Tradition is a word often used to describe the legacy that an athletic program creates over time. Tradition is truly something that doesn’t graduate, no matter what the record on the field is that year.

From Allen Ralston to Forrest Nicolo, the Victory Christian High School football program has been about making champions, both on the field and off. Celebrating the tenth year in OSSAA competition, some people may be surprised just how much success the Conquerors have had for being such a young program.

Besides posting a wining record (56-54) in those ten years, Victory has also produced four district winners, five playoff teams, including a trip to the 2004 3A state championship game and numerous all-state and all-district performers.

Continuing that tradition in 2009 were a trio of seniors, Alex Oden, Jason Burgoyne and Luke Loeber, all of who were named all-district performers by the coaches in District 3A-3.

Slowed by injuries this year, Oden showed his value to the team and impact that he made when the district coaches awarded him the 2009 All-Merit Player of the Year award. It was a consensus decision that if Oden hadn’t been hampered by injuries, this three year starter would have been the top defensive lineman in the district.

Burgoyne, who spent some time last season as the starting quarterback, led the Conquerors into all ten of their ball games this year. He finished the year, the leading passer in the district, and the fourth overall passer in Class 3A.

Burgoyne finished the year with 1,714 yards on 151-277 passing, including 14 touchdowns. His best performance came in the shootout at Blackwell, where the Conquerors went down to defeat 35-28. Burgoyne sprayed the ball around the old ball yard for 411 yards and three scores.

On the receiving end for over half of Burgoyne’s passes this year was the All-District receiver of the year, Luke Loeber. Not only did he lead the team, and the district in receiving, but Loeber led all of Class 3A, and finished third overall in the state, with 61 receptions, 952 yards and 10 touchdowns.

To add to his value to the team, Loeber was also one of the top kickoff returners in the state with 30 returns for over 700 yards, including a touchdown return against Dewey. All the district coaches agreed that he was a threat to go the distance every time he touched the ball.

Joining the senior trio on the all-district team were senior linemen Tyler Arnould, a two-year starter, and Kenneth Dueck, along with linebacker Zach Monks. The only two seniors not to make the all-district team was Nathan Cordray, who was injured during the Blackwell game, after having begun the season as one of the top receivers on the team, as well as being the team’s top tackler; and offensive lineman Chris Strong, who provided strong leadership from practice to game night on Fridays.

After that, the 2009 season would be considered a disappointment by most standards; and if you asked any player or coach, 0-10 was not one of the goals that they had set for this team before the season began.

But there was the disappointing 14-7 loss at Okmulgee to begin the season, as well as the lopsided losses to Holland Hall, Tahlequah Sequoyah and then on into district play. Along the way, player after key player seemed to go down each week with a new injury, making it that much more difficult for the 2009 team to compete with the teams in their district.

That’s where tradition kicks in. A tradition that goes far beyond the field – a tradition that only shows up in the lives of our young men after they have left Victory and started making their mark in the world. After all, football isn’t just about wins and losses between the lines, or how many points we can put up on the scoreboard – it is much, much more.

For Allen Ralston, his only memorable moment in a Victory uniform came in the fourth quarter of a lopsided win over Porter, back in the fall of 2000. A reserve cornerback, Ralston will forever remembered as the guy who gave up the touchdown to ruin the shutout.

But if you ask the Marines from the platoon that he went into Fallujah with, none of that ever mattered. Nearing the kick off of the first Marine action in Fallujah, following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Ralston found himself in a group of men who were all convinced that they were going to die.

Ralston was concerned as well, writing home that it was a pretty bleak situation. But in the face of that adversity – what most of the men around him thought to be certain death – Ralston brought into play something that he learned while walking the halls of VCS. He began to quote Psalm 91 every day, eventually getting his entire unit to start quoting it with him.

Of all those Marines who had been certain that they weren’t going home alive – every one of them did just that – come marching home. Not one was lost to enemy fire – not one was left behind. Part of the Marine credo is that they will never leave a man behind. In Fallujah, they didn’t have to. God made sure that they all came home together.

Then there’s freshman Forrest Nicolo, someone that no one in the stands ever noticed because he wasn’t big and fast – no he was one of those faceless, nameless guys standing on the sideline cheering the rest of the boys on.

He was one of those who came out to practice every day, knowing that more than anything, he wasn’t getting himself ready to play on Friday night, but rather helping the others get ready.

After the game against Berryhill was over, week nine being another disappointing loss for the Conquerors, every Victory player found a pre-selected Berryhill player, so he could share with him and pray with him.

In the middle of the Chief celebration, little Forrest Nicolo entered the “enemy’s den” and brought back another soul. He wasn’t the only player to pray with a Berryhill player. Freshman Matt Woodward prayed for a player’s healing, and there are many, many untold stories about what happened in those moments when football ceased to be the most important thing in life.

Forrest’s actions that permanently changed that young man’s life forever, just because he was willing to step out and allow the love of God to work through him – extending into someone else’s life.

Neither Forrest nor Matt’s is a unique story. On the contrary – Head Coach Brent Marley and his coaching staff of David Slatton, Casey Willis, Marty Barnett, Ted Davis and Dave Smith, emphasized all year that there was more to football than just what the players did on Friday night.

Whether it be playing praise and worship before the games in the locker room; having the players be reading Pals for elementary students; or having the players take grade check sheets around each week to their teachers, the VCS coaches have been teaching far more than just how to play football this year.

In speaking to Coach Marley about the year, in spite of all the frustrations and the fact that they couldn’t pull out a win this year, there were many positives for the head coach – one of the biggest being that he didn’t have to spend one second in an office dealing with the behavior of his players. It was quite refreshing after some of the things that they have had to deal with in the past.

Marley also related that in September, about a dozen players and coaches traveled over to the Hilton hotel and helped bag 4,500 bags of groceries. He also mentioned that the football team ran a Sidewalk Sunday School Truck into the projects of Tulsa.

“It was really neat to see the players laughing and playing with the kids, ministering the Gospel and handing out food to the families that came,” Marley said.

Those are stories and testimonies that seldom see the light of day when it comes to what is in the morning sports’ page; but in the light of heaven, those are stories that will be written down and remembered for all eternity.

Whenever you are involved in educating young people, or coaching, of any kind, at any level, there are more ways of measuring success than just the score on the board at the end of the game, and the team’s record at the end of the year.

We all want to win games – all successful people at all levels are competitive to some degree – but there are many ways to win, many ways to measure success. 2009 was definitely a different year on the field than in 2004.

But maybe, just maybe, the 2009 team learned something that that state runner-up team never learned – how to compete and overcome obstacles that seemed insurmountable. No matter what the score was this year – no matter how many bad breaks the team had received, they never stopped competing.

The offense was trying to score right up to the final buzzer. Burgoyne kept pitching it and Loeber kept catching it, even though there was no way for the team to win on the scoreboard. But maybe, just maybe, there is far more than one way to win.

Opening kick-off to final gun, the Victory Conquerors of 2009 competed no matter the score or who they were playing. They had a job to do, whether it was the senior starter, or some fifth-string freshman that never dreamed they would see the field this year. It is this kind of persistence; the same kind of refusal not to quit no matter the obstacles, that this year’s players will take with them.

Proverbs says a righteous man keeps getting back up, no matter how many times they get knocked down, while a lesser man falls into mischief. In that light, maybe we should re-evaluate how we define a winner – how we define success.

Success isn’t some destination, but rather how we go about the process in getting to each of the stop over sites in our lives. Championships are remembered when great odds and obstacles have been overcome. Those are the victories that are remembered the longest.

What championships are our players meant to win in life? A coach never knows how successful his season has really been until he sees what his players do in life several years into the future.

Allen Ralston and Forrest Nicolo will never be remembered for some spectacular play, or for being the most dominate player on the field, but they will be remembered in the hall of fame in heaven, because they allowed their lives to count – they allowed God to work through them to meet the needs of the people they came in contact with.

Remember, these three remain, faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. A love that refuses to accept no for an answer. A love that seeks every way possible to meet the needs of the people all around you.