Never, Ever Give Up

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Lisa Holt
Lisa Holt

Recently, our family took a road trip and attended the LSUA Generals Basketball Conference Playoff game in Longview, Texas.  If you are not familiar, this is a brand new team that was just formed in 2014. They had an impressive record their first year at 21-3 and deserved to go to the NAIA Championship. At halftime, the Generals were down seventeen points.  In the basketball world, it is preferable to go into the half less than ten points down, because at this level it’s just too much lost ground to try to make up.  In other words, it wasn’t looking favorable for our boys.  Nevertheless, they came back on the court to a standing ovation of dedicated fans that had made the trip to support them.  And they played to win.  They never lost their composure, they played strong, they played consistently and most importantly they played as a team.  The Generals won that game in overtime by one point, clinching the Conference Title.

 

LSUA GeneralsIt was quite a game and one we won’t soon forget. It had more meaning than just winning a game for us.  We were traveling with our teenaged son, who had been struggling with some confidence issues with his basketball game—he was frustrated and ready to abandon his dream to play basketball.  On the way home, we asked him if he had learned anything from the game.  He listed several answers, but finally got to the one we were looking for “Never, Ever Give Up”.  You see, he knows some of the players and the coaching staff personally, having attended a summer basketball camp at LSUA.  These are young men that he looks up to and respects.  Watching them play that game was better than any “parent” talk we could have given him.  Another valuable lesson to be taken away from that experience is “Never, ever give up,  because you never know who is watching you.”  These young Generals, the Coaching Staff and the Head Coach Larry Cordaro set a standard that is becoming more difficult to find in sports.  They are active in our community with our youth, and they always take time to pose for a picture or acknowledge a child with a fist bump. Alexandria is lucky to have LSUA Generals Basketball but more importantly the youth of Alexandria are lucky to have the quality of young men that make up the team.