Compassion

As you know, I coach my son's 5th and 6th graded basketball team through our local YMCA. This is a travel league, where we play games at other Y's throughout our area. We are not very good and we get beat more than a drum.

Saturday was our last regular season game as our tournament begins tomorrow night. Once again, we were shellacked by a score that was something like 46-5. It seems that in every game we are totally out-classed when it comes to basketball ability and talent (and coaching skills too!). This can be somewhat demoralizing when it continually happens.

At the end of our game, a cool thing happened. The opposing coach came up to me and said, "You tell your team to keep their head up. Tell them we have played together as a team for two years and we are currently playing in three leagues. Tell them they are going to be fine."

A very classy and compassionate thing for him to say.

I passed this on to our team and I think it helped. I know I was encouraged.

He didn't need to say what he said. But he chose to be bigger than his ego. He chose to use the opportunity to build others up by showing compassion and understanding. A terrific example!