Men's Breakfast, October 8, 2016

The Men’s Breakfast Group met Saturday, October 8th.  The featured guests were supposed to be Ben Rudolph and Omar Cantu from Brazosport High School.  The Brazosport principal volunteered them as featured guests in place of herself, but didn’t tell them, so of course they didn’t show.  Instead we had an open discussion. 

The main topic was youth athletics.  There was praise for Ben Rudolph, athletic director and head football coach at Brazosport High School.  Brazosport has sent teams to regionals or state level contests in most sports, with the exception of football.  This is due to the support of Ben and dedicated coaches.  Unfortunately, football is the exception and the most visible of the sports.  A primary reason for the lack of success in football is that the competing schools are usually much larger and often have bigger students.  Brazosport is classified as a 4A school but was only twelve students over the lower limit for 4A schools when classified.  In addition, the largest part of the student body consists of low income Hispanics, who are generally smaller than the general population.  They are competing with big farm boys from rural districts.  Even so, a significant number of Brazosport football players have received scholarships to play at colleges.

 
A new guest, Jarvis Davis, described his coaching of teams outside of school.  He has coached several sports, especially ones that his kids participate in.  This has shown how extensive the athletic program is outside of school. 

One of the reasons for success of the athletic program is that Ben Rudolph considers character building to be at least as important as winning.  This is supported by the institution of Anchor Dads.  Many of the boys do not have a male figure at home so anchor dads provide a substitute.  Robert Dohle described the program and urged other men to participate. 

Robert Dohle also discussed the Episcopal Church’s fish fry that is coming up. All revenues from the fish fry are donated to local charities and none are retained by the church.  He is expanding the event to include more churches.  In addition to the Episcopal Church, Crossover Church and The Rock Church are helping sponsor the event this year.  The event will be held at River Place.  He also mentioned that they could use items for the silent auction. 

The men had an interesting discussion and a good breakfast.  The next meeting will be held November 12th.