The Lady Griffins and Aiming Students Higher 

Last year, my daughter’s high school basketball team faced the scenario kids dream about: your ball, down by two with ten seconds left, and a championship on the line. Her team inbounded the ball, quickly advanced down court, passed to an open player near halfcourt who successfully launched a three. The crowd went wild and the Academy of Classical Christian Studies’ Lady Griffins in Oklahoma City won their first district championship, defeating Apache High School 44–43.  

Yet there was an inconvenient truth lurking behind the postgame celebration. Earlier in the fourth quarter, there had been a scoring discrepancy between the official scorebook and scoreboard that resulted in the Academy’s being awarded an additional basket. Once the game-winning euphoria subsided, their coach couldn’t help thinking back to this scoring controversary and the team’s mysteriously awarded basket, so Coach King reviewed game film twice that night tallying the score, and realized his team had mistakenly been awarded two points. Their 43–42 win was in fact a 42–41 loss.  

The home team is responsible for supplying the scorekeeper, so the error was theirs. But by this point the game was over, the gym was empty, and league rules declared definitively that there was no going back.  

Coach King, who was “tor[n] … to pieces” over it, decided to call a meeting the following day to tell his team. Though crushed by the news, the team left the meeting with both a conviction and clear course of action: Apache High School deserved the championship, and the Academy would do what was in their power to see that the championship win and plaque went to the rightful owner. After several calls with the league, the Academy’s championship was rescinded and awarded to Apache. Coach King hand-delivered the championship plaque to Apache during their practice and congratulated them on their championship win.  

The Lady Griffins Strike a Global Chord 

This story would’ve remained in obscurity had CBS’s Steve Hartman not gone “On the Road” to report it. Since its airing, the story has become one of Hartman’s most popular, and a steady flow of media requests and coverage has followed, including from The New York Times and The Guardian. 

I’ve been surprised at the global response to the story. What accounts for its popularity? Is it the reprieve the story provides from an off-balance, win-at-all-costs youth sports culture? Is it the way the story cuts against the general lack of charity toward one’s opponents (athletic, political, or otherwise)? Does the story highlight how sports can lift us above and beyond the court or pitch?  

To some extent, the answer to all of these questions is yes. 

Education Matters 

I’d like to consider how the story speaks to the broader topic of education, a consideration that I believe will explain its popularity. In 1943, C. S. Lewis observed that modern education, unlike virtually all premodern education, seeks to extract the student from the world and position him as manipulator over inert, meaningless matter. For Lewis, this was an inversion of premodern education that sought to situate the student in the world and teach him to live with the grain of the universe (what Lewis calls the Tao). 

These students attend a school that’s part of a growing movement known as classical Christian education. These schools are of a premodern vintage, aiming to lift hearts and minds beyond mere technical competence aimed at control. As the Academy’s mission reads, the school seeks to “shape students’ affections for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, for the benefit of man and the glory of Jesus Christ.”  

Notice the attention given to the transcendentals: truth, goodness, and beauty, which lift students beyond what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the immanent frame toward something higher. Modern education, on the other hand, operates comfortably within this immanent frame, orienting students downward toward exercising control over meaningless matter. Though the Academy is a Christian school, the difference Lewis observes is not Christian versus secular but (again) premodern versus modern. Lewis notes that this premodern approach that assumes a cosmic order that students must fit their lives into has “Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, … and Oriental” forms. I know many educators who are trying work out this premodern approach to education in public and private, religious and nonreligious settings.  

These modern and premodern approaches to education run along two tracks moving in opposite directions. Modern educational efforts are reductionist, flattening both pupil and world. In the flatlands of modern education, the world is conceived as a clump of scarce resources that demands fierce battle to get one’s piece of the pie. It’s an educational approach, Parker Palmer explains, that “treats the world as an object to be dissected and manipulated, a way of knowing that gives us power over the world.”  

The real-world impact of this modern educational approach is a win-at-all-costs culture that we see in many spheres. In politics, it means mercilessly beating your opponent and taking every win you can while ignoring its long-term impact. In business, it means setting your sights on making loads of money regardless of how it affects consumers and clients. In sports, it means, above all, winning. In every instance, control governs.  

Disruptive Goodness Stands Out 

“Disruptive goodness” is an act of kindness, decency, or love that stops a person in his tracks; it surprises because it’s so rare, and it can show up in all sorts of places. In politics, disruptive goodness might be bipartisan cooperation that serves citizens, not a politician’s platform. In business, it’s a boss taking responsibility for his employee’s costly error, or a person opting for a lower-paying job because it allows him to serve others better. In sports, it looks like the opposing team carrying an injured batter around the bases even though it costs the team the game.  

Classical Christian education is uniquely suited to foster disruptive goodness. In a culture marked by historical amnesia, students read the stories and ideas of the ages, which keep “the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through [students’] minds.” This doesn’t just give students a broad, historical perspective and a deeper understanding of themselves; it also encourages them to give constant attention to questions of justice and virtue.  

 

Just last week my ninth-grade son was wrestling with this moral quandary from Greek literature: was Antigone morally bound to follow King Creon’s decree that forbade the burial of Polynices? These moral considerations aren’t limited to the classroom but spill over into real-world service. This year, for example, my son’s class makes weekly visits to serve a nearby school with unique needs. 

This brings us back to the popularity of the Lady Griffins story. The rules of the game, the league, and modern education suggest that taking the win is not only acceptable, but sensible. After all, the game was over before anyone knew any differently, and the league rules don’t allow retroactive scoring.   

But an education that has moral, historical, and metaphysical texture nudges students toward a different calculus: one that remembers, as one player, Sydney, told CBS’s Hartman, that winning “is not the whole point.” There’s a higher plane of consideration beyond winning; a different scoreboard, so to speak. 

The kind of disruptive goodness the Lady Griffins and their coach displayed comes as a surprise in a world bent on control and winning, a surprise that has drawn millions to their story. This kind of goodness can certainly erupt in all sorts of places, but it’s not surprising that it surfaced at a school trying to foster a love for higher things (the Good, True, and Beautiful). Aim students higher, and they tend to rise. 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.