Cheering For The Other Team

CHEERING FOR THE OTHER TEAM

I heard about an unusual high school football game played in Grapevine, Texas recently between Grapevine Faith Academy and the Gainesville State School. Faith Academy is a Christian school and Gainesville is located within a high-security youth correctional facility. The prison team had only 14 players and played every game on the road. With a record of 0-8, they only scored twice the whole year. Their players are teenagers who have been convicted of crimes ranging from drugs to assault to robbery. Most had families who had disowned them. They wore outdated, used shoulder pads and helmets.

Faith Academy was 7-2 with 70 players, 11 coaches, and the latest equipment. Chris Hogan, the head coach at Faith Academy, knew the Gainesville team would have no fans and it would be no contest, so he thought, "What if half of our fans and half of our cheerleaders...cheered for the other team?" He sent out an email to the faithful fans asking them to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send," Hogan wrote. "You're just as valuable as any other person on the planet."

Some thought he was confused and crazy. One player said, "Coach, why are we doing this?" Hogan said, "Imagine you don't have a home life, no one to love you, no one pulling for you. Imagine that everyone pretty much had given up on you. Now, imagine what it would feel like and mean to you for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

The idea took root. On the night of the game, imagine the surprise of those 14 players when they took the field and there was a banner the cheerleaders had made for them to crash through. The visitors' stands were full. The cheerleaders were leading cheers for them. The fans were calling them by their names. Isaiah, the quarterback-middle linebacker said, "I never in my life thought I would hear parents cheering for me to tackle and hit their kid. Most of the time, when we come out, people are afraid of us. You can see it in their eyes, but these people are yelling for us. They knew our names."

After the game the teams gathered at the 50-yard line to pray. That's when Isaiah, the teenage convict surprised everybody and asked if he could pray, "Lord, I don't know what just happened so I don't know how or who to say thank you to, but I never knew there were so many people in the world who cared about us."

On the way back to the bus, under guard, each one of the players was handed a burger and fries, a coke and a candy bar, a Bible, and an encouraging letter from the players from Faith Academy. What an incredible act of selfless servanthood. Proverbs 3:27 says, "Do not withhold good when it is in your power to act."

(From a sermon by Brian Bill, Getting Fit: Serving, 2/20/2011)