The New Year’s Day is much like the start of a new athletic season, the months stretching out untouched like a pristine field, a water-sprayed diamond before the first pitch. Everyone gets the proverbial “clean slate,” and resolutions abound to run that extra mile or eliminate junk food.
Before a season, every player, coach and team anticipates the weeks ahead filled with win after win and—ultimately—a championship. But, as we all know too well, those dreams don’t always come to fruition. What happens then? What happens when outside influences snake their way into the equation, when an injury derails a season, when a win-at-all-costs attitude pilfers our love of the game?
Where do those high expectations go when met with the random and cruel nature of reality?
Tyler Lucas, Central Washington FCA Area Director, pours into high school athletes and has seen how quickly the promise of a new season can bog down any team, regardless of talent.
“New seasons can put pressure on us to meet expectations, and that can be a good thing and a bad thing,” he said. “If we put too much pressure on expectations, on what other people think of us, it can create an unhealthy burden that weighs us down instead of freeing us up to give our best.”
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Bradley Northcutt knows a thing or two about expectations. He’s the junior starting quarterback for Auburn High School in Lee County, Ala., a school with strong athletic traditions that entered this season riding a 14-year playoff streak, fresh off an appearance in the 2013 state championship game.
In some ways, that run of success has created a society immersed in records and numbers above all, so you can imagine the reaction around town when the Tigers limped to a 1-5 record at the start of the 2014 season.
The playoff streak was hanging in the balance.
But the Tigers had graduated a substantial number of players from the previous year and needed the new group to step in. Not wanting to be the team that ended the streak, playoff pressure bottled up as teammates buckled down. There was a flurry of frustration in the community, with people—including players—unsure how to react to the uncertainty.
“I stepped back and said, ‘Lord, I can’t do this on my own. We need You to help us through this time,’” Northcutt said.
It didn’t change overnight, but the team did turn itself around and make the playoffs. Northcutt knows who had control of the outcome.
“The truth is for them to first hold onto that relationship with Jesus Christ.”
-Wayne Dickens
“We can’t do things on our own, even if we try our hardest,” he said, adding it’s especially true in the Christian walk where Jesus is always needed. “Even though we think we have the power to do things on our own, nothing’s possible without God.”
Wayne Dickens, East Alabama FCA Area Director, saw the challenges Northcutt and the team experienced as chances to reveal what’s buried in the bones of athletes. God allows life’s adversities, Dickens believes, to bring about good things, revealing the true character of individuals and teams far beyond the scores of games.
Dickens advises athletes regularly to set their hearts not on the influence of others, but the influence of the only One who matters. In thousands of conversations with athletes, he tells them how God is using athletics in their lives, how they must ignore the expectations of others and seek out God’s plan to find fulfillment.
“When you’re in the state championship the previous year, or you’ve got an older sibling who was a great athlete, it’s hard,” Dickens said, “because parents just assume you’re going to be in the state championship again, or because your brother was a great athlete you’re going to be a great athlete. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s tough on the kids.”
Where do athletes find motivation to stand strong against the winds of the world’s weight of influence? The best place to look is to the One who made them in His image.
After all, victory is already won in Christ.
“The truth is for them to first hold onto that relationship with Jesus Christ,” Dickens said. “When you have that, then you can figure out what God’s plan is for your life. And then you can look back and see how He has gifted you to be successful, to be effective.”
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How do athletes react when a highly anticipated season begins a downward spiral, fans voice displeasure, and the social media mob gnaws in grisly fashion?
In Lubbock, Texas, FCA staff member Brandi Cantrell works as Texas Tech’s women’s chaplain. In a sports business centered on winning that can quickly wrap even the most honest hearts in a web of pressure to perform, social media and Internet access distorts team expectations.
“They can get overblown and get so crazy that no one feels happy,” she said. “No one feels success because expectations are too high. No one can attain them.”
In order to stay grounded despite wins or losses, adversity becomes an opportunity for players to grow in their character. Cantrell knows student-athletes who thrive have a hope and faith not in themselves or their seasons, but in Christ.
“I love to see when our kids are faced with adversity,” she said. “I love to see them turn to Christ instead of what our culture says about who they are or how they should react. They tend to keep their eyes on the bigger picture and are better equipped to handle the struggles with an even-keel attitude, so emotions aren’t a roller coaster based on how they played, whether they were yelled at by the coach, or if they won or lost.”
This attitude is contrary to society’s standards. Being equipped to weather the storms of adversity isn't always something the world values. While still competing fiercely, deeper purpose for the Christian athlete arrives when they base their performance beyond the field.
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What happens when, after only a day or two, an unexpected injury happens? What then, when the season vanishes like a mist before it ever really started?
Two years ago, Selah (Wash.) High School receiver Kyle Ditter entered his sophomore year at football camp playing free safety. During the last scrimmage, he dove for a tackle and dislocated his shoulder with a torn labrum. Surgery sidelined him for the entire season.
“I was really broken up my sophomore year,” Ditter said. “I didn’t believe God wanted me to play football anymore. I didn’t think He cared. I spent two weeks moping, got away from the Bible. I missed FCA Camp that year, and I love going to camp.”
Injuries have impacted Selah (Wash.) High School's Kyle Ditter's football expectations but have also increased his trust in God's sovereign plans.
Ditter went through the year wondering why God allowed the injury to happen. Hoping to shake off the discouragement, he entered the summer of his junior year with a renewed determination to make the most of it.
But hardship struck again. In his last week at basketball camp, just before the start of football, Ditter tore his ACL and once again missed football season. He wasn’t as upset as the prior year, but he did harbor disappointment.
This time, though, he didn’t miss FCA Camp. The camp theme, Relentless, resonated with his situation.
“That hit me,” he said. “I didn’t have faith, I wasn’t pursuing God, wasn’t relentless. After the knee surgery, a light flipped. Now I’m doing everything to glorify God. I knew God had a plan and He wasn’t going to put me in a situation I couldn’t handle.”
While His plans often go against the grain and not the way athletes expect, the temptation to tune Him out slips blinders on hearts and minds.
“We can get upset and frustrated instead of seeing God maybe had a different plan,” Lucas said. “When we’re open to His plan and not so set on our own, then He can really use that for His glory. We pray before games and even during competition to keep God at the forefront and remind ourselves that God’s the One who’s given us the talents to play, and we need to use those gifts for Him, not to please people.”
As athletes break through the cluttered demands of expectations, they begin to see a puzzle slowly pieced together. But perhaps a smidgen of the answer still lay shrouded in mystery. Ditter, reminiscing on his two injury-riddled seasons, admitted half his high school career didn’t fit the picture he’d painted as a freshman.
“It’s not what I had planned when I was a kid,” he said. “But if I had the chance to go back and change them, I wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t appreciate football the way I do now. I wouldn’t be stronger in my faith. Before, I would play hard, but not all the time. Now I do. I appreciate my injuries. It’s a clean slate when you get the chance to play again.”
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A clean slate—chalk white, ready for what is to be written in faith’s playbook. When a set of unknown X’s and O’s gets penciled in, let it fall into the hands of the Master Coach, who sees each play, knows where the routes will lead, and how to glean the best points for His team.
As Ditter recognized through his own trials, “The cross gives us trust in a God we don’t always understand.”
-FCA-
–This article appears in the January/February 2015 issue of FCA Magazine. To view the issue in its entirety digitally, click here: Jan/Feb 2015 FCA Mag Digital
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Photos courtesy of Kyle Ditter and John Wilde