Remember Why You Play: Faith, Football, and a Season to Believe

I am not normally a football fan - but when I first heard the story of Faith Christian High School a year ago, tears came to my eyes. More recently, the story was refreshed when I watched a YouTube video about the school and how it reached out to the Texas state school for boys.I was excited to read the story of Coach Hogan, the school, and football team that left a lasting impression on the lives of 14 boys from the state school. Actually, the book follows the team from its pre-season planning, through early two-a-days, through the final game of the year - the year before the school was asked to play, for the first time, the Texas state school.I found the first third of the book, as the coaches and team prepared for the season, of interest. It caught my attention and kept drawing me back into the book. However, much of the book is a week-by-week, game-by-game, analysis of the lives, decision, attitudes, and plays made on the field. As I said, I am not a football fan, and weekly recaps became less and less interesting. The comments on players, coaches, and others, which introduced each chapter, were uplifting, but the play-play recap of what happened on the field was less so. By the time I reached week three or four, I felt like I was rereading the same game over and over. A football fan may have enjoyed the on-field experience, I did not.I do recommend the book. If you are like me, you might want to skim the parts of each chapter that focus on the game itself. However, do skim (and not skip) even these parts, because there are occasionally thoughtful insights on living life and sportsmanship - like when it might be appropriate for a quarterback to take a knee on the final play of a game. And when the book is over, you can be glad that a team of 40 and a team of 14 were able to change each other's lives.This review is based on a free copy provided by Amazon.com for use on its Kindle e-reader.

The subtitle of Remember Why You Play by David Thomas is a bit of an understatement: Faith, Football, and a Season to Believe. It is so much more than another football book.I picked up this book because I had heard the story about the Faith Christian Lions playing against the Gainesville State Tornadoes in 2008. Gainesville State is a maximum-security juvenile detention facility, and Faith Christian is a squeaky-clean Christian high school. Yet the Faith team and fans handled this game in an unbelievable way. Kris Hogan, Faith's head coach, asked the Faith parents to cheer for the Gainesville players... to cheer against their own sons. These incredible families responded in the most loving, Christ-honoring way, leaving an indelible impact on the 14 Tornado players dressed for that game.But, as David Thomas said, you have to go back to look at the Lions' 2007 season to truly understand why a team - a whole school - would respond this way.Kris Hogan is a highly successful coach in the state of Texas where football is king. Because of his success on the field, he has been offered positions at other schools, making a lot more money than Faith Christian can pay him. But he continues to coach at Faith because he believes that is where God has placed him. And because he believe that, he is much more than an Xs and Os football coach.Football is simply the backdrop to the life lessons Coach Hogan is trying to teach his players. He views it as his mission to prepare these young men for life after high school, so football games and practices just become the means by which he can apply the valuable lessons.Sports fans will definitely enjoy this book, as will any current or former football players or coaches. But I also believe parents of teenagers and even youth pastors will find a lot of life lessons in Remember Why You Play to pass on to the young men in their lives.

A must read for every parent with children in any sport.

Not very often do you come across a book that is equally engaging for men and women alike. While the book appeals to anyone who loves Friday night football, this go so far beyond a Friday night game. The summary of the book tells of the Gainesville State game and how the fans and families reached out to the players to make them feel valued and loved. The majority of the book follows the Lions the previous season to show just how natural such an act of kindness and service was to Faith Christian. There are not many high school coaches who see their job as much more than winning games...especially in Texas. Kris Hogan knows that he has been called to help raise boys into men. Regardless of whether they play at the college level or not, he is helping to instill character qualities that will serve them the rest of their lives.There are moments when you have to remind yourself that this is a true story because the actions of the players and the coaches are so counter to what society would do in the same situations. Because this is a Christian school, they know that they are under a microscope and that their actions are scrutinized. The 2007 Faith Christian Lions were not perfect, but they each were transparent with the author and allowed him to show what it takes to be successful and what it means to be a team.This was without a doubt one of the best books that I have read. I have bought copies for several people already knowing that it will appeal to a wide audience from high school kids to senior citizens. None of us are too old or young to learn that if we want to be successful in anything, we must be "Sold Out" and remember why we do what we do every single day.