Rehounds & Bobcats Pray - Corbin Times Tribune

There are few subject matters that can be written about that gets the blood of folks boiling faster than a discussion of their personal loyalty to their local sports team. If you are a Colonel, Yellow Jacket, Wildcat, Jaguar, Cardinal, Panther, or Redhound, then you are more than likely ready to take offense if I were to write against your team or in any way write something negative. We bleed no other color than our own and we wear the t-shirts, ball caps and jackets to show just who we love too. A sport has a way of bringing out the best and the worst in us, I suppose.
I love competition and goals, direction, team work, and winning are things that do motivate me. For every athlete I know the desire to push yourself outside of your limits and safe zones are one of the aspects that has individuals signing up for their first teams and trying out to make teams everywhere. For many, there is also the love of being involved with something that you could not complete by yourself. My local loyalty to teams has been altered due to my involvement in sports as a registered official. It is difficult to be personally involved in cheering on a team and also officiating their involvement in that sport too. I have on the other hand learned to appreciate the efforts of student athletes and I enjoyed my part of their competition as such When you are in high school it is all about your school, but as adults we learn the bigger picture of not just sports, but life.
Last night the Corbin Red Hounds traveled to Log Mountain in Bell County to play a little football. In one aspect, nothing is out of the norm. The band is packed and ready to go, cheerleaders are excited and ready to cheer, parents may have taken off work early or made other arrangements to eat dinner early or to even go out and eat before or after the game. Sports officials are excited, they have made all their travel arrangements with plans to arrive a hour and a half before kick-off, and school officials and volunteers are getting the concession stands up and going, ticket booths manned and the programs ready to sell. All a part of Friday night football in the mountains. Last night was different in the unique opportunity that each side of the football field had an opportunity to participate in. While normally a Corbin Redhound and a Bell County Bobcat would rather just meet on a field for action, the real action for life took place in the stands and before the football was kicked to being in the game, and actually the real action took place even before the officials and captains met on the field for the coin toss.
Redhounds and Bobcats had the opportunity to pray together and that is real news and real action. If you are a Christian, then you believe that prayer is a direct and real communication with the creator of the Universe. You have no doubt personally experienced the practice of prayer on many different occasions in your walk with Christ. This experience is unique because it is a student lead organization known as First Priority and they are responsible for planning the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer at each game. Unique also is that fans and Christians from different churches, denominations all have a united participation in seeing the successfully practice of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. There is no doubt that the exercise of our faith is important.
All across the Nation, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is filing complaints and yes, even lawsuits against school districts for sponsoring public prayers. The law on this matter is quite clear and with all due respect for the law of the land, individuals should be exercising their personal freedoms everywhere before that too is attacked and removed as fundamental rights we have still have today. Go Rehounds and Go Bobcats, I say.

Until then