FACS Faces Giants

Athletics

FACS Faces Giants

Straining Toward the Goal--Reflections Following Our 2007 Season

The First Assembly Christian School varsity football team has finished its season, having won its first state championship game against Harding Academy and lost its second playoff game to St. George’s Independent School.

If that were the whole story, we could simply put a nice little cut line under a team photograph, note that the team went 6-4 in the regular season (including a 20-17 victory over two-time state champion, Davidson Academy of Nashville), and move on.

But there’s an off-the-field story this season that is more interesting and, some would argue, more important, than the Crusaders’ win-loss record.

It’s a story that reminds us that life sometimes imitates art.

It all started with prayer—coaches praying to have an impact, students praying for personal change, and, as it became clear God was moving, parents, administrators and teachers praying that God would have His way.

Both varsity and junior varsity players, along with the coaching staff, began attending Thursday night Bible studies early in the season, and are continuing their studies in the off-season.

“These are open forums. We discuss issues. We pray for each other,” says Don Purvis, head coach. “I can honestly say that what happened off the field this season was more important than anything we did on the field.

“We decided we were going to try to reach a standard this year,” Coach Purvis said. Players adopted Proverbs 27:17 as a motto—“Just as iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another”—and painted the word “iron” on their helmets as a memory jogger.

Each player and coach has an accountability partner. In addition, high school players are paired, as mentors, with junior high players.

“Our football players have learned that they’re going to be looked up to—they’re going to be leaders—no matter what,” Coach Purvis said. “They had to decide which way they were going to lead.”

By all appearances, the players have decided to lead for good. A number of secondary classroom teachers have commented about “changes in attitude,” and a “new spirit of cooperation” in class this year, attributable, in part, to the leadership of football players.

Little things are making the difference. Some examples:

When a junior high player exhibited poor classroom behavior, his mentor, along with all the seniors, literally pulled tires alongside the offending student, sharing the disciplinary load.
When the administration decided to allow athletes to carry water bottles to class and some non-athletes began abusing the privilege and littering the hallways, it was the football players who, without instruction, picked up the trash.
Coach Purvis asked his players to wear ties on game days. When our uniform company was unable to supply enough ties early in the season, one player, senior Collin Farrell, took the initiative to bring his own ties to several players, and taught the students how to tie them.

If these and other signs of goodwill are beginning to sound familiar to those who saw the 2006 film, Facing the Giants, there may be a connection.

“Last fall, Coach Piker (Paul D. Piker, math teacher and sports statistician) kept telling me I had to see this new Christian football movie,” Coach Purvis said. “Every day I’d come in, and he’d ask me, ‘did you see it last night.’ Finally, one night, I’m sitting at home and my wife’s out of town. I’ve got nothing to do. So okay, he’s going to ask me again if I’ve seen it. So I went. I was the only one in the theater. And there’s a parent in the film with the last name Purvis, which isn’t that common. I’m thinking, ‘what is God asking me to do?’

“I came out of there convinced that God has each of us where we’re at for a reason, and we’re supposed to serve Him with everything we have right where we are. Next thing I know, I’m in the position of head coach.”

Recently, assistant coach and Bible teacher Jason Hall took a group of senior players to the Memphis Jewish Home to minister to residents. The group went on to Perkins restaurant for breakfast, where one of the players spotted Steve Williams, who played the role of Larry Childers, a high school kicker’s wheelchair-bound father, in the Facing the Giants film. As Coach Hall had his picture taken with the amateur actor, he told Williams that FACS is a lot like the school in the film, and that our players, who watched the movie as a team, had been inspired by the production.

Turns out, Coach Hall wasn’t the first person to relate such a story. A number of Christian schools have been inspired simply because a church group had the guts to tackle the making of a low-budget film.

Now a number of FACS students, faculty, and parents have been inspired by a group of football players who dared to take the lead and be different this year.

Their example, in turn, calls each of us to ask the same question Coach Purvis asked while sitting alone in that theater: ‘What is God asking me to do?’

First Assembly Christian School

Scholarship for Life. Values for Eternity.

Athletics

FACS Faces Giants