This is an exciting time around the state for some hard-working kids, coaches, parents and grandparents. Competition has reached another level.
Over in the Houston area our dear friends, Joey and Eddie Colburn will be watching their grandson, Cline Andrews, and his Clements team as they battle Memorial in a best- of- three playoff. The winner goes to STATE. The losers go home.
On a different but difficult level of competition, C.J. Hartwick, 12, of First Baptist School in Corpus, will be in Washington, D. C. for the National Spelling Bee. There will be 273 children there from across the country. Each one of them has competed against many others to reach this level The placement of a single letter in a single word can make the difference in going on or going home!
Over at Rice Stadium in Houston,where Memorial and Clements will battle it out, a single pitch in the wrong spot, or a missed guess on a fast-ball or curve can send a team home, heartbroken, while the other team excitedly moves on to state championship play. It's all about choices and selection. Does the "i" go before or after an "e"?? Do I dive for the ball and try for a game-saving catch, knowing that if I miss the runner on first will score and we lose? Is it SERREFINE or serefine? I cannot ask my parents or teacher or coach. I make a choice and go with it.
Less dramatically the rest of us will be involved in choices. They may not decide the result of a baseball game or spelling bee, but important nevertheless.
Long ago a great leader, Joshua, put a choice before the people who followed him. It was a life-changing choice. Read it: "If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15) That was a winning choice, Josh! You hit it out of the park! You got the "i" before the "e". Way to go!!
(I will let you know later about Cline and CJ)
