if you are not a sports person then you may not know of the big story (before the nfl draft week) of greg paulus. greg was a star player for the duke university basketball team the last few years. before coming to duke though greg was a super star high school football quarterback. he is now, with his one year of eligability left as student athelete wanting to take his game back to football and the university of michigan looks like they will give him a shot.

as i've been listening to the 'experts' they are all skeptical and pretty much predicting that he won't make it as the starter or even show any sign of success. i suppose that's understandable, but i am really pulling for greg to prove all them wrong, but probably not for the reason you might guess.

as a youth pastor i have two entities that compete with me for our teenagers time and energy the first is school, the second is sports. when its school sports its compounded. (notice i didn't say that family competes with me.. that's another blog posting)

some 6-8 months ago i put together our calendar for the summer with missions and camp experiences. one of my girls, who is invested in what we are doing and loves the mission experience for junior highers was super stoked to go. its tearing her up now, that a few weeks ago the high school coach has scheduled soccer tryouts for the same week, the very first week of june (yes, soccer tryouts are june1-5th). my guess is that she will not be going on the missions experience, which i understand, but it continually bothers me when stuff like this comes up.

when i was a teenager i played soccer, skied (the snow kind), and played golf as sports go. i moved to new jersey from alabama during those soccer years and because my brother & i were unknowns by the local coaches we ended up not getting invited to the travel teams and spent three or four years of PAL league soccer. when high school came i remember starting training 2-3 weeks before the season and we ended up making the teams & eventually onto varsity playing with many state ranked players & a state championship. soccer stopped & skiing started then golf.. well, golf was pretty much year round cause that was my favorite, but i didn't start playing till i entered high school, rather late for today's kid. i then spent time at church doing bell choir, singing choir, youth group, even young life. we had family vacations not associated with any of that. never once did i feel pressure to have to compete or make decisions (at least hard ones) on doing one or the other.

those days were great, you got the importance of teamwork, competition, physical fitness, school pride, and personal self-esteem. somewhere along the years the thing that brought on good things has gone to such an extreme it has flipped on itself.

apparently now you need to compete in your sport or choose your instrument at an early age and give yourself over to the coaches & teachers or you will never be able to make the team/band whatever. i get that scholarships are a big deal, but scholarship is supposed to get you into school so that you can be well rounded & educated. in our environment today that doesn't seem such the priority. why are things so uber competitive? is it that important that we start our girls soccer the first of june. even worse, football before school has even let out in the last two months of spring.

i root for you greg paulus cause you might show some of the culture that you change your sport focus and still be 'okay' the world will not end…