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GWU Football Coach Shares His 'Play Book' at Men’s Event
Coach Carroll McCray
“I brought my play book,” Gardner-Webb University Head Football Coach Carroll McCray said recently as he raised a black book before an audience of 150 men and boys gathered for the annual men’s night at Double Springs Baptist Church.
Instead of holding up a diagram of X’s and O’s showing linemen and running backs, McCray held up a Bible. “From the youngest to the oldest,” the coach declared, “this has all the answers.”
“I like talking about football,” said McCray, who is in his second year of coaching at his alma mater where he played on the offensive line in the early 1980s, “but more than that, I like talking about the good Lord.”
Quoting scripture and using examples from football and farming, McCray urged men to become mentors.  As nice as this beautiful gym is, he said, gesturing around the large family life center, it is not about this building. Like a house doesn’t become a home until a family lives there, this church is about the men and women in it. “There is magic in this church,” he said.
Referencing The Mentor Leader, a book on building people and teams that win by Tony Dungy, the now retired coach who led the Baltimore Colts to a Super Bowl win, McCray outlined seven characteristics of a mentor. He must:
Engage  - All through the Bible, you read about sheep, he said, and why they need somebody to care for them, but you have to be among them. “The greatest quality of a shepherd is that he is going to smell like the sheep,” he said. “This is a contact sport.”
Educate – The challenge of the coach or mentor is moving the young guys along and bringing them forward to be able to play. “God will judge you on how you move these young men,” he said. As a coach, “I’ll be judged by that scoreboard, but the good Lord will not judge me by that scoreboard; he’ll judge me on how I move those young men,” adding that the pressure of coaching is “not nearly as much pressure as standing before God.”
At Gardner-Webb, he said, we tell them about Him. “We are proud of our Christian heritage. We are proud of what our school stands for. Gardner-Webb changed me when I was there.”
Equip -  Prepare young men by giving them the right training for life, a fundamental foundation.
Empower – After equipping them, the mentor has to be willing to let them go and trust them. All Gardner-Webb football players carry a wallet card with 1 Corinthians 15:33 printed on it: “Do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character.”
Encourage – He illustrated with a story about a duck hunter who paid $10,000 for a dog that could walk on water to retrieve, but was criticized by a negative companion who couldn’t believe the man would spend so much money on a retriever that couldn’t even swim.
Energize - Fathers and grandfathers are to inspire young men and also allow them to be positively influenced by other good men.
Elevate – He encouraged men to do as Jesus did and get away to pray and meditate. “If I don’t get up early in the morning and have that quiet time, I have a messed up day,” he said.
Referring to the Biblical story of the good shepherd who left his flock of 99 to find one lost sheep, McCray asked: “What is the condition of your herd? Do you smell like sheep? Have you been in the herd? Do you love your herd? Are they so precious you don’t want one to get away?”
Sometimes life is hard, McCray said. A football player who gets a bloody nose after a tackle doesn’t quit the game but stays in because he has learned the fundamental and foundational things that help him act and react in the right way. Likewise, when life’s tackles cause pain, “Don’t give up,” he warned, “on your family or your church, or your children.”
“There is one thing that makes a difference,” he said, describing a child who falls down and immediately examines his skinned knee. If there is no blood, he gets up and goes on playing, but if he sees blood on that knee, he starts crying. “The blood changes everything,” McCray said. “That reminds us of something else – Jesus. Jesus came and His blood changed everything.”
McCray closed with a challenge: If a man allows the blood of Jesus to determine the course of his life, “One day when you have to be accountable for your herd, you can stand tall.”
By Linda Cabiness

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