“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” — Proverbs 22:6
It was a moment still frozen in memory and not because the temperature dipped into the mid-20s on that frigid Nashville night.
Just before Baylor’s TSSAA football semifinal game at Brentwood Academy two weeks ago, as the teams jogged onto the field for kickoff, Red Raiders senior running back Caleb Hampton stepped up next to me along the sideline and said, “Mr. Hargis, thank you for being here to cover us.”
What could merely seem like a small gesture was easily recognized as something much more significant. For a young man to set aside the whirling emotion just before the biggest game of his team’s season — and their career to that point — to express gratitude to someone else was a glimpse into that kid’s character.
Hampton, a finalist for the Division II-AAA Mr. Football award, would go on to total 85 yards in the game and his younger brother, junior defensive back Joshua, played an equally important role in helping Baylor advance to the state championship game for the first time in 11 years.