This is what America wants

Everyone knows “The Story.” This is not about the story. It is about what we, the leaders of college sport, can do with greater clarity because of the story.

The dust on Central Washington’s softball field has settled. But the impact lives on and serves as a force for NCAA schools trying to encourage vibrant community environments. If you have any doubt, say the words “softball,” “home run” and “carried” to 10 people, and more than half of them will tell you the story. Just the word “softball” may start the conversation.

And what a wonderful conversation it is.

What did we learn?

Our student-athletes do the right things. They act admirably without force, without coaching, without rules, without personal gain, without television cameras, without sponsors and endorsements.

Doing the right thing appears to be rare. If events such as this were considered common, they wouldn’t be news. Winning, losing and playing the games are common. The spectacular plays, the tension-filled close overtime games, the feats of extreme athleticism are rare, so we see them in sports news daily. But how many stories are told as often as this one? We enjoy great plays, but we need more examples of good hearts doing the right thing.

America longs for more of the right thing. If being neighborly and good community were common, we would still appreciate this story. But it wouldn’t refresh us with the intensity the nation felt from this story. You could almost sense a national voice saying: “Yes! This is what we’ve been missing. This is what it’s all about.”

Being more invested in community is natural and comes from the heart. We have been working on community strategy in Division II for three years. But what happened in a small community in Washington was not created by a strategy. Instead, the platform and strategy were created because we all see real needs in our communities, and we see the uplifting potential that our athletics programs offer.

We were surprised by the response, not by the actions of the students. Those who work often with student-athletes were not surprised by what the Central Washington players did. What surprised us was the reaction of a nation that rarely sees this side of our student-athletes. But don’t all of you have stories about your students doing the right thing when it meant more for others than it did for them? It felt good for the nation to react as it did, but shouldn’t we be concerned that so many believed the action, rather than the circumstance, was unique?

America needs what we are doing. There are certainly more than these six lessons, but none is more important than this: America has indirectly said to us, “Yes! This is it. This is what we need.”

So now it’s time to build community. It’s time to invest in doing the right thing as the heart of every sporting event.

From now on, if anyone asks why you are investing more in connecting with your campus neighbors, tell them it’s because the heart you saw displayed in two softball players carrying a competitor around the bases is the same heart we want to make available to all our neighbors.

If people ask why sportsmanship matters, ask them which they would prefer seeing more of: the common victory at the expense of others or the much larger heart that comes from putting others first? Tell them you want your students to graduate with a wealth of great sports stories – and stories of doing what is right.

We want our students to know those peak moments of athletic accomplishment. We value the rewards of hard work and practice. We know those sports skills will translate into powerful life skills.

But more important, we want our students to have a wealth of college experiences when they choose to meet the needs of others instead of their own. We want them to leave our schools having lived community from the heart. We want them ready to build community elsewhere, so much so that Americans will come to expect this sort of behavior from our student-athletes.

Now we have the lead story. Certainly not the first – nor the last. Perhaps not even the best. But in the best of strategies you look for the proof of genuine performance.

Now we have it.

Rich Luker is chief strategy officer for Relay Worldwide and a consultant to Division II.