By Marcus Asay, World Workforce International 

I grew under the shadow of a father that was the epitome of a solid athlete.

The sports gods chiseled him as a lean, six-foot-two, quick-reflexed, and finesse body.

In high school, he participated in a variety of sports: tennis, track, baseball, basketball, and pole vaulting. He held a state record for many years and then catapulted to NCAA basketball fame as a freshman guard on the Cinderella University of Utah basketball team winning the national championship at Madison Square Garden in 1947.

Along the journey, he was asked to join the Pittsburg Pirates as a relief baseman in summer camp. Also, as a high school basketball coach, he won two state championships in Utah while substituting as a history teacher.

As a young boy, with dreams of being a great athlete (without the body), and four other brothers, my dad would take us to the backyard and line us up with baseball gloves in hand. With a bat, he would ‘volley’ grounders or flyers to each of us as we fetched the ball and threw the ball back to him. He called this game Pepper. I would watch as he skillfully hit the ball to land perfectly at our feet. He used coaching words like ‘get there’ and ‘hustle, hustle.’ When one of us made a good catch, he enthusiastically declared ‘great catch’!

Those were wonder years. There were times we would talk about what made a great player in sports, and I strongly recall certain words like: “Keep your eyes on the ball, boys!” in baseball. “Follow the ball with your body,” and “Stick to the ball son!” in basketball. Well, my dad gave great advice but what was more amazing was watching his physical skill in doing what he would advise; it was perfect congruity and poetry in motion.

Those words hollow and echo through my mind many times in my career and life. I did not always keep my mind to the ball at all times, but the times I did stick to the ball, my outcomes were successful.

Words and phrases he used such as “focus,” “sticking to details,” “work toward a goal,” moved me in ways that sticking to a ball or watching for it was a masterful, life-changing success strategy.