This past weekend was a scary moment for my son’s baseball team. In our tournament, one of my son’s teammates was hit just underneath the eye by a pitch. It was one of those freak moments that happen in sports. As I ran from coaching 3rd base to him and his mom came sprinting in, we were trying to console such a tough kid going through a moment us parents all fear.

So what happened next? Our CANI baseball team did exactly what you would expect from a group of kids and parents that have created a community. We rallied around one another. One parent ran for ice. One grabbed a towel to help with the blood. One helped carry him to the car to get to the hospital. One was helping pack up his bag. One was helping console his mom. And on and on and on…all supporting the way communities do.

While the boys were finding ways to rally around each other, us parents continued to check in on how the visit to the hospital was going. The boys kept asking how he was doing all while telling themselves we have to win it for our friend and teammate. The kids responded the way communities do…rally around one another and have each other’s back.

We are so blessed that while he has a journey of recovering from two facial fractures, he’s already back to himself.

I’ve said this in previous blogs, but youth sports can be the platform for kids to learn such incredibly valuable life lessons. Realizing how to bounce back from failure. Understanding the price you must pay to improve. Developing leadership skills through the highs and lows of the season. And this weekend was a reminder of another lesson in the importance of building your community.

We all have a variety of groups we’re a part of. Your team at work. Your neighborhood. Your friend group. Your kid’s sports team. A group can simply be a group. Or a group can become a community when the group buys in for a bigger purpose and is willing to be there for one another.

This weekend was another reminder of what our 10U CANI team is about. We believe in uplifting these boys in ways that go well beyond baseball. Because a community is here well beyond when the last pitch is thrown. It’s being there through all the craziness, the highs and lows, and everything in between because the focus remains in the long run how we help these boys grow both within and outside of the game of baseball. Our community has learned to rally around this common mission.

When you think about your teams (work, neighborhood, family, friends, etc.), do you feel you have a common mission to rally around? There will always be diversity of thought and experience within each team, but can there be a common vision to rally around to turn a group of individuals into a community?

One of the difficult parts we’ll all face is that communities will constantly have to face moments of imbalance. Just when we think we’re in a state of balance and everything is going to plan, disruption is bound to happen. It tests a community. It tests whether we are truly living by the mission and vision. During these difficult moments, it’s easy to get distracted and start thinking through our singular lens as opposed to the community lens.

This is where strength in community comes into play. We need leadership to continue reminding and showcasing what we’re trying to accomplish. We can get so caught up in the smallest of situations and it takes a community to remind one another to zoom out and keep focused on the overall mission and vision.

The most rewarding part about this weekend was the leadership our kids displayed. It was highly emotional to see their teammate in distress but the way they rallied around one another, had each other’s back, and wanted to win for their teammate was an incredible display of community. They rallied around one of our key pillars of having each other’s back and the courage and leadership those kids showed was nothing short of inspiring.

Community is what we make of it. We can let imbalance that life presents us disrupt our community or we can challenge ourselves to continue to stay connected to our mission and vision. We have a choice in every community we’re a part of to either help everyone in the community stay connected to the mission and vision or we can make the choice to focus on the disruption and let it suck our time and energy.

It’s a decision that we often have to make during our toughest moments – make the easy decision to do nothing (or worse add to the problem) or make the hard choice to dive into the struggle and do everything you can to help solve problems. We can all do hard things and make the difficult choice to lean in. Be the leader in the community that stands up in the toughest times to help the community stay connected to the mission and vision.

Take your step: reflect on how you show up for your communities (work, family, friends, neighborhoods, etc.). Identify one way you can show up as more of a leader in one of your communities. Lean into the next struggle you face and be the voice that helps bring everyone’s focus back to the mission and vision.

On a side note, I wanted to send a shout out to another community that showed up during this scary moment for our team. The team we played against from Beatrice, NE (Beatrice Bullets) was nothing but class during all of this. Not only were they extremely concerned for our team during the game, so many of their fans and team asked after the game how our teammate was holding up. To go another step further, they reached out to Brian Wasko who runs the CANI baseball organization to be able to send a candy care package to our teammate. Great example of the good that happens in youth sports and the community they have built as a team. Thanks for all your class, Beatrice Bullets.