Prayers, hugs & tears

January 20, 2014

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." - Proverbs 3:5It doesn't matter the color of your jacket, skin or what community you live in, we must all pray for families of the three teenagers who attended Oak Glen High School who lost their lives in a terrible accident Saturday night.We are all members of the community.Tears are tears.Heartache is heartache.Sorrow is sorrow.Hugs and prayers are essential.Three 16-year-olds will not be sitting at their desks Tuesday when school resumes.Not only is it real now, it will be real again when students go ...

Life around the wide, wide world of sports

January 27, 2014

The Ohio High School Football Coaches Association announced its 2013 Academic All-Ohio Football Team honors. The teams are selected based on the combined GPAs of the Top 22 academic players on the team who have earned a varsity letter.Of the 72 teams who were recognized, Steubenville Big Red placed 62nd and Indian Creek 71st.Big Red senior Bryan Pierro was one of 100 student-athletes from more than 35,000 who played this season who were recognized as a member of the 2013 Individual Academic All-Ohio Football Team.These seniors were nominated by their coaches, carry at least a 3.6 GPA and ...

Not a smart choice

February 15, 2014

The telephone rings while you're updating a spreadsheet, responding to an e-mail or typing up a weekly progress report.Your boss is nagging, The woman from the next cubicle is bragging about her kids and the clock seems to be ticking slower and slower and slower.It's a normal day at work.Then, some guy who you've never met before somehow busts in the office, points a finger in your face and calls you "a piece of crap."Not exactly the nicest greeting, right? Not exactly something you want to be told while you're minding your own personal space and doing your job.So what gives people the ...

Words are more than words

February 17, 2014

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me."It was reportedly first published in the 1860s, but it is one of the dumbest things ever said.And, unfortunately, the myth perpetually continues.Keep in mind what has happened lately with nothing more than words in two cases - Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin; and Marcus SmartI am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that NFL players stand squarely in Incognito's corner and Martin is left alone.It has everything to do with the locker room culture.With the release of the Ted Wells report of the mess that ...

Uncommon people doing uncommon things

February 24, 2014

I talk in this column a lot about my faith in God and how that gets me through way more than I could on my own.I talk a lot about how the world must be changed through us and our relationship with God and how that affects those we touch in our daily lives.That, for most of us, is done through sports.And, recently, there have been a lot of people in the news in the professional sports world and little of it good.We walk into any sporting event knowing someone will win and someone will lose.What we don't know is how things in that sporting event will affect us or those around us.What we ...

How to win a game

February 25, 2014

Nate Moses had a mountain to climb in his second year as the Edison boys basketball coach.The first year produced three wins which, unfortunately, wasn't all that unusual for the Wildcats.They hadn't seen a double-digit win season in a decade.Not that they were all three-win seasons, mind you, but there wasn't a winning season in the bunch.What faced Moses was not teaching the boys how to better defend the pick-and-roll, how to run the break, block out or take a charge.It was much tougher than that.He had to somehow teach the boys how to win.That, for sure, would not be easy.And, it took ...