Awards Season: Getting it Right

It's awards season. It's that time of year when schools, sports and society recognize the great achievements, effort, abilities and advancements made by people in the past year plus. In light of this timely tradition, I would like to offer a thought on why it's important to get awards "right." And, why we might get them wrong. 

On Friday, May 3, 2024 President Biden gave the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 19 people. Check out the impressive list here. As noted by the WhiteHouse.gov  this prestigious award is "presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors."

All of my social media channels were flooded with posts, pictures, and praise Rev. Greg Boyle, SJ—"a Jesuit Catholic president who founded Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention and rehabilitation program based in California,"

Beyond my colleagues and friends who work in Jesuit education, this award was celebrated by those who love his writing, Catholics, Angelinos, advocates for social justice and many more. Read about his ministry, his efforts and approach and it's impossible to question another American more deserving.

In honoring Greg Boyle, I was reminded that getting awards "right" buoys our spirits; it's strengthens our society. It is good to collectively celebrate and honor a person. It puts their life's  story into our conversation and calls us to consider what they have done, what sacrifices they make, what their talents have yielded, etc. How or why the United States better because of this person? And who they recognize and celebrate?!

I appreciate that this award is extended to Americans, even after death. I was equally moved in seeing names like Medgar Evers and Jim Thorpe as 2024 honorees. What a class.

The risk, however, of extending an award is that from time to time we get it wrong. There's no other way to say it: we honor the wrong person. In some instances, there might be two candidates who are equally qualified. To award one means to leave out the other. Quite often questions of merit and desert are not easy to answer.Who decides? How do we decide? It's not easy to get it right.

To this day, there is one experience that still haunts me. I had been coaching for a good 10 years and we coaches opted NOT to honor a certain athlete with the program's highest honor. She was our best athlete and she was a great teammate. She did not however fit the mold of how athletes in the past demonstrated leadership in the capacity in which we were familiar or comfortable.

I wish we had spent more time discerning different and creative ways that our athletes demonstrate what the program’s highest honor aims to recognize. While criteria for the award helps, I also think its take a generous mind and an open one when making a decision like this one. We struggled with our choice. Please know, we made a good faith effort. We thought we were doing the right thing, but I'm not sure any of us felt totally comfortable with our choice. When it came time to extend the award, there was a collective gasp from the audience. Most people were shocked. The sentiment in that room was very different than it should or could have been. I will say, both the honoree and the athlete who did not win embraced and supported one another. Lessons learned.

The swimmer won seven Olympic gold medals and 21 world championship gold medals,
more than any other woman in the sport

I love honoring my athletes. I think awards are not to be dismissed. I want to acknowledge however, coaches, teachers, administrators and leaders don’t always get it right. It’s worth discussing how we get to bullseye. And for what it's worth, I brought this up with another coach in the program just last week. I told her how I felt and she said "no, we made the right decision."  Ten years after the fact and here we are: we agree to disagree.

Whether we get it right or wrong, awards require us to hit pause—to look back, reflect and recognize. Who has made a difference? And how Why are we better because of them? And in the choosing, we might cheer or jeer. As Americans we will not all agree on who deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom—there are a few names on this year's list that I see as moves for pure political gain. Regardless, the class stands as a collective cannon whereby we can assess what American life and culture means from the lives of its very own.

Whether your choosing the 2024 valedictorian, the NBA Clutch player or Defensive Player of the year, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient or Presidential Medal of Free honoree, let us do what we can to get awards "right" and celebrate when we do.

Of all the awards to win, I have to admit being award "Clutch Player of the Year"....might be my preference.

Photo Credits
Boyle
Thorpe
Ledecky

Holiness: A Contact Sport

Is holiness a contact sport? Is it something we can bump into?

A colleague of mine once described his daughter as clumsy. "She is always bumping into things." I thought to myself, "of all the words a parent could use to capture their child, he uses clumsy?!" You might not find that offensive in the least, but my antenna of judgment stood straight up. Turns out his description was not in vain. He was preparing for his father-of-the bride speech.

He said, "she was at an event and bumped into Chris. She spilled her drink on him. That's how they met. So we can bump glasses and toast to that." 

His words, that story, the collective "cheers" we gave to the happy couple and one another—I think the best word to describe it: holy.

If holiness were a contact sport, then how might you interact with those around you differently? Could you put yourself in their lane? I know I do what I can to avoid that— especially with people I find challenging or disagreeable. Rather than box out, would we be asked to box in? What does that even look like? 

This way of thinking about holiness came to me from Father Greg Boyle, SJ—priest, prophet and poet. In his latest book, "The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness," Boyle writes, "I always liked that Saint Kateri Tekakwitha’s name: “Tekakwitha” means “she who bumps into things.” What if holiness is a contact sport and we are meant to bump into things?" He had me at contact sport.

In my life, I haven't played a lot of contact sports. The sports I have taken to—golf, tennis, long distance rowing and running—demand me to dig deep and keep my eye on the ball, the back of the person sitting in the seat in front of me or the road ahead. However, if you ask me What is your favorite sport to watch? one of them is a contact sport. Football (or American football for the soccer players out there), like other contact sports, necessitates physical, bodily contact. Contact sports require a lot of bumping into things and that isn't always easy. Athletes take a physical beating and run the risk of injury because of it. What we bump into might break. What we make contact with might hurt us and others. The path to holiness isn't all that different.

Boyle offers a response. He writes, 

In the end, all great spirituality is about what to do with our pain. We hesitate to eradicate the pain, since it is such a revered teacher. It re-members us. Our wounds jostle from us what is false and leaves us only with a yearning for the authentically poetic. From there to here. Holiness as a contact sport, busting us open into some new, unfettered place. We are hesitant, then, not to call it God. Remarkable, incredible, and… all the other “-ables.”

To me, that's a God who is tangible...palpable...and well, describable.

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was a Native American, daughter of a Mohawk chief, a tribe belonging to the Iroquois Confederacy. She bumped into things because smallpox, left her with facial scarring and damaged eyesight. Canonized by Pope Francis, she saw what really mattered through the light of faith. Let put on that lens and engage in this contact sport. Amen

Photo credits
St Kateri
SI Field Hockey and Greg Boyle, SJ

When Did You Start Out Slow? Thank you Apollos Hester

The 2014 high school football season is now complete. At the gym this morning, guys were talking about who won the state title this past weekend. As they did, I thought about the journey the coaches, players and their families took to get there. A pigskin on the gridiron isn't possible without the sacrifice of many people to make it happen.

Thank you Alex for your great question

So I guess it's fitting that I love the invitation every conclusion of a season brings. It is one to look back and push "rewind." I ask myself: What were the highlights? The joys and surprises? What were missed opportunities? Where did we fail? Where did we make necessary changes? What do we need to do between now and the beginning of next year to get better?

One question I've never asked myself ifs this one: "When have you started out slow?"

This unusual question was brought to my attention by one of my beloved students, Alex. At the beginning of each Sports and Spirituality class, one senior leads prayer, writes a  journal question for his/her classmates on the board and then has the option of connecting the prompt to a video. Those familiar with the video, which is actually post-game interview, had some understanding for why we were addressing this question. Those who had yet to see it, related Alex's prompt to something much different. 

Apollos Hester, a senior wide receiver for the East View (Texas) Patriots was interviewed after 42-41 defeat of Vandegrift High School.  And Deadspin nails its importance in writing, "The conversation got deep pretty quickly. You'll feel like you can do anything after listening to Hester."

All right, well, at first we started slow, we started real slow, and you know, that's all right, that's OK, because sometimes in life, you're gonna start slow. That's OK. We told ourselves, 'Hey, we're gonna start slow, we're gonna keep going fast. We're gonna start slow, but we're always, always gonna finish fast. No matter what the score was, we're gonna finish hard, we're gonna finish fast. 

Yeah, they had us the first half, I'm not gonna lie, they had us. We weren't defeated, but they had us. But it took guts, it took an attitude—that's all it takes. That's all it takes to be successful is an attitude. And that's what our coach told us. He said, 'Hey, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tough. It's gonna be hard. You're gonna go out there, you're gonna battle, you're gonna fight, you're gonna do it for one another. Do it for each other, you're gonna do it for yourself, you're gonna do it for us, and you're gonna go out with this win.' And we believed that, we truly did. And it's an awesome feeling.  

In today's society is is ever more challenging to believe that is's OK to start off slow. Like Veruca Salt in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," too often we find ourselves screaming (even if it's just inside) "I want it now Daddy!"

I continually try to remind myself that "haste makes waste" and "good things come to wait." And I loved hearing shared wisdom from this young person. It's important to be reminded that in life sometimes we are going to start of slow. And I would say it's more than "sometimes;" I think it's often. But again, that's OK.

In his book "Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion" Greg Boyle writes a chapter simply titled "Slow Work." He writes Teilhard de Chardin wrote that we must "trust in the slow work of God." Ours is a God who waits. Who are we not to? It takes what it takes for the great turnaround. Wait for it.”

My students "get it." In fact, they are almost relieved to know that God works this way. In the world and in their lives. It's just too hard to keep up. The Lord God invites us to choose otherwise.

In the Advent season, this is what we are continually reminded to do—to wait and to trust. The world presents a Christmas season that starts out anything but slow, but again, we are reminded "that's OK."

Boyle concludes this chapter by writing "And you hope, and you wait, for the light—this astonishing light." In the final days before Christmas, I invite you to think of the same questions that we ought to ask ourselves at the conclusion of a season—and this season might be Advent or the 2014 year. One question to add to that list is Alex's..."When did you start out slow?" 

Photo Credits
Slow work