No Losers

No Losers


They played one of the most memorable high school football games in history in the fall of 2008 in Grapevine, Texas. It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville State came out to take the field, the Grapevine Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through. That’s right, hometown fans made a spirit line for the visiting team.

The Grapevine fans even made a banner for Gainesville players to crash through at the end. It said, “Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.

“I never in my life thought I’d hear people cheering for us,” recalls Gainesville’s QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah.

And even though Faith walloped Gainesville, 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave their head coach, Mark Williams, a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he’d just won a state title. It has to be the first Gatorade bath in history for a coach with a 0-9 record.

But with the game over, everyone could see 12 uniformed officers escorting 14 Gainesville players off the field. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That’s because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

This all started when Faith’s head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 touchdowns all year. Faith has 70 kids on the roster, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing 7 year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking people to do just that. “Here’s the message I want you to send:” Hogan wrote.

“You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”

Lessons For Leaders:

“You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”

The leadership lessons in that one statement are as profound as any we might encounter in a dozen best-selling business books. Perhaps more so, because the intended recipients of that message were young men who before this game may never have experienced that sense of value or even believed in their own self-worth. Certainly, they were a group that had never received so valuable a gift from complete strangers.

But one man’s leadership sparked actions that led an entire community to rally behind kids who no one had ever supported; the leader of one team became the model for every team.

How powerful a message do we send as leaders when we proclaim the intrinsic value of every member of our team? And how much greater is that message when we extend that believe even to those we oppose with respect.