The Winner in Every Child

Church: Maranatha Fellowship Church

Location: Saint Albans, West Virginia

This was my first experience coaching an Upward team. The concept is outstanding. I was blessed with a bunch of kids (3rd grade through 6th) that have amazing talent. I really didn't need to do any coaching at all. They know the game very well. However, there was one child on my team that had been through two brain surgeries. He had some vision issues, and little feeling in his hands. Catching the ball required great effort, and running up and down the court was a chore for him. The other kids on the team took notice that he was the only one that had not scored, and they took it upon themselves to start passing the ball to him every chance they had, so that he might make a basket. These are kids that can score whenever they want, but they gave up many chances to score so they could try to get him to. But he never did make one. It came down to the last game, and our special player had still not made a basket. We got together and made a play to isolate him in the lane, and try to get him an easy basket. It didn't work. The other kids still kept feeding him the ball, and in the last half of the last game, he made his first shot!! The gymnasium erupted with cheers. Even parents that were there for the other teams were cheering for our guy.

Throughout the season, our media ministry was filming the games so they could make dvds for each team. My team was filmed early in the process. However, God was at work... When the video team pulled the video of our game, there was no audio. Something had gone wrong. They had to film our team again, and the game that they filmed was the last game, the one in which our guy made his first shot. He will have that dvd to remind him of the first time he made a basket during a game. Our Pastor was so excited that he had made a basket, he had the video team pull the video of his shot, and showed it during the main service the following Sunday.

There is no other basketball league that would have given this young man a spot on a team, let alone actually play. God made it so he not only got to play, but played on the only undefeated team in our league, scoring over forty points each game. Thank you for putting together such an awesome program. I was truly blessed.

Sourced from Upward.org