When a state championship coach who is also an Ivy League grad reads your post about the OLine Challenge, you get the following educational and inspirational email.
“It moved me to share with you one of my favorite etymologies. I flippin’ love etymologies — every word we speak has a biography, a life story, of its own. And there is richness in their heritage.
“Competition.” From the Latin, competere, “com” meaning together, “petere” meaning to strive. Competition literally, at its heart, means “we strive together.”
In the earliest Latin, it was a contractual word implying an agreement. Only in Late Latin did it come to mean “rivalry.”
What’s the mission of every practice rep and every play? To become better than we were the rep or play before. This is true whether we’re wearing mesh practice jerseys of our school colors on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon.
We strive to get better together.
It is a broader application of the notion of #Ubuntu (I am because we are) that has been our team-building mantra for some six or seven years now. “Competition,” understood in this way, expands Ubuntu, that sense of “we,” to include — each and every game — the athletes in different colored shirts and helmets.
I know you know all this, Coach. But it’s been a central concept to my team (and individual) building “curriculum” for as long as I’ve been blessed to coach Redhawk Football. And those Strongman Challenge O-Linemen, as is their want, opened a lane just wide enough for me to share it with you.
As a follow up, we include some type of competition in every practice session. We value competitions of speed, strength, and athleticism, but oftentimes include competitions of luck or chance so that those who usually win can experience losing and those who usually lose have an equal chance of victory. There is growth and development in both winning and losing as we strive together.
Thank you, Coach Rahn Fleming.
Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time!
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