To the men’s basketball team, Stewardship is the management or care of something to assist it to grow to become a success. On our team stewardship looks like working together as a team to achieve our common goal, which is to win the first Atlantic East championship and NCAA championship. It is holding everyone on the team accountable for their actions. In addition, it is respecting our teammates, coaches, chaplain, referees, and fans.

Our team builds and maintains a culture of Stewardship by sticking together through thick and thin. We know there will be bumps in the road. As the great Michael Jordan stated “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” Our team showed stewardship last year by sticking together through the ups and downs of the season.  For example, many people counted us out and gave up on us.  Through these trials, we pushed through the adversity by leaning on each other, even with only having 8 men on the roster.  Each one of us brought something different to the team which helped us pick each other up to eventually reach the Conference championship.  This experience reminded me of not one, but two things that caught my attention while reflecting on the Balance Pillar.

On the Balance Pillar it states, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are His refusals.”  This was stated by Theresa Grentz, coach of the 1992 U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team, after she was asked by a reporter “How will you deal with this gold medal loss personally for the rest of your life?”  It also states on the Pillar, “Healthy relationships include not only the relationship between ourselves and others, but also our relationship with all of creation. We are called by God in the Book of Genesis to be stewards of all creation.”  On any team or in any organization, the key to success is communication which stems from healthy relationships.  Looking back, we needed to go through those trials in order to understand how to create healthy, respectable relationships not just on our team but with those people that surround us.  Sometimes we might go through obstacles that were not a part of our plans but, with keeping things in perspective everything happens for a reason.

This was a challenge for all of us but, one that we have learned from and made us stronger.  We can bring what we learned from our challenges with us into this new season and use it as a resource to become successful.  Through stewarding our gifts and our time and balancing our relationships, I have no doubt that Men’s Basketball can lean on each other again to be successful on and off of the court!