A Tale of Two Basketball Players

My oldest daughter Anne has gone off to college. That means we only have two children living with us full time.

Mike is a junior in high school. Sara is a freshman in high school. They both play basketball and that means my wife, Sue, and I get to spend our winter in the stands watching a lot of basketball.

Mike was recently promoted to the varsity. It is dream come true for him. (As a former basketball player that had to quit for health reasons in the middle of my sophomore season I will admit it is a dream come true for me as well.)

Well done Mike you are awesome. I was told by the coach that it came from hard work and practice.

Sara is a very good basketball player but has had injury problems the last two years. It has cut into her playing time and made getting on the court hard this season. But she is gutting it out and has told me that “she has three years left” and we are sure she will get back to 100%.

As a parent it is fun to watch your children play basketball. Especially fun when they score points.

But Mike’s position as the new guy on the varsity and Sara’s health means we haven’t seen huge point totals out of either of them.

That leads into the next two stories about this basketball season.

A few weeks ago we saw Sara sitting in the stands watching Mike play and talking to a girl that is about 3 years younger than Sara. Later that day that same youngster posted on Social Media how awesome Sara was.

It isn’t anywhere close to the first time we have heard from somebody about what a huge positive impact Sara has had in the life of a young child. In fact we hear it a lot. Sara wants to grow up and be a 4th grader teacher. It seems like a perfect fit.

Over Christmas break we were told on multiple occasions about how a younger high school player was excited because something made him more like Mike Chapin. The player had brought up many examples of being like Mike. But younger player wasn’t talking about jump shots or rebounds. It wasn’t Mike’s basketball life that he wanted be like.

He wanted to “be like Mike” the person.

If Mike or Sara finishes their basketball careers with 1,000 points we won’t be as impressed with them as we are with these two stories.

(P.S. We are sure that the same stories are going on at Bethel but we don’t know those students parents and siblings.)
Mike and Sara are People Making a Difference for People!!!