Celebrate Clive

Daily as I leave home every morning a colour photograph of a smiling soccer coach hugging a heavy trophy is there to encourage me as I approach the door. Scribbled on its border are his inspiring words, “Earn your right to play!”

           

This simple message is underlined by the fact that my soccer coach, Clive Charles, died six months after the photograph was taken and exactly nine years ago today. He was faithful to his ideals to the end, and his spiritual presence bids me to follow in his footsteps.

“Earn your right to play”? Clive’s motto referred in particular to the conditional right of each of the 20 women who were privileged to wear the purple and white jerseys, which proclaimed that they were jointly the University of Portland Pilots soccer team. Acclaimed as one of the best collegiate women's soccer teams in the USA, the team has included several Olympians (most recently London 2012 saw Christine Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt win bronze medals with Canada and Megan Rapinoe a gold with the USA), and Clive an Olympic coach.

Clive made it clear to us that earning a right to play applied to more than just the soccer field. It embraces all facets of life equally. In soccer and in life, he expected a high standard of

Anatomy of a (Freakishly Awesome) Goal

Recently I was organizing some old boxes my parents returned to me that I had been storing in their garage and I came across a list of goals I had written for a 12th grade English class project. It was a reflection of my ideal vision of life at the time (and there were some freakishly awesome goals that my 17 year old self set!). As I took a brief mental note of those