My Hero

One season when I coached Little League flag football, I had a very courageous player on my team named Anna Humphries.

She was the only girl on our team. In fact, as I recall, there were only one or two other girls in the whole league. Anna wasn't a bad player, but she didn't have the same level of experience and skill as some of the others.

According to the Little League rules, I was required to play every player about half of each game. That assumed I would have fourteen players to fill the seven player positions. However, that season I only had ten players. Considering Anna's limited experience and skill, I could have played her for half of each game and then pulled her out, but I felt that she was being courageous to compete with these boys and

I wanted to encourage her, so I decided to keep the playing time fairly equal.

Everything went great until we came down to the big game. It was the end of the season, and both teams were undefeated. On the last play of the game, the other team ran toward Anna's side and scored a touchdown.

They were now only one point behind. With one play remaining, they were going for two points for the win.

I had a choice. I could take Anna out and put another person in her place, or I could leave her in. She had competed hard all year, and based on my earlier decision to play everyone equally, it was still her turn to play. With our team goal of winning it all on the line, I decided to leave her in, and I told her that if they ran to her side again, she could make the play and stop them.

Anna felt that extension of trust and rose to the occasion. Sure enough, the other team ran toward her side, but Anna made the play, pulling the runner's flag and stopping him just inches short of the goal line. This was only the second flag she had pulled the whole year, and she pulled it on the most crucial play of the year.

We won the game and the unofficial league championship. To this day, every time I see Anna, I feel happy that I believed in her and extended trust to her. I tell her, "You are my hero! You made it happen!"

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An excerpt from my book, The Speed of Trust. Copyright (C) 2006 by CoveyLink, LLC.  Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a divison of Simon and Schuster, Inc.  Read my previous post, "Broken Trust Happens," here.

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