Message to Students from Mr. Raul E. Correa, Principal

Raul E. Correa, CST to Students 1

Steve Haymore's Podcast

Character vs Reputation

John Wooden once stated that we should be more concerned with our CHARACTER than our REPUTATION. His believe was that our character is what we are while our reputation is merely what others think we are. In the book,"Becoming a Person of Influence," authors John Maxwell and Jim Dornan share more on the difference of these two words:

The circumstances amid which you live determine your reputation…
The trust you believe determines your character…Reputation is what you are supposed to be; character is what you are…Reputation is the photograph; character is the face…Reputation comes from one without; character grows up from within…Reputation is what you have when you come to a new community:Character is what you have when you go away.
Your reputation is learned in an hour;
Your character does not come to light for a year…Reputation grows like a mushroom; Character lasts like eternity…Reputation makes you rich or makes you poor; Character makes you happy or makes you miserable…Reputation is what men say about you on your tombstone; Character is what the angles say about you before the throne of God.

(Taken from Bob Starkey's http://hoopthoughts.blogspot.com)

Always Choose the Right

China stripped of 2000 gymnastics medal for underage athlete

By Chris Chase

Follow Yahoo! Sports Olympic blog, Fourth-Place Medal on Facebook and Twitter.

"China was stripped of a team all-around bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics on Wednesday because it fielded an underage gymnast. Dong Fangxiao was discovered to be 14 at the time of those Games, two years younger than the minimum age requirement.

The medal will be given to the United States team which finished fourth in Sydney. The IOC has asked for China to return the medals "as soon as possible" so they can be reallocated to the U.S. team."

Students, how embarrassing; what a shame, how sad. China thought they were getting away with cheating, but no, it caught up with them even several years later. Dong Fangxiao is now about 24 years of age, and how do you think she feels? The glory and fanfare of winning the olympic medal is long gone, but memories of cheating and CTW impact for years long after the they occur. She should have been strong enough to CTR and not let the Chinese persuade her to CTW, but she was weak and fell for the temptation. Imagine how she feels today and how she faces people and what they think of her action. She hides her face in shame along with all the others who permitted this infraction. They knew about, but were too anxious to WIN, that they CTW. "The short term gain is not worth the long term pain."

Today, cheating is wide-spread throughout athletics, schools, families, communities and nations, and we need to do all we can to promote goodwill, that which is right.

Students, Always Choose the Right, CTR. If you CTW, you may get away with it for a period of time, but inevitably it will catch up with you, even if it's in the end. Individuals, teams, churches, businesses, schools, states, nations.....all must always do what is right--no exception. "True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what's right" (Brigham Young)

Small Precedes Great

"From small beginnings come great things"

A Proverb

Students, just think about it. Great things come from small beginnings. For example, from one small acorn a giant forest can result. From the small beginning of kindergarten one can become a high school and university Academic Champion. From little league one can go to the major leagues.  All great students started small, but they persisted by working hard, working smart, and working together and they became academic scholars and high achievers in school. 

Honesty is More Important than Victory

Davis calls penalty on himself, gives up shot at first PGA win

By Jay Busbee

“Honesty is more important than victory.”

Imagine standing on the edge of achieving your life's dream. You make a small mistake that will cost you your dream -- but if you don't say anything, you might just get away with it. Would you own up to the mistake, or would you keep quiet and hope for the best?

Brian Davis isn't the best-known name in golf -- or even the hundredth-best-known -- but after Sunday, he ought to move up the list a few notches. Davis was facing Jim Furyk in a playoff at the Verizon Heritage, and was trying to notch his first-ever PGA Tour win.

Davis's approach shot on the first hole of the playoff bounced off the green and nestled in among some weeds. (You can see the gunk he was hitting out of in that shot above.) When Davis tried to punch the ball up onto the green, his club may have grazed a stray weed on his backswing.

So what's the big deal? This: hitting any material around your ball during your backswing constitutes a violation of the rule against moving loose impediments, and is an immediate two-stroke penalty. And in a playoff, that means, in effect, game over.

Okay, you can think that's a silly penalty or whatever, but that's not the point of this story. The point is that Davis actually called the violation on himself.

"It was one of those things I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye," Davis said. "And I thought we’d check on TV, and indeed there was movement." Immediately after the shot, Davis called over a rules official, who conferred with television replays and confirmed the movement -- but movement which was only visible on slow-motion. Unbelievable.

As soon as the replays confirmed the violation, Davis conceded the victory to Furyk, who was somewhat stunned -- but, make no mistake, grateful for the win.

"To have the tournament come down that way is definitely not the way I wanted to win," Furyk said. "It’s obviously a tough loss for him and I respect and admire what he did."

Furyk took home  $1.03 million for the win. Davis won't exactly have to beg for change to get a ride home; he won $615,000 for second place. And he may have won much more than that by taking the honorable route.

To be sure, this isn't quite in the same category as J.P. Hayes, the golfer who disqualified himself from qualifying school after learning -- in his hotel room, all alone -- that he had played a nonqualifying ball; or Adam Van Houten, who cost his team an Ohio state title when he admitted signing an incorrect scorecard.  For starters, Davis's shot was on television, and while he could have "not noticed" the movement, the TV cameras still did, and someone might have called him on it later on.

But the bigger deal is this -- the guy gave away a chance at winning his first-ever PGA Tour event because he knew that in golf, honesty is more important than victory. It's a tough lesson to learn, but here's hoping he gets accolades -- and, perhaps, some sponsorship deals -- that more than make up for the victory he surrendered.

Arete Scholar/Athlete

Students, succeeding in school is like succeeding on the basketball court--both require hard work. The harder you work, the more enjoyment you'll experience from your pursuits. There is no substitute for hard work. Bill Bradley was both an Academic Champion and an Athletic Champion. He was an outstanding student at Princeton University and then a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford England. In addition to being an Academic Champion, Bill was a basketball All-American, College Player of the Year, Olympic Gold Medal winner, NBA World Champion, Senator of the state of New Jersey, and even ran for US President. Work hard in your worthwhile endeavors and enjoy the sweetness of great success. You can do it IF YOU WILL.

Bill Bradley

Steve Haymore Casts

Benny Moss

 Surry County North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame To Induct Moss

WLMINGTON, N.C. – Husband. Father. UNC Wilmington men’s basketball coach. Now Benny Moss has added another title: Hall of Famer.

            The third-year UNCW skipper will be inducted into the Surry County Sports Hall of Fame this Saturday during a special ceremony at the Surry Community College Auditorium in Dobson, N.C. The Pilot Mountain native will join six other athletes, coaches and volunteers from the northwest North Carolina County in being recognized.

            “This is a great honor for me and I’m very humbled,” said Moss. “I have many fond memories of my high school career. I owe a lot to Mike Burge, my high school coach, as well as my high school teammates. An honor like this is always a tribute to your coaches and teammates, and anyone else who has helped you along the way.”

            A 1988 graduate of East Surry High School, Moss enjoyed a tremendous career with the Cardinals. He remainsEast Surry’s all-time leading scorer with nearly 1,400 points after earning All-Northwest 2A Conference honors three straight years and collecting league Player-of-the-Year in his senior season. He was also named All-State twice by the Winston-Salem Journal.

            The 6-8 Moss averaged 23.5 points during his junior year and pushed the margin to 27.0 ppg in his senior campaign, attracting the attention of college scouts. He went on to UNC Charlotte, where he was named to the 1989-90 Sun Belt Conference All-Freshman Team. After two seasons in Charlotte, Moss transferred to Pfeiffer College and helped Coach Bobby Lutz and the Falcons reach the NAIA Final Four in his senior year.

            Moss begin his coaching career with Lutz at Pfeiffer in 1993 and made stops at Phillips, HendersonState and UNCC before landing the UNCW post in 2006-07.

Joe Reed: HPHS Coach and Athletic Director

Click the > play button below and listen to the wisdom of Coach Joe Reed, Boys' Varsity Basketball Coach and School-wide Athletic Director. Coach Reed shares excellent insights for being a successful student-athlete, principles that one can use for a lifetime to enjoy happy and successful living.

HPHS Podcast 2: Coach Joe Reed

Steve Haymore's Podcast

How to Be Brilliant

Monday, March 22, 2010

How to Be Brilliant

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/review/Paul-t.html

By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL

Published: March 18, 2010

You’ve probably heard it at one time or another: Most of us use only 10 percent of our brains. More factoid than fact, a claim of unknown provenance and dubious accuracy, the idea sticks around because of the enduring appeal of its underlying premise. We’d all love to think that we’re in possession of tremendous untapped potential, of latent mental powers just waiting to be activated. It seems so convenient, like falling in love with the person you’re already married to, or whipping up dinner from what’s already in your kitchen. You don’t have to leave home, or even change out of your pajamas.

THE GENIUS IN ALL OF US

Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong

By David Shenk

David Shenk’s Web Site

Motivational gurus from Dale Carnegie to Tony Robbins have long promised access to these hidden stores of genius. Now here comes David Shenk with “The Genius in All of Us,” which argues that we have before us not a “talent scarcity” but a “latent talent abundance.” Our problem “isn’t our inadequate genetic assets,” but “our inability, so far, to tap into what we already have.” The truth is “that few of us know our true limits, that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our ‘un­actualized potential.’ ” At first it would seem that Shenk, the author of thoughtful books on information overload, memory loss and chess, has veered into guru territory. But he has assembled a large body of research to back up his claims.

Two bodies, in fact. The first concerns the emerging science of epigenetics, the study of how the environment modifies the way genes are expressed. Since the days of Crick and Watson, we’ve tended to see genes as a set of straightforward instructions, a blueprint for constructing a person. Over the last 20 years, however, some scientists have begun to complicate that picture. “It turns out that the genetic instructions themselves are influenced by other inputs,” Shenk writes. “Genes are constantly activated and deactivated by environmental stimuli, nutrition, hormones, nerve impulses and other genes.” That means there can be no guaranteed genetic windfalls, or fixed genetic limits, bestowed at the moment of conception. Instead there is a continually unfolding interaction between our heredity and our world, a process that may be in some measure under our control.

The second body of research investigates the nature of exceptional ability and how it arises. We’ve traditionally regarded superior talent as a rare and mysterious gift bequeathed to a lucky few. In fact, Shenk writes, science is revealing it to be the product of highly concentrated effort. He describes the work of the psychologist Anders Ericsson, who wondered if he could train an ordinary person to perform extraordinary feats of memory. When Eric­sson began working with a young man identified as S.F., his subject could, like most of us, hold only seven numbers in his short-term memory. By the end of the study, S.F. could correctly recall an astonishing 80-plus digits. With the right kind of mental discipline, Ericsson and his co-­investigator concluded, “there is seemingly no limit to memory performance.” Shenk weaves accounts of such laboratory experiments, conducted on average people, with the tales of singularly accomplished individuals — Ted Williams and Michael Jordan, Mozart and Beethoven — who all worked relentlessly to hone their skills.

Bring these two domains together, and a new vision of achievement begins to come into focus. Shenk’s “ambitious goal,” he tells us, is to take this widely dispersed research and “distill it all into a new lingua franca, adopting helpful new phrases and metaphors” to replace old and misleading ones. Forget about genes as unchanging “blueprints” and talent as a “gift,” all tied up in a bow. “We cannot allow ourselves to think that way anymore,” he declares with some fervor. Instead, Shenk proposes, imagine the genome as a giant control board, with thousands of switches and knobs that turn genes off and on or tune them up and down. And think of talent not as a thing, but as a process; not as something we have, but as something we do.

It’s ambitious indeed to try to overthrow in one go the conventional ideas and images that have accumulated since 1874, when Francis Galton first set the words “nature” and “nurture” against each other. Yet Shenk convinces the reader that such a coup is necessary, and he gets it well under way. He tells engaging stories, lucidly explains complex research and offers fresh insights into the nature of exceptional performance: noting, for example, that profound achievements are often driven by petty jealousies and resentments, or pointing out the surprising fact that great talent seems to cluster geographically and temporally, undermining the assumption that it’s all due to individual genetic endowments. Just how tall a task Shenk took on is evident in his voluminous endnotes, which go on as long as the main text and are just as interesting. Here the author allows us to watch him working his way through the literature, inquiring, arguing, marveling, as he wrestles a new understanding into being.

Shenk doesn’t neglect the take-home point we’re all waiting for, even titling a chapter “How to Be a Genius (or Merely Great).” The answer has less in common with the bromides of motivational speakers than with the old saw about how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible. Behold our long rumored potential, unleashed at last! Shenk is vague about how, exactly, this happens, but to his credit he doesn’t make it sound easy.

“You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.”

It’s in this self-help section that two weaknesses in Shenk’s argument become evident. The first is the matter of where the extreme drive and discipline that greatness requires are supposed to come from. Shenk tells us about

Beethoven writing 60 to 70 drafts of a single phrase of music, and Ted Williams hitting practice pitches until his hands bled.

Shenk would be the last to argue that such fierce dedication is “inborn” or “innate” — but if it isn’t, are the rest of us all equally capable of mustering it? We certainly can’t retroactively grant ourselves the kind of intense childhood exposure that Shenk describes for many of his greats, like Mozart and Yo-Yo Ma.

Shenk is also evasive about just what restrictions individual biology places on achievement. He is careful to say that we are not born without limits — it’s just that none of us can know what those limits are “before we’ve applied enormous re­sources and invested vast amounts of time.” He ducks the implication that these limits will, eventually, reveal themselves, and that they will stop most of us well short of Mozart territory. There’s a tension here between Shenk’s extravagant talk of “greatness” and “genius” and the more modest message he delivers: practice can improve your performance, perhaps far more than you imagined.

Still, it doesn’t feel as if Shenk is making false promises, perhaps because he so sincerely follows his own advice.

 In an oddly touching footnote, he relates his own struggle to achieve. “My attitude toward my own writing is simple: I assume that everything I write is rubbish until I have demonstrated otherwise. I will routinely write and rewrite a sentence, paragraph and/or chapter 20, 30, 40 times — as many times as it takes to feel satisfied.”

Such efforts have resulted in a deeply interesting and important book. David Shenk may not be a genius yet, but give him time.

Dr. "J" Julius Erving

You're a great basketball player, but I have the feeling as I read about you that it's always been important for you to be a good person, to be a well rounded person, as well.

“I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence. I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life. And I remember hearing her say hundreds, thousands of times, ‘You don't have to work that hard to try to be a good person, just do it.’ “

“I think she would add to that, even if there are a lot of things in life that you can't do, this is something that you can. This is a do-able thing. All it requires is programming your attitude properly and relating to people, as you would want to have them relate to you.”

[To see this entire interview with Dr. "J", go to  the Academy of Achievement]

Preparation

Preparation is the key to scoring high on a test, for performing beautifully in an athletic contest, for performing well on stage, for giving that public speech. Once the test begins, your preparation time ends. Once the game starts, preparation for that game ends. Once you start performing on stage, preparation for that performance ends. Once you begin to deliver your public speech, preparation for that speech ends. Students, excellent preparation precedes excellent grades and performance. Look what three of the top college athletic coaches have to say regarding preparation for a game:

What’s more important, pregame preparation or in-game adjustments?

Anson Dorrance: “I think preparation is the absolute. All things you do before the game begins are certainly more important than whatever happens during the soccer game.”
Bob Knight: “I think preparation. I think in-game adjustments are the most overrated thing in coaching. The team that’s willing to prepare to win is going to be the team that wins. Most everybody plays to win, but it’s preparing to win that I think is the most important thing in successful play.”

Mike Krzyzewski: "Pre-game preparation is much more important as far as the coach and player relationship. I find most players, if they start a game and don’t have the proper mind-set, it’s very difficult to turn that around."

Make a Life

"We make a living by what we get,

but we make a life by what we give."

— Winston Churchill

Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People

 Stephen Covey said:

You can buy people’s hands, but you can’t buy their hearts. Their hearts is where their enthusiasm, their loyalty is. You can buy their backs, but you can’t buy their brains. That’s where their creativity is, their ingenuity, their resourcefulness.

I am personally persuaded that the essence of the best thinking in the area of time management can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities.

Effective people are not problem-minded; they are opportunity minded. They feed opportunity and starve problems.

You can’t be successful with other people if you haven’t paid the price of success with yourself.

If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, than to be understood.

“Time management” is really a misnomer — the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power — the freedom to choose.

[This posting was obtained from Bob Starkey's blog, HOOPTHOUGHTS, on March 16, 2010]

Follow Your Dreams

Students, I was saddened to see this article about a good friend of mine, Merlin Olsen. I want you to pay special attention to the bold text, for herein lies a vital message for each of us pertaining to pursuing our dreams. He always chose the right. Throughout his high school, college, and professional career, he never did: drink, smoke,  or use steroids or any harmful drugs. He enjoyed freedom because he did Choose the Right. 

Merlin Olsen, Football Star, Commentator and Actor, Dies at 69

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Published: March 11, 2010

Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame tackle who anchored the Los Angeles Rams’ Fearsome Foursome, the line that glamorized defensive play in the N.F.L., died early Thursday at a hospital in Duarte, Calif. He was 69.

His death was announced by his brother Orrin, who said he had been treated for mesothelioma, a form of cancer.

 “Merlin had superhuman strength,” Jones told The Los Angeles Times in 1985. “If I was beating my man inside, he’d hold him up and free me to make the tackle. If he had to make an adjustment to sacrifice his life and limb, he would make it. A lot of the plays I made were because he or the others would make the sacrifice.”

Olsen felt that the Fearsome Foursome could have excelled in any era.

 “We could all run,” Olsen said. “The other thing we had going for us was a rare chemistry. There was also a very special kind of unselfishness.”

Joining the Rams in 1962 from Utah State University, where he won the Outland Trophy as college football’s best interior lineman, Olsen spent his entire 15-year career with Los Angeles.

Olsen was voted to the Pro Bowl every year except for his final season, he was an all-N.F.L. selection six times, and he was chosen by the Maxwell Club of Philadelphia as the N.F.L.’s most valuable player in 1974. He was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982. He was named, along with Jones, to the 75th anniversary all-N.F.L. team in 1994 in a vote by the news media and league personnel.

Olsen may have exuded a fearsome presence in his own right, but he was hardly a brute. He was named one of the nation’s top scholar athletes by the National Football Foundation in his senior year at Utah State and he received a master’s degree in economics while playing for the Rams.

Merlin Jay Olsen, a native of Logan, Utah, was born on Sept. 15, 1940. He was so awkward while pursuing sports in the ninth grade that a coach discouraged him from athletic aspirations.

“I was either stubborn or foolish, but I was unwilling to give up on my dreams,” The South Bend Tribune quoted him as telling a College Football Hall of Fame luncheon in 2007.

Olsen played a major role in reviving the football program at Utah State, leading the Aggies to appearances in the Sun Bowl and Gotham Bowl. He was one of the Rams’ two first-round draft picks in 1962, going third over all after they drafted quarterback Roman Gabriel.

Olsen was the N.F.L.’s rookie of the year.

Utah State brought an ailing Olsen back to the campus for a halftime ceremony of a basketball game in December 2009, when it announced it would dedicate the football field at its Romney Stadium as Merlin Olsen Field in 2010. The St. Louis Rams — the Los Angeles Rams’ successor franchise — honored Olsen at a home game that month although he was unable to attend because of his illness.

 “My roughness and aggressiveness at certain times are prompted by my desire to be a better football player.

(Article taken from nytimes.com on March 11, 2010)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/sports/football/12olsen.h

Selflessness and Compassion

Bob Starkey, in his blog hoopthoughts.blogspot.com, posted this statement by Phil Jackson: 

"In basketball, as in life, true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it is no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment. The day I took over the Bulls, I vowed to create an environment based on the principles of selflessness and compassion."

-Phil Jackson

Imagination

"Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions."

Albert Einstein

Self-Confidence

"Somehow I can't believe that there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable."

Walt Disney

Goals

"The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them."

Og Mandino

Believe in Yourself

"When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, your future will be unlimited."
— Brian Tracy

Visualization--Mental Pictures--Mental Movies

Visualization is mentally picturing in your mind, like taking mental pictures or mental movies in your head. Research shows that people who visualize effectively enhance their performance and raise their achievement level tremendously. For example, Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his book Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life shares a report from Research Quarterly about an experiment on the effects and results of mentally practicing shooting basketball free throws. The experiment organized students into three groups.

Group 1: This group was scored on the first day and then actually went onto the basketball court and practiced shooting free throws every day for 20 days. At the end of the 20-day trial, they were scored again.

Group 2: This group was scored on the first day and engaged in no sort of practice whatsoever for 20 days. At the end of the 20 days, they were scored again.

Group 3: This group was scored on the first day and then spent 20 minutes a day, mentally practicing, imagining that they were shooting the ball at the goal. When they mentally missed, they would imagine that they corrected their aim accordingly. At the end of the 20 days, they too were scored again.

RESULTS after the 20-day experiment:

Group 1, which actually practiced shooting 20 minutes everyday, improved in scoring 24 percent.

Group 2, which had no sort of practice whatsoever, showed no improvement.

Group 3, which mentally practiced in their heads using their imagination, improved 23 percent!

WOW! Students, can you see the power of taking mental pictures or mental movies to improve your skills, knowledge, and performance? Mentally see yourself qualifying for membership into the Academic Champion Club (The ACC). See yourself receiving an 'A' on a test. See yourself scoring a three-pointer in a basketball game. See your athletic team winning the state championship. See yourself obtaining your driver's license. See yourself attending graduation and receiving your diploma. See yourself attending the college or university of your choice and graduating. See yourself performing successfully in your chosen career field. See yourself enjoying a happy, successful family. The practice of visualization is powerful and is applicable for any situation. Regardless of what your past circumstances have been or what they currently may be, you can always visualize and forsee a magnificant future. Look forward and go forward toward your desired future. 

LaVell Edwards calls this science "Self-visualization." He said, "Self-visualization encompasses not only what you are now but what you may become." Students, visualize your potential. Visualize yourself being really outstanding in your field. Visualize yourself being a great person living a great life! Practice visualization forever!