This year, the Neumann University Men’s Golf team is using an inspirational picture as our symbol of stewardship. Rickie is a man of faith and well composed moral character.  Rickie also dresses very well especially on the golf course. Stewardship is not only about using our resources carefully but, also taking care of one another and ourselves even our own image.  This picture will remind us every day on the golf course to value our faith, have high moral character and to take care of our image and how we present ourselves.

The Men’s Golf team at Neumann defines stewardship as not only caring for ourselves and for our teammates, but also the courses we play on. We are privileged enough to play on some of the nicest courses around, and that doesn’t go over our heads. Golf has the largest field of play out of all of the sports, and we are responsible for not only taking care of the course that we play on but we make sure that others are taking care of the course as well. Our coach makes it well known that any player to disrespect the course out of frustration or discontent has a good chance at not playing for the rest of the season. Every tournament, match, and practice entails us taking care of the course, be it our home course or an opponent’s. This truly emphasizes that stewardship and care for our field of play is priority.

While reflecting on the Balance Pillar, I noticed a quote from Jim Valvano that I believe applies to everyday life in the sense that we take things granted. Valvano states, “There are three things we should do every day, number one is laugh, number two is think, and number three is have your emotions moved to tears… if you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day, that’s a heck of a day”.

In golf we are faced with 3 to 4 hours of an emotional roller coaster. You could be having the day of your life, or you could look like a novice player, and that happens to me often. You need to have a balanced mentality. It’s easy to laugh at our friend or opponent that tops a tee shot 5 feet in front of him, but we need to be able to laugh at ourselves when that happens to us. It’s easy to lose concentration and begin to not care about how we’re performing, but we need to be able to take a deep breath and think about finishing strong. It’s easy to lose our composure from frustration and give up at times, but we need to be able to let our guard down and be open emotionally for being here today and being given the opportunity to compete at such a high level in our sport.

Through stewarding our resources and our personal skills on and off the course, we can potentially encounter a “full day” just as Jimmy Valvano stated. A balanced mentality includes not only taking time to laugh, think, and cry but, to also look out for our teammates. We do not let chins go down, and we give encouragement to be better than we were yesterday.