Screwing Up

We all screw up.  I personally mess up several hundred times a day.  My husband is a wonderful man.  He has a great many strengths. One of the things that I'm most proud of is how he handles himself when he's wrong, especially when he's coaching.

Ryan is a baseball guy.  He played college baseball.  He's competitive.  He wants the best from each of the kids.

We just finished up baseball season with a World Series tournament.  There are about a hundred and eleven World Series tournaments so it really isn't a World Series.  It's just a really big baseball tournament.  Ryan is the head coach for Zac's age group.
 
He's not great at crisis management.  He sometimes flies off the handle.  He gets caught up in the heat of the moment.  This usually only lasts a few minutes.  Maybe an hour.  He's quick to realize that he's done something wrong.  And he handles it quickly.  What does he do?

He humbles himself and seeks reconciliation.  He goes to that person and asks for forgiveness.  He might try to explain why he did what he did.  Or he might just say "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that".

With the baseball team, he will sometimes talk to the team about it after the game.  "I did this. It wasn't right.  I've asked player name for forgiveness. I'm sorry."

Before our last game in the World Series we found out that we would have to forfeit the rest of our games.  We had a player get hurt so Ryan added a new player for the tournament.  The whole process is computerized so Ryan thought if the system let him add the player he was good to go.  Not so much.  A team challenged and the tournament director told him the system shouldn't have let him add the player.

Ryan talked to the team about it. He apologized to the team, the specific player and the parents.  Then he went to the other team's coaches.  He explained what had happened.  He apologized for not knowing the rules more throughly.  He wanted to protect the player and our team's reputation.  He wanted the other team's coaches know that he wasn't trying to cheat.

I have never been so proud of him.