When most sport seasons end, numbers get crunched. As coaches, it’s easy for us to get caught up in this number crunching, especially as the media highlights our career wins, the titles we’ve won and the number of “Coach of the Year” awards we’ve received.

But any true coach knows that records are not what are important. Having the opportunity to work with athletes and make a difference in their lives is what is important. Coaches, like players, make a lot of sacrifices to develop winning teams, but most will tell you those sacrifices and successes are for the athletes—for the joy of watching players mature and grow.

Life is like a roller coaster ride. There are ups and downs, fast parts and slow parts, twists and turns, fear and excitement. In our sports we ride this same roller coaster. One play we are up, the next we are down. One game we win, the next we lose. It is one crazy ride.

The day before last year’s Kansas City marathon, I was meeting with Chris Anderson, our National Director of FCA’s Endurance Ministry. I was fired up for the race but a bit anxious about trying to run a PR. As I was reflecting back on my training leading up to the race, I mentioned to him that I wished I’d done more long runs, more speed work, more conditioning, more everything. I was feeling the pressure. He smiled real big, leaned across the table and said, “Dan, at this point, the hay is in the barn. The race is tomorrow.

When I was a coach, one of the hardest things was getting my athletes to understand that improvement took place in the off-season. I would always get the same song and dance about their working hard during the season and needing the time off. Let me tell you something. Work ethic is a big deal to a coach. Athletes who put in the work are always better off in the end.

As Christians, I think we sometimes feel like it is our job to make sure all of our friends, family members and teammates come to faith in Christ. We spend our days trying to do all we can to be a perfect example—saying the right things and serving in the best ways in order to make sure we can have the best possible influence. We think that doing things for God is what our complete focus should be.

For the majority of my time in college, I didn’t have any Christian teammates on my basketball team. Because of this, I put pressure on myself to be in the Word, to go to church and to pray enough just so that I could see all of them at least start to pursue more of God in their lives. But I eventually came to realize that wasn’t God’s aim for me. Nor, is it the aim for any of us.

Our family plays a great game at the dinner table called “Would You Rather.” We ask the question “Would you rather . . . ?” so that our children have to make a decision, such as, “Would you rather win a World Series or a Super Bowl?”