True toughness found in protecting others

I was appreciating Eric Plummer’s ability as a sports writer to encourage the Sandpoint soccer players (both boys and girls) and to email the head coach of Northwestern Christian in Spokane to suggest that this coach might want to consider how he could justify humiliating another team and asked him to consider how those players might feel.

I would ask you, Eric Plummer, to also consider what you are valuing/role modeling when in response to someone who considered that soccer players might be tougher than football players you write, “What I can say is many of the players on the soccer pitch boast arms only slightly bigger than a garden hose.” You then go onto suggest that the true test of toughness is who can get to the other side in an alley. Your summation being, “until you’ve strapped it up and taken on an angry 260-pound pulling guard, it’s simply big talk and cheap as dirt.”

Eric, if someone suggests something (i.e. soccer players are tougher than football players), how you respond to those statements is a reflection of your values.

In bold print after the statements about how tough football players are, you wrote WWJD? Perhaps he would turn the other cheek? Perhaps he would speak about the hearted toughness it takes, if you are born strong, to protect those who are weaker than you. Imagine being born slim, with as you wrote “garden hose arms” and meeting large football players in an alley? Imagine that you knew these football players used their strength as a “true test of toughness.” What would the outcome be? Would it be something that JWD?

S.J. KING

Sandpoint