us and G.o.d. Because Jesus had no sin He could die for our sins on the cross. Because Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose from the dead, He has the power to forgive your sins, make you His child, and give you a home in heaven. That is the best news you could ever hear. You can't earn the free gift of eternal life, you can't pay for the free gift of eternal life, you can only receive it as a free gift, by putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone."

And then I always end with an invitation to pray with me if they want to trust Jesus, praying something like this: "Dear Jesus, I know I am a sinner and need a Savior. Thank you for dying on the cross for me. I open the door of my heart and ask you to come in. Save me now, Jesus. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for coming into my heart. Thank you that G.o.d is my Father and I am His child. Thank you that I have a home in heaven, and I will come and live with you some day. In Jesus's name, Amen."

Finally, I ask them several questions. "Did you ask Jesus in your heart?" "Where is Jesus right now?" "Is He ever going to leave you?" "He promised to never leave you, to never forsake you, to be with you forever. If you have Jesus and you died today, where would you be?" "If G.o.d is your Father and G.o.d is my Father, what does that make us?"

Personally it is so exciting to have the privilege to share this good news with other people. I know that G.o.d is the one who changes hearts, but I am always eager to try and plant a seed. There was one special day that a friend of ours, Jenessa Spaulding, and I spoke in nine schools to 29,000 people. The first school that day was over 11,000 students. Needless to say, it was a wonderful and fruitful day in the schools.

Many nights I got back to the hotel we were staying in with a terrible sore throat. As I would fall asleep, I thought there was no way I'd be able to speak the next morning, but sure enough every time, I would wake up refreshed, throat fine and ready to go.

In addition to the life-changing aspect of preaching the gospel and leading people to place their trust in Christ, it was great preparation for the speaking I would end up doing as I got older. Speaking without notes, learning to reduce or extend my remarks depending on the time allotted, tailoring my remarks on the fly for an intimate setting or for a larger gathering-the opportunities I had speaking in the Philippines provided great training for it all. I now actually prefer speaking without notes, because it ensures that I won't come across as scripted, and it gives me a chance to engage my audience with my eyes and my gestures. And also, without notes I'm a.s.sured that my comments will be real, authentic, and come from the heart. I still get nervous when I speak, but even so I would rather not have notes and instead simply have prepared enough to know the material I want to share, I might have several words jotted down to remind me of points I want to make, and I've found that being slightly nervous actually helps me, in that it boosts my energy and pa.s.sion.

Full days. Packed cla.s.srooms and auditoriums, and being worn out at the end of the day. That's what our trips back to the Philippines were like. But we loved it, and I came back from my first mission trip to the Philippines renewed to fulfill my purpose of living for the Lord, whether here or there and in whatever place, setting, or game I found myself in.

Life was good back in the States, too, when we returned from the Philippines. For the most part, life was quiet for us other than my schooling and studying with Mom, working, and sports.

One of the hardest parts about living at the apartment during the week was that it meant I was apart from Otis, our beloved dog given to us by Peter's friend Philip Hurst. We'd always had a number of dogs on the farm, but many of them didn't survive-or didn't choose to stay-on the farm. Otis set himself apart in many ways, including longevity. We got Otis when I was around five years old, so he and I had plenty of time to develop a trusted and close bond.

Otis was loyal and protective, traits you'd hope to find in a dog. If you came by, you would see blonde-haired Otis, who looked to be a mixture of half Lab and half golden retriever, walking down our long dirt driveway at the farm and toward the house, keeping my mom company . . . and safe. He would wander the property, looking for threats to the family, including snakes. When he found one, he would neutralize the threat and then, proudly, leave the dead snake, I suppose, for us to see that he was keeping us safe. He must have done this a hundred times.

Once at a birthday party, we were all swimming in the pool, when all of a sudden one of us spotted a small snake in the pool at about the same time that Otis did. He beat us to it, thank goodness, and leapt into the pool, grabbed the snake in his mouth, and made sure it would never again end up in any pool. Then he climbed out with the now lifeless snake draped out of his mouth, carried it off, and laid it to its final rest in our backyard.

Otis met every visitor who came onto our property, whether invited or not, and usually before anyone else in the family had the chance. Our guests or any delivery truck or our large-animal vet-anyone and everyone-were all escorted-chased, really-as they came up the drive toward the house. He was always keeping an eye out for us and on all others.

For my birthday weekend in August that year I went with my brother Robby and Kevin to Disney World. When we returned home after the weekend, I couldn't put my finger on it, but something seemed different as we drove onto the property. My mom met us as we pulled up in front of the house.

"I haven't seen Otis all weekend." She seemed pretty unsettled.

That's what it was. That's what seemed out of place. Otis (the "first greeter") always greeted everyone on their arrival, always excited to see friends and strangers-even though he was too trusting of strangers until they showed him they couldn't be trusted. That's what was different. He wasn't there when we pulled up. And now Mom was telling us he seemed to have been gone all weekend? It wasn't completely out of the ordinary for him to take off for several hours, but never several days. We were concerned, so we all headed out to find him.

Getting more upset by the minute, I took off on foot, running around the farm, then decided that the car would be faster. So I got in and started driving around the property, calling as loud as I could, over and over again, for Otis. We covered the length and breadth of the property as well as some property off the farm, even though Otis had never left the farm before. I went back and forth, over and over, hoping at any moment Otis would come bounding and barking from behind the corner of somewhere-maybe even with a snake that no longer could harm us hanging from his mouth. I smiled thinking for a moment about what a welcome sight that would be.

I made another pa.s.s down the driveway, driving slowly, keeping my eyes peeled toward the underbrush on either side of the drive. There it was-that golden head popping up in the brush. I slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car, yelled for the others, and ran toward him, calling out to him as I ran.

He put his head back down. In the past, he would have always come running to greet me. I reached him, afraid that maybe he'd been bitten by a snake. He looked fine, and I slowly and gently lifted his head. I still didn't see anything wrong, until he opened his mouth.

It was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. His bottom jaw appeared to have been split down its full length, the two pieces hanging loosely. He was missing teeth, too, I would later learn, but I couldn't tell at the time with all the damage and blood. I looked down at his legs and realized that instead of being tucked under him as they should be and usually were, they were awkwardly splayed around him. Otis had been hurt bad, but I couldn't figure out by what.

I gently but quickly scooped him up, put him on the seat of the car, and raced back to the house to tell the others, so we could all head to the vet. And all the way to the vet, I was getting more and more upset and more and more frustrated with the state Otis was in. Not merely upset, I was getting angry as well, because the more I thought about it, it was becoming clearer to me-he wasn't attacked by a what but by a who. It appeared to me that he'd been struck with something repeatedly.

The vet agreed with my guess, and after he'd given Otis a quick look he suggested that it could have been the work of a baseball bat. He didn't close the door on another object or possibly a car, but a bat or board was his guess.

"Tim, his injuries are too severe." The vet told me that Otis's back, legs, and hips were all severely damaged and his jaw was radically fractured. Surgery would have been extensive and expensive, and there was absolutely no guarantee that at his age he would survive either the surgery or recovery period. Plus, the extensive rehabilitation that would be required might prove to be more than he could take.

So we brought Otis home to die and laid him carefully on his bed.

Only we forgot to tell Otis that was the plan. We forgot to tell him that these were his last days.

So, every day, I carefully lifted Otis and carried him to the pool. He had grown up swimming in our pool and our pond, but this was a bit different, and he seemed to know it. He didn't fight it, but it didn't excite him, either, as it had in the past. I gently submerged him on my lap up to his shoulders, and for several days we stopped at that point of submersion. We just rested in the pool in that position together for a while, and then I would carefully take him back into the house. Neither one of us was prepared to give up.

When I'd been doing that for a couple of weeks, I began gently moving his back legs and watching his reaction. We took it slowly and increased his range of motion over time to help his muscles regain some tone and strength. He didn't seem to want to move them on his own, so I would-and he let me-move them for him. Over time, I started moving my hand out from under his back legs, which would force him to begin to paddle a bit to feel like he was staying afloat. I never took my hand off his chest and never made him paddle much. Just long enough so he could take a few strokes with his legs and regain some confidence and strength in them.

It was hard to look at him, though, without feeling how painful it all must have been for him and how he still must have hurt. Missing and broken teeth. A jaw that was split and badly misshapen. Every time I looked at him, I could sense and feel the pain he was in.

Thankfully, Otis continued to get better, and over the next few months, with the regular pool workouts and lots of milkshakes-he loved vanilla-he regained the ability to walk again, albeit with a noticeable limp. He never ran again, but after an initial period where he seemed ashamed or worried that he'd done something wrong-which made me as upset at the physical injuries he'd suffered-he settled back into being himself, even though as a bit more frail version of the original Otis. But he was our Otis, no less, and the one we always knew and loved.

A couple of weeks later, football season began. It was my second football season at Nease, and we continued to make great strides to improve during my junior year. Throughout the off-season, the guys had spent much more time on their own-weight lifting, working out, working together on drills-looking to get better, to develop that edge we needed, and in the process to help make us a better team. And it worked.

Though we'd been a .500 team the year before, our performance had been unexpected, but this year expectations were higher for all of us-including me. My playing the previous year had attracted some quiet attention from college scouts, and while I had no idea where that would take me, I did know I was looking to make that quiet attention get a bit louder.

But more important than wanting interest from college coaches, I felt a lot of responsibility for helping to make our team better and for pushing all of us to fulfill our potential. This year a 55 season would not be enough for any of us-especially Coach Howard. It was Coach Howard's second year as head coach at Nease High School, and he'd had a full year to encourage us, set the bar higher for us, persuade us that his way would lead to success, and build his values and lessons into us, including one that he taught and reminded us about often: "Our job as coaches is to love you guys; it's your job to love each other."

And as time pa.s.sed, they did just that with all the players, and we did with each other. It all began to make a difference-both on and off the field. We could tell that we'd improved in the off-season through 7-on-7 touch football tournaments that we played in. From Jacksonville to South Georgia to North Carolina, we won every tournament, and as an added benefit, improved our pa.s.sing game timing. In the process, games got to be more fun. We had enthusiastic, energetic fans. Students started coming more regularly and ended up creating what I still think is one of the coolest cheers around. When we had scored and were getting ready to kick off, they would begin chanting, "Mo . . . Mo . . . Mo . . . Mo, Mo, Mo, Mo," getting faster and faster until the ball was kicked. The idea was that momentum ("Mo") was now on our side. They then began raising one hand, spreading all five fingers toward the sky, acknowledging Coach Howard's goal that we get the ball back-and score-within five minutes of kicking off.

We were scoring quite a bit, really rolling and undefeated headed into our midseason game against St. Augustine. We had improved and knew we had a good chance to beat them. In fact, we led until the very end. They scored a touchdown with about twenty seconds left in the game to take a 3330 lead, after which we ran the kickoff back to around our own thirty-five yard line. With only a few seconds remaining, Coach Howard called for a Hail Mary pa.s.s, but my attempt landed harmlessly at the goal line as, once again, St. Augustine won. However, the combination of our effort during that game and the continuously improving football culture at Nease High School helped me gain even more interest from colleges, which began to take note of me in larger numbers. It didn't hurt the interest that the ball had traveled seventy yards in the air on that final throw against St. Augustine.

Throws like that may have put me solidly on the radar screens of many college recruiters that season, but as a team, we played football that was worth remembering.

In the first round of the playoffs, we played Citrus High School, from Inverness, Florida. Coach Howard had asked my dad to do the chapel service for the team. Dad mixed together Bible verses with clips from Saving Private Ryan, a combination that apparently worked. One of Robby's college teammates, Angel, drove up from his home in Miami for the game, but unfortunately for him, he arrived a few minutes late, and by then it was all but over. I threw for three touchdowns in the first five minutes and seven in the first half, resulting in a 550 score at halftime. Setting numerous records in that game, we coasted, resting and playing all the members of the team, to a 766 final score.

In the next round of the playoffs we faced our nemesis, St. Augustine, again. We were so jacked up and believed we were ready for this game. It was going to be the perfect setting for finally breaking through to beat them-we had lost twelve straight games to them. Looking back on that night, I think Dad should have gone with Saving Private Ryan again. It was back and forth early, then our turnovers contributed to their taking a big lead. We were so far behind by halftime that it seemed like we had no shot at getting back into the game. To our credit, though, n.o.body in our locker room lost heart or turned it in, and we continued to sc.r.a.p and battle, slowly chipping away at their lead.

Finally, we had driven close to their end zone and trailed 3528 with just seconds left on the clock. The danger in calling a running play in that situation, of course, is that the clock would continue to run unless we got the ball out-of-bounds. We had enough time remaining, however, that we knew that even if we didn't score, we could still line up quickly and spike the ball to kill the clock and be able to run another play, or simply quickly line up and run one more play without having to stop the clock.

I kept the ball on a power-keeper play and lunged halfway across the goal line in the middle of a pile of bodies. The referees never made a call one way or another, continuing to unpile players, and while they were unstacking players, they never stopped the clock. When they finally got to the bottom of the pile, they should have found me with my entire upper body and the ball across the goal line, but somehow they didn't see it that way, ruling that the ball never got across the goal line.

No touchdown.

No time left.

Game over; 112 for the season, with both losses to St. Augustine.

St. Augustine raced off the field jumping up and down, cheering and hollering in celebration, while we stood there, in stunned silence, our season over.

Through the off-season and the summer, we kept growing together as a team, and by my senior year, in 2005, we were an incredibly tight-knit group-brothers-in-arms ready to go out together to face whatever was before us. We had all gone to camp together that summer to work on our football, a commitment that some had avoided in the past. We began meeting every Wednesday night and talking about important things, something pretty rare among high school students, even rarer especially since we were guys. We were truly trying to live out Coach Howard's mantra: CHARACTER.

STRENGTH.

HONOR.

Coach posted those words on the locker-room wall. Every day they were right there, in our faces. After that 112 record of improvement capping my junior year, we now had even higher expectations for my senior year.

At the same time, there was a lot of attention on me and whether I would perform at the level everyone expected. In the lead-up to the season, I'd learned that Ken Murrah of Ponte Vedra Beach wanted to film a doc.u.mentary about me, which was scheduled for broadcast on ESPN. It certainly fit within the framework of the admonition of Proverbs 27:2 to "Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips." It was very flattering that they would want to do that, and even though it was very well done, I couldn't help but be pretty embarra.s.sed by its filming. And the t.i.tle was the worst part of the embarra.s.sment.

The Chosen One.

They interviewed coaches, teammates, and other key people from my life. And while I didn't really want the extra attention, it turned out to be really fun and led to other guys getting scholarships because of all the attention focused on our program. It was also a great Christian witness, because the final doc.u.mentary showed my dad reading Bible verses.

But I'd have at least changed the t.i.tle.