I was getting ready to call a coach for his preseason team information for the Kansas Pregame magazine and was getting excited. This particular coach was coaching three sports at his high school and they had won multiple state championships. I wanted to hear his thoughts on how he did things at his school.

So after we had talked on the phone awhile and I had most of his team information, I asked him about those state championships. He totally surprised me with his answer. He said, “State championships are great, but what my players learned at church youth groups on Wednesday nights was far more important. I said back to the coach, “That sounds like a story, tell me more about this.”

The coach said when he was right out of college and became a head coach he worked his players hard, off season and in season. He said it took seven or eight years before they finally won a state championship.

He also said his wife and him had started a family right after college and it took a dozen years before his own kid was involved in middle school athletics. He then, for the first time, noticed that if the coaches of those middle school sports kept their teams late on Wednesday nights at practice, his own kid couldn’t get to youth group at the church.

So he started thinking about what he was doing as the head coach at his own practices. He was keeping kids late in practices on Wednesday nights causing the same problem for his own players.

He then went to his team and told them he was going to let the players go at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday nights from now on so they could get to youth group at their church. He also wanted the players that were going to youth group to invite their friends that didn’t go to church or youth group to go with them.

He said his players were very happy to get out of practice one day a week early and responded by asking their teammates, which were not church members, to go with them and they did. He then started hearing from parents and youth group leaders and they were all pleased about what he had done.

The coach then said to me, “We still continued to compete for state championships and won a few more.”

1 Timothy 4: 7-8 For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.