FROM GOOD OLE UNCLE VIC

April 2008

    Hello everyone, how are you? Did you play any good April fool's jokes on anyone? Did anyone play any good ones on you? I turned the clock forward an hour on Lynne again so she rushed out of the house an hour early for our 8:00 am meeting. Works every year!

    The answer to last week's trivia question: What is the difference between a caucus and a primary? A primary is a state-wide election of a political party's candidate. A caucus is a meeting of registered voters of a political party to plan action or elect delegates. Those that got it right were: John Krainer, Pam Phipps, Pam Monacelli, Greg Hunter, David Sadowski, Brette Gilden, Kim Duda, Jill Eisenberg, Candice Ament, Rosemary Wheeler, and Kris Galasso.

    This month's trivia question: What state had the most teams in the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament? Turn your answer in to Jami at Jami.Mignogna@BrickBodies.com

    Speaking of basketball, I love this time of year. The NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments. The Maryland State High School Basketball Championships. For a basketball aficionado like me this is the best time of year.

    That being said, sports are great but you have to keep things in perspective. As the NCAA commercials say, only a very few college athletes will go on to play professionally. And what is often overlooked is that only a very few high school athletes will play at the college level. For many athletes, this is hard to accept. When I was an assistant basketball coach at Towson University I was responsible for academics and career counseling. (Yea, me! We obviously had a limited budget!) When I asked each member of the team what they wanted to do when they graduated do you know what every one of them said, to a man? You guessed it. Play in the NBA! And we only won 5 games that year and lost 21!

    In my years of playing high school and college athletics and of coaching high school, college and AAU sports I have seen way too many kids that compete fiercely between the lines but once they step off that court forget everything that made them such a great player. They forget about focus. They forget about teamwork. They forget about hard work. They forget about goals. They forget about how to compete. Somehow they don't see any connection between life and sports.

    Life is no different than sports. The harder you work, the luckier you get. Tyler Hansborogh, the center for North Carolina who is the front runner for the John Wooden Award, given annually to the best college basketball player in the country, took 500 shots on his day off before the Regional Finals to see who would go to the Final Four. 500 shots! On his day off! Of course, they won.

    But in sports, just like in life, sometimes things don't always work out the way you would like them to. You can go from a hero to a goat in seconds. Joe Alexander of West Virginia hit the game-tying basket against Xavier with seconds left on the clock but missed the potentially game-winning foul shot and then fouled out seconds into the overtime. Xavier won when B.J. Raymond hit two huge 3 pointers. One minute, Alexander is the hero, celebrating and pumping his fist and the next minute he is sitting on the bench with his jersey pulled over his head as B.J. Raymond and his Xavier teammates celebrate at mid-court. That is life. Sometimes you are up. Sometimes you are down. But you never stop trying. And, as long as you give it your best, while you may be disappointed, you should never be ashamed of the way things turn out.

    And of course, there is always attitude. Stephen Curry and the Davidson team is the best example of this. This little school of 1600 students in North Carolina, led by a skinny sophomore that was rejected by his dad's alma mater, Virginia Tech because he was too small, shocked the basketball world and took Kansas to the brink of defeat before falling by 2 in their Regional Final, again, of course, to go to the Final Four. How did they do it? They believed. That's how people do anything of significance. They believe.

    When all else is said and done, attitude is everything. My high school, Springbrook of Montgomery County, played for the Maryland State 4A (Big Schools) Championship in early March. I saw them play for the first time in the State Semi-Final and told Glenn they would win the State because they had a guard that would not let them lose. They were the heavy favorite in the final and took Thomas Stone High School lightly and it showed. At the half Springbrook was down by 15 and with less than 10 minutes to go, they trailed by 18. Eighteen points down with ten minutes to go! And that is when the Springbrook guard, Carl Garner, began to take over. He went to every senior on the team, grabbed them and reminded them that this was their last game. He switched to guarding the leading scorer on Thomas Stone and shut him down. He began to take the ball to the basket himself and get Springbrook back in the game. He refused to lose. And, in one of the greatest comebacks in State play-off history, Springbrook ended up winning 61-57. Attitude really is everything.

    I just hope Carl Garner takes this with him in everything he does in his life. And I hope all young athletes do as well.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY