ONCE A PROFESSIONAL ALWAYS A PROFESSIONAL

I did not translate because her numbers tell the story.  She is cradling the MVP award of the professional woman's league in Portugal.  Her story in English, below.

Jennifer Risper é a estrela que mais brilha

...is the star that burns brightest  (Portuguese)

 22.11.2011 ás |  Miguel Tavares |  0 Comentários

Em Algés, mora uma jogadora que tem o seu brilho próprio e que vem trazer qualidade e momentos de genialidade aos campos de basquetebol da Liga Feminina de Basquetebol. Se o cartão de visita de Jennifer Risper já deixava antever uma boa campanha em Portugal, a #8 do Algés tem demonstrado as qualidades que a conduziram à WNBA.

Na Jornada6 da LFB, a base norte-americana do Algés acabou por ser a grande figura: no jogo contra o MRGroup Olivais Coimbra, Jennifer Risper foi MVP, rainha das assistências e atleta com mais roubos de bolas. No desafio deste fim-de-semana, a #8 das algesinas voltou a ser a figura maior na importante vitória da sua equipa, terminando o jogo com 20 pontos, 7 assistências, 5 roubos de bola e 4 ressaltos. Tão, ou mais, importante que os seus números é a capacidade que Risper tem de assumir o jogo nas alturas decisivas. Nos momentos decisivos do jogo de Vagos tomou sempre as opções correctas: fosse para finalizar em bandeja, ou para assistir uma colega melhor posicionada para lançar.

Depois de ter sido a atleta em maior destaque no jogo da Supertaça Feminina, Jennifer Risper continua a demonstrar a sua qualidade e ao fim de 7 rondas da Liga Feminina, a base norte-americana é a MVP da competição com as médias de 18.3 pontos, 9.4 ressaltos, 5.7 assistências e 4.6 roubos de bola por jogo.

20 POINTS
7 ASSISTS             These are one game numbers
5 STEALS
4 REBOUNDS (She's 5'9")

18.5 POINTS
5.7 ASSISTS           These are averages
4.6 STEALS          
9.4 REBOUNDS

We met this woman last night.  She joined a small community of religious people from our church.  She was there to talk about her change of career.
At the young age of xxvi she has lived more than what some of us can log over almost three times that amount.  The adversity that she has had to overcome and the joys that have been showered upon her all flowed smoothly from her heart as she spoke.
She has decided to give her life to God.  After a rather impressive professional basketball career, the numbers are there for you all, she has decided to be a lay college/university campus missionary. She is listening to the call to "Come and follow me."   She will be stationed in Nebraska, yes, THAT Nebraska and she will be the spiritual guide, the prophet, if you will, in the athletic area of the institution.
We hear a lot about professional athletes.  I personally totally lost interest in that universe 20 years ago.  Of course it didn't help that I was living in San Diego!  Be that as it may.  Jennifer Risper has been the object of great adulation for many years. Through Vanderbilt U. and through her professional career, as you can tell by the picture celebrating her MVP award.  She has left that all behind for the sake of the Kingdom.
We spent a wonderful two hours with her last night. I invite you to click on the link just below to see what it is that she is called to do.  This, I'm gonna watch.   http://www.focus.org/

REVENGE AND SCHADENFREUDE TOGETHER, SO SWEEET BECAUSE SO RARE

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/joel-peralta-caught-pine-tar-nationals-rays-crying-130611107--mlb.html

This is why I stopped being a fan of "professional" sports.
Is it because they cheat?  No.  Is it because they are so much better at what they do than I could ever have become?  No.
It's because when they get called out about their cheating ways by another cheater who knows they the are cheating because he knows that the cheater used to cheat for him when he was the cheater's boss before he traded him away to the cheateer in the other dugout, they cry "FOUL" instead of just sitting in the bushes and waiting for an opportunity to bite back.  It's the "cry-baby" syndrome of shedding tears over seeing one of the myriad of "unwritten rules" broken.  Even though I am now an old man, I cannot get used to the reciprocal righteousness of "hypocrite vs hypocrite" one-up-manship."  I have come to a point where the humor of the situation has grown into disgust.  I humbly admit that men grow old way before they ever grow up, but professional athletes and their "mystique" has become more than what I can stomach.  The story of this episode is made humorous by the fact that the whining, offended cheater who ratted out the cheater who used to cheat for him LOST anyway.  So the cheater who ratted out the cheat by "Wiki-leaking" his propensity for cheating to the officials, got beat anyway.  Now that, I like.  
Then, the cheating boss of the cheater who got "Wiki-leaked" whines and cries about the lack of loyalty of the "Wiki-leaking" opposing cheater to the "unwritten rules" of the game.  This type of behavior, says the winning cheater,  will cause cheaters all over the league to have to change their ways in order to protect their cheating ways from other cheaters who would know that they cheat and how they cheat because they used to share cheating tactics when they were on the same team.  How horrendously traitorous of you!  You have contributed to denigrating and despoiling the legion of professionals of the cheating tricks that they have developed to a here-to-fore unheard of level of perfection.
Now that is A+ stupidity on top of political ignorance.
The winning manager should have said [could have said if he too were not a cheater] is: "I have taken my pitcher aside and had a Dutch Uncle talk with him about the evil of cheating.  The pitcher who substituted for him and won the game proved to the august and honorable cheater in the other dugout that the cheating ways that he espouses and the disregard of the unwritten rules that he practiced tonight could not protect him from the ignominy of defeat at the hands of an honest and straighforward, clean and righteous mano a mano fighter who has been spared of having to work in the cheating shadows of my opponent's salacious locker room.  That's all I have to say."
It reminds me of the Country and Western song, "Ladies, Don't Let Your Sons Grow to be Cowboys." [read: Professional Athletes]
So, last night one cheater beat another.  It happens all the time, because in life, there is always a winner and a loser.  Like it or not.  Take it or leave it.  Honest or crooked.   It has always been so and will ever remain so.  
Amen.

ONE WAY HOW AMATEURS DIFFER FROM PROFESSIONALS

It's not complicated, but I never in my life thought about this way.  It came about in a conversation with an avid golfer whom I know quite well.  No, not you.  This person is happy just to be out on the links.  He goes to golf at least once per week and goes to the Philippines with a group golf tour just to watch the grass grow.  Now this guy is a real competitive guy.  He is in business for himself and I work with and for him.  Yet, while we were chatting the other day, he was carrying on about how nice the weather was and about how much fun he had with the guys.  I personally could never be like that.  When I do a sport, I have a hard time realizing that it is only a game.  I really do.  For me, baseball is war; hockey is war; ping-pong is war; tiddly-winks is war, for crying out loud.  There's no such thing as a "game."  When I told him that he laughed and said that he now knows why I never played professional sports.  He said that it is because I never learned that perfection is not a reality, but a goal.  As long as you keep it in front of you as a goal, then each mistake that you make is just another time when you realize that you are not yet perfect.  He said that the difference between a professional and an amateur is that the professional has more reason to get angry at himself/herself than the amateur, but doesn't.  The amateur (many of us) have the tendency to get angry at ourselves for every missed shot, but we don't have the "right" to do so because we are not good enough to begin with.  His point made sense to me on the intellectual level.  Every time we watch professionals play, we see their cool, self-containment and inner directive focus in action.  We see the football star drop an easy "catch".  We watch the baseball star strike out.  We see the crack tennis champion double fault and yes, we sometimes see the bright star of the hockey rink miss an open net.  In most games that are played against the clock, we often see the star who made the calamitous error early on, make the play that seals the victory.  My friend said, in competition it is not perfection that is the goal, it is comparison.  It is the ability to control the comparison and stay on the positive side of the "I am better than you" comparison.  It is not possible to control that if you consider yourself perfect and get angry at yourself for not being so.  The professional is one who realizes this to a high degree.  The professional knows that he/she is not perfect, so mistakes don't drive the professional crazy like they do the amateur.
Without thinking about it during the conversation, I thought of myself, the professional driver.
There are people on the road for whom being there is war.  Beware of them.
I learned a lot from the conversation with my friend.  I never thought about life that way.  I never thought that I could find the description of  the thought within my very self.  I am amazed that there is indeed one thing in me that is not war.  Too bad that God has made arrangements that dictate that I will have to learn how to be a professional at something else, because driving nearly put me away for good.
Isn't that what war does?
HHmmmm!

I LEARNED SOMETHING FROM TODAY'S SUPER BOWL

I have to start be telling you that I do not follow professional sports any more.  I used to, but then many years ago the baseball players went out on strike.  That did it.  Anyone who makes a truck load of money by the minute and can't get along in life without having an agent and a union between him and his employer is not anyone that I want to support.  So I don't.  I admire their athletic ability from afar, but I am convinced that they need some lessons about managing their own life at large.  But that is only the introduction.  I confess that on Super Bowl Sunday I watched the game out of the corner of my eye because I wanted to see the commercials. You are familiar with the type.  "I buy Playboy because I enjoy the articles."  So here's what I saw.
a. A million-dollar-a-minute bumblebutt drop a pass that your 95 year old grandmother could have caught and scored on.
b. A great, I mean great Coca-Cola ad.  Remember the "Mean Joe Green" ad of many years ago?  This one is better.
c. The same million-dollar-a-minute bumblebutt catch a pass for the last and victory ensuring touchdown pass.
I sat back and shook my head because my brain and my emotions were scrambled.  I was sitting before the television preparing the outline of my Bible Study presentation scheduled for Monday evening.  When I saw the action on the screen, I couldn't help but think of God and the way He treats us, sin after sin, mistake on top of mistake and still entrusts us with His work in the plan of salvation.
Until now, I sit here and shake my head about football.  Eleven people, highly professional, humanly human and laden with weaknesses, trusting one another to do what has to be done to win the prize.  One minute they disappoint and cause despair, then they perform to the level for which they are admired and bring elation.  The lesson here is that they must trust one another if they intend to dominate as a team.  They must bring themselves to accept the occasional foible of one and move on with the assurance that momentary weakness passes and habitual communitarian strength remains.  It takes a special kind of person to survive in that environment, and in many others as well. I will think of this for a while, I am sure.  It really hit me today and I thank God for it.