Hockey Chat: In 1896, George Merritt of the Winnipeg Victorias was the first goalie to sport ordinary crickett pads during the Stanley Cup playoffs to help him stop pucks. Soon after, crickett pads were used by all goalies.

As a baseball coach for twenty years, I often had to maximize the skills of my players and play “small ball” since my teams were not always blessed with great power. Consequently, the sacrificial bunt was an important part of our offensive arsenal.

Amazingly, the sacrificial bunt, which should be one of baseball’s easiest skills to master, was for some players the most difficult. Most of the players could square around, get the bat out over the plate, and with a relatively loose grip, let the ball hit the bat. But some failed because the player was not willing to “sacrifice” himself and give himself up to move his teammate forward.

The player was struggling, missing foul shot after foul shot in practice. Obviously frustrated, the player continued after practice working on her game. Her coach sat idly by, watching. He got up to watch more closely. Rebounding miss after miss he offered, "Do you want me to help you?" "No, I do not. I can fix my own problem," she shot back. He smiled and continued to rebound.

Every year I look at my team’s schedule of games during preseason and start to calculate wins and losses. One game I’m certain we’ll win, another we probably won’t, and still another will be a toss-up. Though each season is filled with uncertainty and challenges, the majority of coaches still dream about championships and most valuable player awards. What’s exciting to me is that God can do immeasurably more than all of those expectations combined.

Staleness is the first sign of decay. Avoiding getting stuck in a rut is key to any training schedule. All training regimes get old unless changes are made. The body plateaus and needs a new stimulus or it won’t improve. All exercise routines need variety. No matter how hard we work, we need change.

Spiritually we also need to be challenged, or we go stale. There is nothing spiritual about sitting in the same pew for 30 years. Recently I asked a man who ran a retreat center if he had seen any other retreat centers lately? He replied with an air of conceit that he had been too busy ministering and had not seen any other center in 10 years. His center had that sad stale smell.

All-star quarterback Jack Kemp and his teammates boycotted the 1965 AFL All-Star game in New Orleans “as a statement against the racial climate in the city.” Jack’s black teammates were not treated with the same respect as he and his white teammates, and because they were a “team united,” they did something about it. As a result,the game was moved to another city.

French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “The human race is governed by its imagination.” For Bonaparte, considered a military genius, imagination enabled him to conquer most of western and central Europe. As leaders of this world through our joint inheritance with Christ, we too face many seemingly insurmountable foes. Fourth and long, down by three with four seconds left on the clock, an away match against the state champion—these obstacles pale in comparison to the matchless superiority of our Lord’s power.

Hockey Chat:  Passing is a key in the game.  Have you ever seen someone try to go end-to-end around 5 attackers only to get stripped before he’s able to get a shot off.  Players that try to do it all to get the glory usually lose it all and are left empty.  What’s all that hard work for if it gained nothing?

The perfect season was in 1972 when the Miami Dolphins did the improbable. They won seventeen games (including the Super Bowl) in a row. People still call them one of the greatest teams of all time. On the other side of the coin, Northwestern lost thirty-four games in a row over a four-year period. The adjectives used to describe these teams were much different. Streaks—either you love them or you hate them. If you are on a roll and winning games, then everything seems to go your way. But if the steak is the other kind—the bad kind, the losing streak—then it seems the harder you try, the more small things grow into huge problems. When you have been on both sides, you learn the difference between winning and losing is very small.

Many times we think about the starting lineup for an athletic team and how we as athletes work to make the cut. What about God’s starting five—not five people, but five direct commands from His Word.

Throughout my years of training as a wheelchair athlete, I have found that memorizing and reciting Bible verses helps me in many ways. It helps me to stay focused, to get to sleep and to stay calm in anxious moments.

Prior to a race, I often recite a verse in my mind to calm my heart. I know that God is going with me as I race and that He will give me what I need on that particular day.

One of my strengths as a wheelchair racer is my endurance, but I’m usually slow off the start. I will never forget the time when one of my coaches shouted at me after a race about my slow start. “What were you thinking? Where was your mind, anyway?” she asked.

As an English teacher, I instruct my students to look for symbols in literature. As a basketball coach, I often use symbols from literature to teach my players, such as in Genesis 3:11 where God asks Adam and Eve if they have eaten the forbidden fruit. Instead of telling the truth and asking for forgiveness, Adam blamed both God and Eve. When God asked Eve the same question, she blamed the snake. Since then, mankind has been pointing fingers and playing the blame game.