Building Men for Others: Accountability

Being this is my 18th year of coaching high school football, I have heard just about every excuse there is in the book.  And being a cop for 25 years, the excuses get even lamer.

After the game at Hilltop, the County went through a power outage.  The locker room was pitch black and we used cell phones to light our way through opening lockers.  It was hard to see as the players tried to change their clothes and put all their gear away in their lockers. 

As I closed everything up for the evening, I saw that gear was scattered on the floor of the locker room.  I left it all there and locked up the room.

Yesterday, one of our players came up to me and said, "Coach, somebody got into my locker and stole my girdle."

In the 25 years of being a cop, nobody ever took the time to pick the lock of a locker.  And nobody every took another person's stinky girdle.  Crime doesn't happen that way.  But this young man was adamant that the perpetrator took his soiled and slightly smelly underwear.  There was no way he could have left the girdle out by accident.

So I had him check the tops of the lockers and see if it could have been thrown there.  Sure enough, it was on top of the locker.  Somebody picked it off the ground and threw it there.

It is hard for all of us to assume that we could make mistakes and that there is an outside possibility that WE are the masters of our own fate.  It is easy to blame somebody took something from us instead of saying, "Coach, I lost this or I lost that."

It comes down to this:  We are all accountable for everything we do in life.  Step up and put your stamp on what you do in life.  If you make a mistake, FIX IT!

I will be sharing this life lesson to our players today after practice.