Belhaven Basketball

As the basketball coach at Belhaven I try to stress three dynamic parts of our college.

1. Spiritual Life
There is the opportunity for Spiritual growth for each student here at Belhaven. It impresses me the influence I have seen in the lives of many former students and student athletes that attended Belhaven. It is good to hear stories from former players that I come in contact as well as traditional students from the college. I have heard stories of how their faith was impacted greatly and strengthened because of their time at Belhaven. This influence came through a variety of ways whether it was in the classroom or through other people on campus.

2. Academics

Belhaven continues to make strides in being stronger academically. I am proud of the education our students receive here at Belhaven and feel like it is a tremendous recruiting tool. We stress how solid the academic programs are here and we emphasize the small student to teacher ratio. Our goal is to make sure young men understand they will have quality educators that care about them as students and as people. The faculty here invests in the lives of our students in a powerful way.

I realized how important having relationships with the faculty as a student in my own life was a few weeks ago. During a recruiting visit with a young man and his family and I started listing the names of my instructors from college. I just kept naming the teachers I had while in college and could not believe how many I remembered. It amazed me that after 20 years I could still remember their names and the classes they taught ( I conveniently forgot the grades I received). There is no way could come that close to naming that many of my high school teachers.

3. Athletics

Our push is that the student athletes we bring in here to Belhaven are going to put to a challenge athletically. We have a full time strength coach that works on quickness and speed as well as strength. We have three full time trainers on staff to help our athletes to get the proper treatment if they ever have an injury. Our coaches are committed to making sure each individual improves as an athlete and in their skill level. We are constantly trying to find new ways to help our players take their game up a notch. We have had some big wins and made big strides over the last couple of seasons. We led the nation in FT shooting two seasons ago and this past season for the second year in a row, we received votes in the top 25 NAIA National poll early in the season. Two years ago, it was academic casualties that set us back and then this past season we had some injuries that had a big impact on our season.

We could use your prayers that this season we continue to make strides without big roadblocks. The bumps have made us better, but I am still excited about the future we have here in building the basketball program.

Character and Building into lives
Our main emphasis is to impact lives while building and maintain a top-notch basketball program. We are about building character, discipline and teaching our young men what it means to work hard. Coach Whitten and I have spent many nights on the phone and on the road, trying to build what I think is going to be a fun team to watch next season and for seasons to come. We are not finished yet with our recruiting so keep your eyes open for some great young men with the skills we need to be successful.

God has been good to us and will continue to be good. We just have to stay faithful in the little things.

How God Works

At my age I am still amazed at how God works, how patient He is, how forgiving, how loving and how compassionate.

I still as a parent of four (15, 13, 11 and 2) am learning each day to be a better parent, a better husband, a better son, a better brother and a better friend.

My friend reminded me of a story I told him a while ago and it shows how much God wants to spend time with us.

While living in Tuscaloosa I had come home from a long day at work and was ready for some rest and relaxation. My son who was probably 9 or 10 had other ideas. He wanted to play catch in the front yard. As he went to get the gloves and a baseball to throw I kept hoping my wife would call us in to dinner soon. As we threw the ball my wife had come out and given us the "Five minutes till dinner" line.

As we continued to throw she soon came back out and said "Time for dinner". I then told my son "OK catch one more then we will go in". I threw him the ball and it was easy to catch. He caught it in his glove then dropped it. I threw it again and he did the same thing. Perfectly catching the ball the purposely dropping the ball each time I tossed it to him. It took time to register, but it finally hit me that all he wanted was TIME. He was going to do everything he could to stay out there and play catch with his dad. Even if that meant purposely dropping the ball.

Here is where the lesson comes in. That is what God wants from us. Our TIME and our ATTENTION. That is why sometimes the easy things in life do not go so well. The situations that come up, the opportunities we have to help that we don't take advantage of, the people we ignore. All those times when God is really there and he is calling out for our TIME and ATTENTION.

That evening tossing the ball with my son taught me a lot about how God longs for us and longs to have that deep relationship with Him, but we put it off because we feel our schedule is more important and our time and attention are given to something else.