specht

Coach Steve Speck teaches his players to be champions in every facet of life, not just on the football field. He emphasizes the importance of developing faith, leadership through character, and being true men for others. Coach Speck's teams have won two Ohio State championships and he was recently inducted into the Sports Faith Hall of Fame. He believes that we should have faith in our future and that our children are the key to that future. He also shares his personal spiritual journey and the importance of having a vision for our lives. Overall, Coach Speck's message is about the power of faith and making choices that align with our values. Be champions in every facet of life is a motto that Coach Steve Speck teaches his players to live by. It's an indication that his influence extends far beyond the football field, even though his job is head football coach at St. Xavier High School here in Cincinnati. To be sure, Coach Speck is an outstanding high school football coach. Many coaches go through their entire careers without winning a single state championship. Coach Speck's teams have won two Ohio State championships, one in 2005 and the other in 2007. Making a difference in young men's lives is what Coach Speck is all about. He emphasizes that his goal is to produce championship-caliber young men. His program is based on three value-based core objectives that when achieved, his young men will be champions in every facet of life. Here they are. First, develop faith. Have faith in God, life, and those around you. Develop leadership through character. All successful people demonstrate certain character traits. Integrity, self-discipline, dependability, and accountability are just a few. And finally, develop the concept that we are true men for others. He believes that we should be of service to our fellow man and leave the world a better place than we found it. In recognition of these values and his influence on young men, Coach Speck was recently inducted into the Sports Faith Hall of Fame in Chicago. This Hall of Fame honors coaches, athletes, and teams for their sportsmanship and demonstration of their Catholic faith. Coach Speck will tell us how these ideas are very much in line with our theme today, sharing our lives in fellowship. Coach Speck resides in Fairfield with his wife, Becky, and their three children. Gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our first speaker of the day, Coach Steve Speck. Thank you, Father Ken. Appreciate it. Josh, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I don't know about anyone else here, but after listening to Father Ken, I think I'm ready to suit up and play for him. I think the applause today shouldn't go out to me. I don't believe it should go out to any of the speakers. I think all the applause today should go out to every single individual that's in this building. You're men of faith. You're professing what you believe, and I don't think we see enough of that today in today's day and age. Unfortunately for us, we hear about the negatives. When you watch the news, you see the dysfunction, whether it's in the economy, the banking system, the auto industry. We need bailouts here or there. But you come today, and you see a room filled with men of faith. This is what should be publicized. This is the future. Gentlemen, it is my honor, it is my privilege to be here today to be able to speak to you. Thank you for this opportunity. I'd also like to thank, answer the call, Mr. McPhee, Mr. McNamara, for giving me the opportunity to come in and speak to you today to try to give you a little bit of what I've been blessed with. I want to talk about spiritual journey. I want to talk about choice. I want to talk about free will. I want to talk about what makes us men for others. I've been blessed in my life. I've had a lot of opportunities to succeed. But I think more importantly, I've had tremendous opportunities to fail. And I've failed. I've failed time and time again. But I've always had individuals along the way to pick me up, to brush me off, to let me fall again, to let me fail again, to pick me up and to continue on. I think that's the way we get better. Scott Peck said it best in his book, The Road Less Traveled, life's difficult, life's hard. And in order to make it a little bit easier, we have to understand that it is difficult. When I talk about failing, I always think back to some of my college days. People like to talk about the success that we've had as a football program at St. Xavier High School. They like to talk about state championships. I like to look back at my college career. I went to a small school in Indiana, Earlham College. In four years, our football record was 6-34. Yeah, it was painful. But when I look back on those days, and as painful as it was, I think I learned more through obviously losing than I ever had through winning. I think more importantly than that, I majored in English literature at Earlham College. And there's one epic poem. I focused my senior thesis on the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton. And I think that had the biggest impact on my spiritual faith when I read the first line that John Milton was trying to justify the ways of God to men. His take was simple. If God is an all-loving God, why would He let evil into this world? And the rest of the epic poem goes into a long discussion on a battle waged in heaven between God and Lucifer. And obviously God won out, but instead of completely destroying Lucifer, He went into what He called chaos, which is what we obviously term hell today. The question is, why does He leave evil in this world if He is an all-loving God? Well, in Milton's view, it's pretty simple. He needed to give man free will. He created man in his own image. He wanted him to make a choice between right and wrong. He wanted man to choose right. But in order to choose right, he had to give him an option. Unfortunately, in today's day and age, we see a lot of individuals choosing wrong. It doesn't mean they don't have an opportunity to choose right. And I'm going to argue that we can look at the situation we are in today in our economy, with our government. You can lose faith in the government. You can lose faith in the economy. You can lose faith in our professional athletics, but you can't lose faith in our future. And I think our future is our kids. That's the one thing I love about teaching is we have an opportunity every single day to build on our kids. Money is going to come and go. We get one shot with our kids. They're our future. So we're on spiritual journeys, men. What's the plan? Where is God taking us? A lot of times we're wondering. We get knocked down. Where is God? We get knocked down again. Where is God? And we continue to question this. I think ultimately it comes down to vision. What's our vision? Do you have a vision? Do you have a spiritual focus? Do you have a spiritual vision on where you want your life to go? I believe early in my life I did have that vision. When I was in college, I knew I wanted to teach. I wanted to teach English. I wanted to coach high school football. I wanted to have a chance to make an impact in young men's lives just as my coaches had an impact in my life. And I had that opportunity immediately after graduation. I took a job at Lakota High School. I was teaching English and I was coaching football and I was happy. My father, unfortunately, would always tell me, his joke was always, people that can't work in this world teach. And then he would tell me people that can't teach, teach phys ed. So I figured I was one up because I didn't teach phys ed. I was at least teaching English. But that haunted me. That haunted me that I didn't measure up, that I wasn't really being productive in society. I would always hear, you can't afford a family on a teacher's salary. And I started to lose focus on my vision of what I wanted to do with my life, of what I wanted to accomplish. My father passed away when I was 23 years old. It was about a week after he passed away that I thought, I need to try something different. I need to get away from this and go into the business world and actually work for a living to make my father proud. And I did. And I spent two of the most miserable years of my life doing something that I knew I wasn't called to do. I made a lot of money. The company I worked for was tremendous, unbelievable company. They did everything they could for me. They gave me opportunities and I learned an awful lot about myself. And ultimately, in my times of despair when I was in the business world, I questioned, why did you do this to me, God? But I get back to free will. I made a choice. I made a choice to go away from my vision, to go into the business world, and to try something new. Ultimately, I learned. I became a better person because of it. When you look back on your spiritual journey, it's easy to see where God fits into place. I have no clue why I went into the business world. I have no clue why I got away from my vision. But the day I decided I was going to get back into teaching, I met my wife. I look back now and I think, wow, I may have been miserable in what I was doing, but if I wouldn't have done that, God would not have led me to my future wife. Who obviously bore three of my children. We don't know where God's taking us, but I can tell you this, man, He's always there. You're all here today as Christian leaders. I think the future, as we mentioned before, is in our kids. What choices are our kids faced with today? What are we doing to help the kids with these choices? In college, I was obviously an avid reader as a lit major, and I found the classics mesmerizing. I loved the classics. And I always looked at the heroes. And I think about the heroes that are kids. I look at my two little boys and see the individuals that they consider their heroes, who they look up to. And I want you to think for a minute. I want you to consider these two epic heroes I want to talk about today. One is Virgil's hero, Aeneas. The epic hero in the Aeneid. And the other is Homer's hero, Achilles. And I want you to think long and hard as I read this passage from a book. Paterno, buy the book. It focuses on these two heroes. In the book he says, In some passages that touched me the deepest, Virgil looked straight into the heart of Aeneas. In the opening storm at sea, he figures everything he lit risk to save his life and leaving Troy is now lost. His mission seems impossible. He feels hopeless and overwhelmed. He goes off by himself to tremble and to cry like a kid. Then somehow he pulls himself together, knowing even in his agony that he can't spill his guts to the men he has to lead. Destiny has stuck him with being a leader and he can't escape it. The bravery, the picking up and going on affected me. But what got to me most in that scene was that Aeneas, the son of a god driven by fate, was after all a human being. His secret places were just like mine. He might have had to put on a bold front as a leader, but he didn't have to hide his sadness and his trembling from himself. To Homer, and in fact to most of the modern world, heroes are created through personal exploits and glorification. Often through an ambitious drive for self-glorification. Heroes are superstars. In sports, the grandstands cheer them and they throw their high fives up and slam the football down after a touchdown. Homer's hero Achilles, in his pursuit of glory, ends up destroying his men and his cause and rotting at the end into a kind of monster. Aeneas, as Virgil created him, was a totally new kind of epic hero. Like Homer's heroes, he endures battles, storms, shipwrecks and the rages of the gods. But the worst storm is the one that rages within himself. He yearns to be free of his tormenting duty, but he knows that his duty is to others, to his men. Through years of hardship and peril, Aeneas reluctantly but relentlessly heeds his fate until he founds Rome. Aeneas is not a grandstanding superstar. He is, above all, a Trojan and a Roman. His first commitment is not to himself. His first commitment is to others. He is bugged constantly by the reminder, the fathom, you must be a man for others. He lives his life not for me and I, but for us and we. Aeneas is the ultimate team man. A hero of Aeneas' kind does not wear his name on the back of his uniform. He does not wear footballs on his helmet to claim star credit for touchdowns and tackles that were enabled by everyone doing their job. For Virgil's kind of hero, the score belongs to the team. There was a movie made a couple years back about Troy. Who did they star? Brad Pitt. I'm sorry, it was Achilles, Brad Pitt. Those are the heroes that are recognized. The ones that want to be self-glorified. You look at today's athletes in this world. Million dollar contracts. They went out of the contracts to get more money because it's about them and it's not about the team. I have a picture in my office of Chad Johnson wearing the Hall of Fame jacket. Remember the Monday night game where it's off on the sideline, he puts the Hall of Fame jacket on after a touchdown? That wasn't about the team, that was about him. I'd like to argue and I'd like to think that our future leaders are going to emulate Aeneas. That they want to lead for others and not simply themselves. We've all been faced with choices. Our children are faced with choices that affect who we are and what our vision is, what we care about and what we want. But ultimately we have to ask ourselves again, what is our vision? I listened to Father Ken talk about vision last night and I got excited because I wanted to talk about vision today too. He's a man of vision. He's a man of big vision. And one of my favorite field sayings with my coaching staff is big vision, have big vision. Coach your players up to have big vision. They can't see one thing, they have to see the field. What is your picture? There's a challenge. What do you focus on day in and day out? A lot of people just punch the clock when they go to work. My field of coaching, we call these X and O guys. The guys that like to get on the white board and they like to diagram the plays. They like to X and O. It's easy to talk to an X and O. It's tough to discuss things with kids, with players. Ultimately the guy that has the chalk in his hand last wins anyway. I've never understood that. I always try to be the guy that has the chalk in my hand last. But I want our coaches to coach the bigger picture. I want them to tell me why they're coming to practice every day. Do they have a bigger purpose than simply working to win football games? Are they here to teach? Are they here to inspire? Are they here to do God's work? I want my coaches to understand that what they teach these kids will transcend the game of life. It's going to help transcend the game of life and mold who these kids are going to become in the future. This is our picture. I believe this is God's calling for all of us. How can we transcend the game of life? How can we see the bigger picture that God has in front of us? When we talk about vision, I love to think back to Jaromir Jagr, one of the great hockey players of all time. Jaromir Jagr was obviously an NHL star. He won championships. But the story that always touched me the most was the fact that he played in the 1984 Olympics on the Czechoslovakian team. He wore number 68. He was the captain of that team. In 1984, they played the Russians. The Czechs played the Russians for the gold medal. And before the game, the coach went and sat down next to Jaromir and put his arm around him and asked him if he's ready. He said, are you ready for this game? Jaromir Jagr looked at him and said, I have been ready for this game all my life. No one understood what he was talking about until they found out he wore the number 68. And in 1968, the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. I was told a story by another individual that during that invasion, the Czechs would take down all the street signs and they would move them and change the street signs to try to thwart the Russians from going in and killing Czechoslovakians. They tried to make it difficult on them. Think about that. Jaromir's grandfather and many other Czechs died in that encounter. They were killed. He always wore the number 68 in memory of his grandfather and all the other Czechs that had died. The moral of this story, folks, is what is your 68? When you wake up every single morning, do you have a vision? Do you have a bigger vision? Do you have something that drives you? Are you in it for others? Obviously, Jaromir Jagr was. He had a 68-type commitment to excellence. It was a standard of excellence he set for himself. Think about that. What is your vision? When I got back into teaching, I had the opportunity and the privilege to come back to my alma mater. Right away, the first thing we instilled was something that I took from Lew Holtz, his whole concept of what winning is all about. A lot of people tell me that I'm in the business of winning football games. I don't agree with that. Lew Holtz always took the concept, the words win, used it as an acronym to mean what's important now. What's important now? That's our big vision. We want our kids to look at every single second of their life as the most important part of their life. I don't want to know what happened yesterday or tomorrow. I want to know what we're doing today. The fact that you are here today, you're in this room, this is what's important now. Professing your faith. You're getting better because of this. And we want our kids to focus on that. Before, Gus read our mission statement. He's right. We want our kids to develop faith. We want our kids to have faith in God, life, and those around them. They have to have an unwavering belief, trust, and faith in themselves, the team, the program, their families, and ultimately, most importantly, God. We want to develop leadership through character. All successful people demonstrate certain character traits, integrity, honesty, self-discipline, dependability, promptness, loyalty, perseverance, accountability. These are just a few of the traits that we want our young men to encounter. And we want to develop the concept that we are true men for others. We want to keep in mind that we were not put on this earth simply to amuse ourselves or enjoy the fruits of the labors of others. We have to endeavor to be of service to our fellow man. We have to leave this place better than we found it. We want our young men to be champions in every facet of life. When I first took the job at St. Xavier High School, my wife asked me what I would say to the kids before the games. She thought we'd scream and yell, bring in a boar's head, blood dripping out of it, try to get the kids fired up and ready to go. God loved my wife. She understands football, but I had to explain we don't do those things. It's pretty simple. It's pretty simple, and I say the same three things to our young men before every single game. I build on the mission statement and I tell them, men, we have three responsibilities. They know what they are, but they're going to hear it before every single game. I tell them, your three responsibilities are pretty simple. Number one, you love one another. Number two, you be the best you can be. And number three, you lean on one another when times get tough. I told my wife that. She looked at me and thought I was nuts. She said, you're not going to win very many football games saying that. And when you think about it, football is a violent game, and I tell our kids all the time, God made it that way. We want you to compete. We want you to compete to the best of your ability, but doggone it, we want you to do it with class. And God wants us to love one another. This isn't just about football. He wants us to be the best we can be all the time, and he wants us to draw strength from one another when times get tough. I don't think that's revolutionary. When we think about loving one another, we talk about building the picture that we've set for our staff. Again, the big vision. You know, the most valuable asset we have in this world are people. It's not money. It's not the stock market. The most valuable asset we have are people, the people we come in contact with every single day. Do they know you love them? Do they know that you really care about them? At the end of every practice, I try to remind our kids, go home, tell Mom and Dad you love them. It's a little thing. It goes a long way. This is the biggest part of the picture, men. It's a choice. We get back to choice. Love the people. Love the players. There's a movie out, Adam Sandler, made a few years back called Rain Over Me. And there were scenes in this movie that hammered this point home. The beginning of the movie, Adam Sandler, and the premise behind Rain Over Me is Adam Sandler was a successful dentist, and his wife and children died in one of the 9-1-1 crashes. And at the beginning of the movie, Adam Sandler's remodeling this kitchen. The kitchen's gorgeous. He's remodeling it, fixing it. He had totally disassociated himself from the world after his wife and his children had passed away. So he's remodeling this kitchen, and it's gorgeous. And as soon as he's finished remodeling it, he starts tearing it out. And then he starts remodeling it another way. And he finishes it a little bit later in the movie, and guess what he does? He starts ripping that kitchen right out. And this is going on and on, and you figure he's just lost his mind. Well, later on in the movie, you find out the last conversation that Adam Sandler had had with his wife was when she was in the airport getting ready to board the plane, and she asked him, would you please work on the kitchen? Would you please get to work on it? Could you just remodel it? That was the last conversation he had. And it plagued him. He couldn't bring her back. The last conversation wasn't, I love you, you're important to me, you matter. It was, would you remodel the kitchen? And he said, I will get to it at some time. Don't wait to remodel your kitchen, man. Do it now. God wants us to do it now because tomorrow isn't a guarantee. We don't have that guarantee. You talk about loving one another. I was taught a wonderful lesson by a 16-year-old young man years and years ago. Five foot eight, probably 260 pounds, was a scout team offensive lineman. Was never going to play in a game. Just didn't have the talents, didn't have the abilities to play in a game. And he came out to practice every single day, and he worked as hard as he could on a scout offensive line. One day he kept screwing up a blocking scheme, and I have a tendency to get a little overexcited, and he kept screwing up this blocking scheme, screwing it up and screwing it up and screwing it up, and I went off on him. And I'm yelling at him to get it right. He's out here, do it right. And the whole time I'm yelling at him, he has a grin on his face from ear to ear. He's just smiling. And you can imagine while this is going on, I'm not smiling with him. I'm worried about getting this play run correctly so that our defense can fit up and they can get their jobs done. And I kept going, finally, I said, is this funny to you? And he just kept on smiling. Couldn't wipe it off. And he dropped his head and went, look at me. Get your eyes up. Look me in the eye. And he just kept smiling. Finally, I just grabbed him by the shoulder pad, pulled him off to the side, and I let the coaches go on with the rest of practice. And I looked at that young man and I said, if this is that funny to you, why don't you turn your equipment in. And he looked at me and said, Coach, this isn't funny. This is great. All my time at CNX, all the time I've been playing football, I've watched you get on guys. I've watched you get on them and push them and push them. And today was my day. Today I mattered. How awesome is that? God love him. I put my arms around the young man. I gave him a big hug. Told him I loved him. And I said, you just taught me more than I will ever teach you. They all matter. Whether they're 6'4", 230 pounds, getting a major college scholarship, or 5'8", 260 pounds, playing on that offensive line, they matter. And they need to be loved. I make it a point to yell at scout team guys as much as I possibly can today. And I'm going to protect him by not giving up his name, but for all of my scout team guys that just get ripped upside down, he's the reason. You've got to love him. Be the best you can be, the second thing we ask our kids to do. And we talked to the kids at the beginning of the year about the parable of the talents, the book of Matthew. Everybody's given talents. You look around this room. I think one of the neatest things I've ever heard stated was, everybody in here is superior to everybody else in some way. Think about that. Everybody in this room is superior to everyone else in some way. Wow. We're all given talents. What are we doing with those talents? Again, getting back to the 6'3", 230-pound player that's going to be a major college football, God has bestowed tremendous athletic talents on that young man. More athletic talents than he did on my offensive line friend that's 5'8", 260 pounds. The fact, though, the only thing that matters is what do we do with those talents? What do we get out of those talents? What are you getting out of the talents that God has given you? And that's what we're going to push to. We want these kids to be the best they can be in the role that they're given. If they push themselves to be the best they can be collectively as a unit, we will be great. And that's what God's asking of us. Talk about the parable of the home builder. Many kids have been at X, they've heard this before. I say it all the time, but I love it. It's a great parable. Tremendous home builder. Builds million-dollar homes, beautiful homes, state-of-the-art. Decides after 40 years he wants to retire. He's had enough. It's time for him to retire and move on. So he goes to his boss and he says, I'm tired. I need a break. I'm going to retire and I'm going to go spend the rest of my days in solitude. His boss said, wait a second. I need you to build me one more home. He looked at his boss and said, can't do it. Tired. Don't have the energy. I need to move on. His boss says, please, just once. So after negotiating, he said, fine, I'll build you one more home. So he goes to build the home and they dig the foundation. They pour it. There are cracks in the foundation. Normally the home builder would have ripped it out and he would have poured it again. Not this time. He said, I'm tired. My heart's not in it. Patch it. So he just patched it. They started framing it. And out of the frame of the wood, it was all warped. He looks at the wood and he sees it's warped and he says, I'm tired. I don't have the time. Forget it. Just go ahead and use it. As they're hammering the frame in, nails bend. He just says to heck with it, hammers them down, adds another nail instead of pulling it out. So I think you get the point here. After he finishes with this home, it's horribly built, and they put it on sand foundation, he goes to his boss and he says, here's your home. I'm finished. I'm ready to retire it. His boss says, well, hold on a sec. Puts it into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys. He says, for all you've done for me for the past 40 years, thank you. Threw him the key and said, that's your home. Obviously, what gives you that? Oh, no, the foundation, the work boards, the roof. He's beside himself. That's what we're building every day. God's given us this tremendous gift of us, of who we are. What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do with the foundation? What are we going to do with the boards? What are we going to do with the nails? Every day matters. Every day gives us an opportunity, as Theodore Roosevelt said, do what you can with what you have where you are. What a concept. We're going to push our kids to give us their best. Give us your best. Every day is a great day. I told a young man the other morning in the weight room at 6 o'clock, I could tell he was tired. He looked at me and he just said, I'll be all right. I said, you having a good day? He looked at me and said, today's a great day because you woke up, because you have a chance to do great things. You have an opportunity today to get better. At the beginning of every practice, I'll walk around and I'll scream to all the seniors, what kind of day is it? I'll go to the running backs. Senior running backs, what kind of day is it? And they better yell back. It's a great day to get better. And we'd go across because that's all I'm worried about, let's get better. I don't care if we're winning a game that weekend. We're going to get better. And if we can get better, good things are going to happen for us. Talk to our kids about no excuses. You can have excuses. We had a 6'4", 225-pound wide receiver two years ago. Great potential. Talk about talent. He was given 90 talents. He used three of them. He's getting better, though. He's going up against a little 5'8 defensive back. We're in a little passing scrimmage, and this 5'8 defensive back is beating him on the line, is holding him, is clawing and scraping and doing everything he can to stop this 6'4 guy. And he was. I heard the receiver come off after one of the plays. Says to one of our guys, he's cheating. I looked over at him and I said, did I just hear you correctly? And he just dropped his head because he knew it was over. He's cheating? He's cheating because he's winning? He's beating you because you're not taking advantage of what talent you've been given? Don't tell me he's cheating. Work harder. Do better. Get it right. I don't want excuses. We have to move ahead. There's no reset buttons here. You can tell me he's cheating, but you can't push reset. I watch my kids play video games. My little guy, if I could dismantle that reset button, I would. All of a sudden he starts off, he's not doing real well, he pushes reset. Reset? No, there's no reset. God doesn't give us a reset button. We need to get it right the first time. You know, John Wooden always said, don't try to be better than anybody else. Don't try to be better than anybody else, but never cease trying to be the best that you can be. And I think that's what God wants us all to do. The final thing we tell our kids about being the best they can be, and we try to live it out, is at the end of every day, go home and look in the mirror and ask yourself a simple question. Are you better now than you were this morning when you woke up? There's either a yes or a no. There's no gray area. Oh, I was a little better. No, you're not. If there's gray area, you're not better than you were in the morning. And that's a challenge we put forth to our kids. It's a challenge I think we should put in front of ourselves. Say yes at the end of every night. Look in that mirror and know, I'm better now than I was when I woke up. When you do that, man, we're going to be successful. And the final straw, drawing strength from one another when times get tough. Nobody can do it alone. If you look in this room, there's a lot of love in this room. There's a lot of strength being drawn from one another. The essence of leadership, Christian leadership, is the ability to inspire others to work together as a team to stretch for a common objective. This is a common objective. This should be the objective. And the fact that you're here today is pretty impressive. Michael Jordan once said, there are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. And the funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. This is a heck of a team. We've got a heck of a coach. The final parable I'm going to leave you with is the parable of the spoons. We'll talk to the kids about this as well. A man dies. He's a home builder. He dies and he goes to heaven. God takes him to a room and says, I'm going to show you two rooms. I want you to tell me which one's heaven and which one's hell. So they go into the first room, and there's all these little people that are frail and emaciated. They haven't eaten. The room's hot. They're all sweating. They're wailing and groaning. They're miserable. And in the middle of this room is this big vat of stew, but it's surrounded by a big chasm. And all these little people have this giant spoon that they can dip across the chasm into the stew, but they can't get the spoon back to their mouth. This guy looked at God and he said, well, obviously this is hell. God said, you're right. So he goes to the next room. He opens it up and they walk in. Same room. Exact same room. Exact same people. The only difference is they're laughing. It's not as hot. They're well-rounded. They've obviously been eating, but it's the same room. And he looked at God and it looked funny, and all of a sudden he sees one of the guys dipping the spoon into the vat and then feeding his neighbor because he couldn't get the spoon back to his mouth. That's leaning on one another. We've got a future and we have an opportunity to do great things. We have to challenge ourselves on a daily basis. I think God wants us to challenge ourselves. He wants to put us in situations, challenging situations, and see the choices we make with our free will to the good. He wants us to choose wisely, and he gives us those opportunities. I think the only way that you improve in this world is by surrounding yourself with people that are better than you. I'm always critiqued on how we schedule at St. Xavier High School. Our schedules are brutal. And I think if you look at most of the Catholic schools in the city, they all challenge themselves with unbelievable schedules. That's the only way you get better. I love looking at our schedule last year. People don't think we were successful. I said, successful, my goodness. Coleraine High School lost to Elder in the regional finals. We lost to Coleraine. Elder High School lost to St. Ignatius in the state championship game. We lost to Elder. St. Ignatius beat Elder in the state championship game. We lost to St. Ignatius. Don Bosco Prep out of New Jersey won their state title. We beat Don Bosco. Indianapolis Cathedral won their state title. We beat Indianapolis Cathedral. Louisville Trinity won their state title. We lost to Louisville Trinity. I think you get the point here. Our kids were better at the end of the year. We had a tremendously successful year, and we finished four and six. Four and six. Wait a second. We didn't get into the playoffs. We didn't succeed as most of modern society look at success. But I argue differently. I saw a group of young men that improved on a daily basis. I saw a group of young men that did a few things that made them champions. They loved one another. They were the best they could be. And they leaned on one another when times got tough. We weren't as talented as the teams that had beaten us. That's going to happen. But it didn't mean that our kids weren't champions. My wife sums it up in three simple words. Well, not words, but three simple statements. She always tells me, my vision's pretty simple. She always says, I have faith in God, I have faith in my family, and I have faith in bomber football, even though the head coach is an idiot most of the time. Men, thank you very much.