Not making excuses

You all know that the point of what Ubuntu Football Academy is doing is much great than soccer.  The great thing is that we're already seeing some fruit of all the effort.  Rory is a 7th grader from Ocean View.  He plays right back for us because he's got great pace, serves a good ball, and his athleticism helps him defend.  When he comes to practice he's focused and hard working.
The only problem is that Rory doesn't always come to practice!  He's had two episodes this year where he has gone completely AWOL.  He'll miss 1-2 weeks at a time during these episodes.  Most teams would have dropped him at that point, but our philosophy at Ubuntu is different.  We continue to pursue him and push him to mature.  As the months have gone on he hasn't had long absences, but will still miss a practice here or there.  Sometimes he'll use the smallest excuse to try and miss a practice.  We try to help him understand that skipping training won't help him reach his goal of playing for Manchester United one day.
This week, though, we have started to see some real fruit from our patience and perseverance.  On Monday Rory came to my house to tell me he would be late to training because he had to go to something at church.  However, he already had his stuff with him and would come straight to practice from there.  (BIG STEP).  He told me then, 3 days early, that he would have to miss Thursday's practice because of a dance practice at church, and had his mom call to confirm (ANOTHER BIG STEP).  But it got better.  On Thursday, about 20 minutes into practice, Rory comes walking up.  His dance practice had been canceled.  Even though he had an easy excuse he put in the effort to come to training.  For him that meant walking to the taxi stand, paying for the taxi, making the ride, and then walking a bit to get to the field.  He didn't even have his stuff, but just came to watch.  This is such a major step for Rory!  He used to look for excuses, yesterday he wouldn't allow his excuse to stop him.  Some of his teammates shared equipment so he was actually able to practice with his team.  It was beautiful!
After practice I made sure to spend some time telling him how proud I was of him.  We know that most of our boys never hear that people are proud of them, so we really try to emphasize that.  I'm excited of the maturity and commitment that he's showing.  He'll miss again in a few weeks, probably, but it's the small steps that will build him into a community transforming leader.  We shared a pizza for lunch today where I was able to continue to build him up over his great progress.  Rory is easy to be proud of and I can't wait to see where he's headed!

Excited,
Casey