Brigham Young University announced the hiring of a new director of athletics this week, on Tuesday, May 13. Brian Santiago is succeeding Tom Holmoe, who announced his retirement three months ago on Feb. 11.
Shortly after Holmoe announced he would be moving on from BYU, I met with him to talk about his experiences at the university and the growth of his testimony in the 20 years he was at the helm of athletics for the school. Among the questions he answered in that interview, I asked what Holmoe learned in his journey.
“I’ve found joy in the journey, because I’m still here,” he said. “But I really believe, like Kevin Young right now, our basketball coach, he talks about ‘stacking wins.’ … I’ve seen stacking, and I’ve seen that stack fall over, and then you start over.”
Far from being a collegiate basketball coach or the athletic director of a major university, I won’t ever have the chance to stack my own wins in the same way that Holmoe or Young describes.
But one of my 12-year-old daughters has taken up basketball for the first time this spring. She would love to stack some wins. Her team has a way to go before it can do that, though. As a new team with many players who have never played any type of organized basketball, they struggle to stack points. Sometimes they struggle to stack passes. And sometimes they struggle to stack dribbles.
The team’s coach has been patient but firm with his players. He has them practice the same drills repeatedly. He expects them to practice at home. He expects them to remember what he has taught them in practice and to act on it in the games. For the players, repeating drills can be boring. Stacking lessons learned in practice can go a long way toward getting better as a team.
Sheri Dew, a former member of the Relief Society general presidency and executive vice president and chief content officer of Deseret Management Corp., spoke to graduates at Southern Virginia University on Friday, May 9.
She talked about Young’s principle of stacking wins in life. As college graduates who have overcome personal challenges, endured learning new things in classes, those students became better people than they were before they entered college, she said.
“You’ve already, whether you’re aware of it or not, been stacking wins.”
For my daughter and her friends, they endured some tough games this season in which they didn’t make it into double digits as a team. The turnovers and fouls seemed at times to stack more quickly and more easily than rebounds, assists and points.
And lest you think this is a story in which there is a miraculous comeback by the end of the season where the team wins the championship and everyone goes home happy, it’s not.
The team scored nine points last week in its penultimate game. It was their season high.
The season, however, is not a failure. No team has cheered louder when a teammate makes a basket or steals the ball from the other team.
From a spiritual angle, the young women on that basketball team have learned how to stack small victories together. They know each other’s progress and work and determination. So does their coach.
Reflecting on his own life as a young man, Holmoe said stacking spiritual wins — like regular prayer or scripture study — was hard to do.
“Jesus Christ, my Savior, my Redeemer, is my only hope. My only hope. As a young boy growing up outside of the Church, I had a testimony that God lives. I knew, and He answered my prayers. But I was casual, and I used opportunities sparingly to connect with my Father in Heaven,” he said.
On the basketball court or in life as a child of God, stacking wins comes in different sizes and magnitudes. But the wins that come during the course of the game or at the sounding of life’s final buzzer all come with the help of a loving Heavenly Father. He helps us stack the wins that really matter.
“And I know that,” Holmoe said. “And when I confess that, that He is my only hope, that all good things come from Him, then I’m good. I’m at peace. And I can do anything through my Savior, anything.”
— Jon Ryan Jensen is editor of the Church News.
