Saturday, December 17, 2011

Very classy...Westlake player approx 80 deep line the tunnel coming out and raised the roof cheering for DO players. Coach Benkert of Westlake teaches character

Friday, December 16, 2011

@delorofootball "Beautiful morning in LA. Heading to our SoCal brothers Oaks Christian for a morning practice before heading to Carson."

Saturday, December 3, 2011

@sb_joedavidson: Arik Bird TD run caps 10-play drive and GBay takes 24-16 lead on PGrove late 3rd;way GB has played in playoffs,is this an upset?

Friday, November 25, 2011

@sb_joedavidson: RT @sacbee_news: Prep Blog: Keys to tonight's prep football playoff games http://t.co/eLmBVO0n

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Anthony Robles, ASU All American, Nat'l Champ & Character Combine Speaker inducted in National Hall Of Fame; Youngest ever

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Character Combine Guest & UFC Figher Mark Munoz is the main event @ UFC 138 Free on Spike TV. Let's go Mark!
Vista del Lago WR Logan Smith sets state single-season receptions record with 122. Record stood since 1977...
http://t.co/lveZXPXx

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Mental Toughness: To reliably perform despite: external conditions, distractions, emotions, failures, and/or gains
#Wrestling Season started today for Mini Me! So #thankful for great coaches who teach life lessons not just #coach.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Friday, October 28, 2011

THE PERILS OF INDIFFERENCE

THE PERILS OF INDIFFERENCE
By Elle Wiesel
April 12, 1999
White House

Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends: Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again.

Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.

And now, I stand before you, Mr. President -- Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others -- and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people.

Gratitude is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary -- or Mrs. Clinton -- for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. And I thank all of you for being here.

We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations -- Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin -- bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. So much violence, so much indifference.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.

What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.

Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God -- not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies.

If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.

And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader -- and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945, so he is very much present to me and to us.

No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history -- I must say it -- his image in Jewish history is flawed.

The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo -- maybe 1,000 Jews -- was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back.

I don't understand. Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. He understood those who needed help. Why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? A thousand people -- in America, a great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. What happened? I don't understand. Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?

But then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we called the "Righteous Gentiles," whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war?

Why did some of America's largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler's Germany until 1942? It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How is one to explain their indifference?

And yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. I was here and I will never forget it.

And then, of course, the joint decision of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims, those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man whom I believe that because of his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity. But this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene.

Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far? Is today's justified intervention in Kosovo, led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents be allowed anywhere in the world? Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do the same?

What about the children? Oh, we see them on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine. Some of them -- so many of them -- could be saved.

And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.

Elie Wiesel - April 12, 1999

Monday, October 3, 2011

Rt @sacbee_Prep Blog: BRAWL VIDEO: McClatchy, Kennedy forfeit next football games: The McClatchy and Kennedy high school fo... http://bit.ly/r4Hncu

Character at It's Finest

Coaches,
Here is a great story of sportsmanship. Read it and share it with your athletes.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Rt @Sports_Greats: An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart & dreams in his head. -Emil Zatopek

Monday, September 19, 2011

Top Teams Both Battled at Battle at the Capital

This week's shuffle of Sac Bee Prep Poll places the top two teams in the city as Pleasant Grove and Del Oro.


Both were Battle at the Capital teams!

Both represented well at Character Combine in years past!

Character Combine in the Pleasant Grove Locker Room

Character Combine in the Pleasant Grove Locker Room



We are at your games. Would you like Character Combine to stop in your practice or game. Give us an invite!

Travis@CharacterCombine.com

Some of the Team Talks Completed and games/teams visited

Varsity Football Locker Rooms Pre-Game
Pleasant Grove
Lincoln of Stockton
Westlake High School
Bear River
Highlands
Scott's Valley
Capital Christian HS
Del Oro

Varsity Football Team Dinner's

Del Oro

Varsity Cross Country Saturday Runs
Florin High School

Middle School Cross Country
Marina Village
Camerado
Pleasant Grove
Sutter
Rolling Hills

Jr Football

Consumnes Oaks
Oak Ridge Jr Trojans
Granite Bay
Woodland

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Long time Character Combine Player of Influence Tanner Trosine Throws for nearly 600 yards! Great performance! Combine salutes you!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Rt @sb_joedavidson: The insanity of prep sports;Grant loses at Lincoln with rash of injuries,then Grant fan confronts coach.Madness http://t.co/WZkVgurZ

Thursday, September 15, 2011

@Sports_Greats: A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. -Jackie Robinson

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

I Have a New Hero: Bear River Coach Scott Savoie


This weekend while serving as the emcee for Battle at the Capital, Character Combine was privileged to award a Player of the Game Character award to a member of each team. The player was selected by their coach as one who exemplified character on and off the field, who led with purpose and who had the ability to compete with 100% effort.

Bear River High School Head Football Coach Scott Savoie became a new person on my hero list of coaches who “get it.”

I approached and explained the nomination process. The idea was to observe the game and then make the selection. Instead, Coach Savoie filled it out and handed it back to me.

Done.

But the game had not been played yet. That’s the look my face expressed.

He answered.

“Character is not only showcased in a game. Character is something this player showed in every practice and moment leading up to the game. I don’t need to see the game to determine who this player will be for us.”

Wow. Stunned. Challenged.

Coach Savoie modeled and spoke what I had never heard said. I watched that player all game long. Coach was right. He chose the right player.

Do you know of a player like this. Better, do you know of a coach like this? I want to know them. Email us your story!

JASONH@Charactercombine.com

Coach Savoie- thank you for leading me well that day and representing so strong at Battle at the Capital.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

From @sportscharacter: "Forget your weaknesses! Think courage." #sacpreps | www.charactercombine.com

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Rt @RunningQuotes: "It always seems impossible until it's done" Nelson Mandela #marathon #run #ultrarunning

Friday, August 19, 2011

This weekend HS Football launches nationwide. Character and courage will be evident everywhere.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Rt @GreatestQuotes: "Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Rt @GreatestQuotes: "Great acts are made up of small deeds." - Lao Tzu

Friday, June 3, 2011

Rt @sb_joedavidson: Prep year in review:good,bad,really bad parents...http://blogs.sacbee.com/preps/archives/2011/06/the-bee-joins-s.html
Rt @wordsofkindness: "The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has #time enough." ~Rabindranath Tagore

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Rt@PosPositive "There are only 2ways 2 live ur life:1) As though nothing is a miracle.2) As though everything is a miracle." -Einstein

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Via @mwbuckingham: 'There's compound interest in altruism. So, while you may start small, you MUST start now.'
GreatestQuotes: "I hated every minute of training, but I said, don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion." - Muhammad Ali

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Rt @posPositive: Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable. - Denis Waitley #justdoit www.bechange.cc

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

"Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

RunningQuotes: Those who have abandoned their own dreams will try to convince you to abandon yours. Don't listen. #neverquit via @JoshCox

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Sports_Greats: You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them. -Michael Jordan

Saturday, May 14, 2011

GreatestQuotes: "I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate." - George F. Burns

Friday, May 13, 2011

Saint Snowflake


It has been a tough two weeks. Since Character Combine, the team has been maintaining full throttle as we head feet first into Evening of Dreams. Michelle Purcell and team have pulled off a series of miracles to make the evening incredible.

Tomorrow night, nearly 700 people will gather in Capital Christian High School's Performing Arts Building. Special Needs Students will hit the red carpet (or since we are doing a Wizard of Oz theme a Yellow Brick Road) and lock arms with their date. The 150+ dates are made up of couragous student athletes who set the standard for leadership. These athletes from across the city are excited to Be the Change!

Two hundred volunteers, nearly 100 VIP Community Leaders and close to two hundred parents of the guest round out the evening.

Its said that in order to become a Saint, you have to complete three miracles. Michelle, Abbie, Travis, and Sherene, you are all Saints.

Michelle, you are Saint Snowflake.

Peace.

JAS

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Rt @Sports_Greats: Team guts always beat individual greatness. -Bob Zuppke

Monday, May 9, 2011

Rt @Sports_Greats: "Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it & you'll start believing in it." -Jesse Owens

Friday, May 6, 2011

Sports_Greats: A team will always appreciate a great individual if he's willing to sacrifice for the group. -Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Owasso is hard-charging in the race for No. 1. MaxPreps Xcellent 25 National Baseball rankings http://bit.ly/iTPGOf via @maxpreps

Saturday, April 30, 2011

sb_joedavidson: Great theme by ex-MLB manager Jerry Manuel at Character Combine:strengthen hrt,mind 2 b complete athlete #beepreps
Right now across Nor Cal coaches are awakened. Today- they'll bring their players to Character Combine... To Fight For Their Future...

Friday, April 29, 2011

Tomorrow @ this time... Character Combine's Fight For Your Future will launch! If you missed it, get in next year w/ Joe Ehrmann's return.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Coming this Summer: Character Combine Sports Developement Camps w/ Casey Taylor and Phil Grams. The reveal @ Saturday's Combine.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Don't want you to miss Character Combine. This year's line up is DEEP! Once we fill- there are NO WALK UPS day of. Don't delay. Register NOW!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

NCAA Div 1 ASU Wrestler Anthony Robles just added to 4/30 line up. One-Legged Athlete was featured last week on ESPN. Register today!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Sports_Greats: If you win through bad sportsmanship, that's no real victory. -Babe Zaharias

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Rt @sb_joedavidson: Something very cool: Cal football will have a spring scrimmage at Grant High next Saturday. Totally legal,and a grt way to recruit #beepreps

Monday, March 28, 2011

RT @Sports_Greats: "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." -Steve Prefontaine @bechange @sportscharacter #runforareason

Sunday, March 27, 2011

"The strength of the group is the strength of the leaders." -Vince Lombardi

Monday, February 21, 2011

Character Combine Recognizes Traits of Hard Work

DAVID GOGGINS | HERO



Register today to attend Character Combine in Hawaii or Sacramento.

Learn and discover ways to be a hero.

www.charactercombine.com

Saturday, February 12, 2011

COMBINE SPEAKER @team_munoz: UFC Host Almost gets @Mark_Munoz to share his strategy vs. CB Dolloway! http://bit.ly/UFCVersus3

Thursday, February 10, 2011

RTr @tonyrobbins: Keep digging deeper.. what you passionately pursue you will find!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Sports_Greats: I've failed over & over & over again in my life & that is why I succeed. -Michael Jordan

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

RayZahab: "The hardest times sometimes yield the most beautiful things." http://vimeo.com/19730241

Saturday, February 5, 2011

RT @Sports_Greats: "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying." #23-MJ
Rt @Sports_Greats: "If u r determined enough & willing 2pay the price, you can get it done." -M. Ditka

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

March 19, 2011 | Hawaii Character Combine @ McKinley High School home of "Black and yellow/ Black and yellow." Lets do this!
Sports_Greats: One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it. -Knute Rockne
Sports_Greats: Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it & staying with that plan. -Tom Landry

Monday, January 31, 2011

Character Combine Registration Opens Tomorrow

Character Combibe registration opens tomorrow for the April 30th event in Folsom, Ca at Vista Del Lago High School.

Register today.

To be added to our email list for news and updates, please email us at JasonH@charactercombine.com

Huge announcement coming soon regarding future partnerships and opportunities for your athletes.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

RT @24hourrun4kids: Ultrarunner vs Ironman http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8279147
RT@PosPositive: Fear less,hope more;eat less,;whine less,breathe more;talk less,say more;hate less,love more & all good things R urs

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Sports_Greats: Great players r willing 2 give up their own personal achievement 4 the achievement of the group. It enhances everybody. -Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Friday, January 28, 2011

"Few people have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." -George Washington
UFC Fighters Mark Munoz & Jake Ellenburger Confirm As Character Combine Speakers, Sacramento, April 30th@Vista Del Lago

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Sports_Greats: It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up. -Vince Lombardi

Monday, January 24, 2011

RT @Sports_Greats: RT @AncientProverbs: For a man to conquer himself is the first & noblest of all victories. -Plato

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Sports_Greats: Team guts always beat individual greatness. -Bob Zuppke

Friday, January 21, 2011

"When you win, say nothing, when you lose, say less."

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Running 365: Day 19: "Adversity"

Short post as I nurse the wounds of a broken stride. Today, DAY 19, is the first day I have missed and it was a good choice. Since Jan 1, I set out to see where and how much toll it would take on someone to run everyday in a calendar year. Not super creative, hundreds have done it for multiple years. But for me, it was interesting.

I have no illusions of granduer. Instead, I think I am a tad goofy. I wanted to do it to see hwat it felt like. Would my body endure, injure, or feel great?

Some of each.

Today, my day started at 5AM and by the time I got home it past 9PM. I still had enough in the take, but since Last Friday I had ran close to 50 miles and fatigue was felt. A nagging shin pain in the spot of my tibia break had my full attention. Doubtful they were connected, but a life lesson is to know that often we connect past pain to current sensitive spots.

So, at 9PM, emotionally drained, I chose to not run.

Part of the journey is talking open about what is ticking in the ticker in all areas of life. People want to know why I run, and I say, "so I can think clearly." Ironically, the cleares thought was to not run.

Iced the shin. E-stim the quads. Rest the mind.

Tomorrow is a new day.

JHARP

To follow the 365 Journal visit www.jasonharper.cc and click on blog.
I believe in playing with your heart, with every fiber in your body; fairly, squarely, by the rules--to win. -Bela Karolyi
RT: Sports_Greats: I've failed over & over & over again in my life & that is why I succeed. -Michael Jordan

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

"Dont do what's expected, do whats inspired." -Seth Godin, Linchpin

Saturday, January 15, 2011

RT Sports_Greats: Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period. -Lou Holtz

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

sb_joedavidson: Stunning at Sac High: national recruit hoops star Josiah Turner leaving school.Mom refuses to explain why.Cripples Sac Hi #beepreps
"What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it." -Johann von Goethe

Monday, January 10, 2011

Rt Sports_Greats: A true friend sees the good in everything, and brings out the best in the worst of things. -Sasha Azevedo

Sunday, January 9, 2011

RT @Sports_Greats: "Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be." -John Wooden

Friday, January 7, 2011

RT @sb_joedavidson: Dano Graves is State Player of Year by Cal-Hi Sports, and talk about a dead-on pick.Great leader,talent #beepreps

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Sports_Greats: It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret. -Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Character Combine Sacramento is April 30th. Registration opens February 1. Register quick!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Dano Graves of Folsom,Vei Moala of Grant make MaxPreps All-American team,released today. Congrats to both!
Oahu Date Set for Character Combine | March 19 | More to come...

Sunday, January 2, 2011

N every contest, there's a moment separating winning & losing. The true warrior understands & seizes the moment. -P. Riley
RT @Sports_Greats: If you win through bad sportsmanship, that's no real victory. -Babe Zaharias