Believe it or not, there is more to sports than winning and losing. Yes, I said it. I know it may be hard to read, especially in such a rich, chaotic sports region that we call South Georgia. But, there truly is more to sports than winning and losing, and I will prove it to you.

This past Friday night, I received a phone call from my best friend from high school, the guy that will one day serve as the best man in my wedding. He told me that a former high school football teammate of ours had collapsed while playing a pickup game of basketball. He didn’t make it. A one-time wide receiver at Mill Creek was dead at such a young age after suffering a heart attack.  The news quickly saddened me, and I immediately felt terrible for his family, with his death coming so close to Christmas.

Although neither my friend nor I had spoken to our fallen teammate in over three years, the news still hit us. We all had been through so much together, and we built a strong bond during our days at Mill Creek. We become a family in high school. I guess you could call it a fraternity that only the guys that were on those teams will understand.

Once I arrived home Friday night from the office, I logged onto the social media website Facebook and started scrolling through my news feed — sorry for those that do not know how Facebook works. I started to read the many statuses that were being posted from alumni of Mill Creek and Mill Creek football. They were all about Glendon.

The majority of the statuses I read were from former teammates, reading something along the lines of “Tonight, we have lost a brother. Our family will never be the same.”

While it may seem crazy to some of you that I consider a guy I have spoken with in over three years a brother, it isn’t too crazyto me. In fact, it seems perfectly normal.

While we may have only won eight games during our three football seasons at Mill Creek, we learned a lot about life throughout those years. Our head coach Shannon Jarvis used to tell us the relationships we built, and what kind of men we became through our time in the program, would carry us much farther in life than the records we posted on the field. He told us the ‘MC’ on our helmets didn’t just stand for Mill Creek, but it also stood for Men of Character.

Jarvis told us that one day we would understand what he was talking about. He would tell us that the lessons we learned through the program would carry you through life.

Those words couldn’t have been any truer on Friday night.

The news of Glendon’s death touched us all. It brought us all back together, even if it was just a text message to one another saying hello and reminiscing in the days that we were all together.

Life is precious, and I think my former teammates and I once again learned that Friday night.

Glendon’s death made us all realize that we were part of something special at Mill Creek, and it wasn’t a team that won a state championship. It was much larger than that.

I can imagine student-ahtletes all across the country know exactly what I am talking about. After all, would sports teams break it down on ‘family’ if they didn’t truly feel as though their teammates and coaches were in some way part of their family? I don’t think so.

Sports teach us a lot. Just sometimes, it may take a few years for a person to truly understand what sports are all about. That is why there is much more to sports than who wins and losses.

Sure, when our teams don’t win on Friday night’s it isn’t much fun, but in 10-15 years the score of the game won’t really matter. What will matter will be what those players are doing with their lives.

I wish all of our readers a happy holiday season. Get ready for 2012, it looks like it can be another wild ride in our local sports world.ing event, whether football, baseball, basketball, tennis or soccer. These high school student-athletes are learning life lessons out there, and one day they will realize those really matter, not the records.