Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
Friday, December 29, 2006, Washington Post

A Change for the Better

Sports are all about change. A team gets better. A kid practices more and swims a personal best or learns a new move on the basketball court.

In 2006, two things happened that got me thinking about change -- in sports and in life.

Before this year, the football team at Kennedy High School in Silver Spring was terrible. It had lost 25 straight games and had not had a winning season in 13 years.

First-year coach Gunnard Twyner knew he had to make some changes. He started an offseason training program so the players would get in top shape and start working together. He also brought the kids together for cookouts and movies to develop team spirit.

To show he was serious about changing the school's losing tradition, Twyner used his own money to buy the team new green-gold-and-white uniforms. "Watching their faces light up when we gave out the new uniforms was as good as winning our first game," he said.

The Cavaliers surprised some fans by winning their first two games before losing 49-7 to the powerful Seneca Valley Screaming Eagles. But the Kennedy team didn't slip back to its old, losing ways. "We told the kids if they liked the way they felt on Saturday morning after they won a game on Friday night, they had to put in the work during the week," Twyner said.

So the Cavaliers kept working -- and winning. They won seven in a row and made the state playoffs, where they shocked Seneca Valley, the team that had crushed them earlier in the season, 19-7. It was Kennedy's first playoff win in 22 years.

Through hard work and sticking together, the Kennedy coaches and players changed a losing team into a winner that made it all the way to the Maryland 3A West Region final.

My other example of change involves tennis champion Andre Agassi, who retired in 2006. Agassi was a terrific player who won 60 titles, including eight major championships. But his greatest accomplishment might have been how much he changed during his career.

When he was young, Agassi was a showoff who seemed to care only about himself. He didn't train very hard, but he won matches because of his tremendous talent. Eventually, though, injuries and his bad attitude caught up with him. He fell from No. 1 in the world rankings to No. 141.

So Agassi changed. He trained harder and became a world-class player again. More important, he changed as a person. He was nicer to fans and opponents. He stopped thinking just about himself and started thinking about others. Through his Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, he raised more than $60 million to help disadvantaged kids around his home town of Las Vegas, Nevada. He even started a school, the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, for at-risk kids.

At the start of a new year, lots of people promise themselves they will change. They might vow to get in good physical shape, do better in school or be nicer to others.

Changes such as those can be difficult. But they do happen. Just remember the Kennedy Cavaliers and Andre Agassi. It wasn't easy, but they changed, and changed for the better.