You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Greetings Jung Squires. Greetings, young Squire Sprouts. Today is the ninth day and the seventh month in the year of our Lord, 2022.

My name is Sir Roland Paterlot, and you're listening to Saturdays with Sir Roland on Catholic Sprouts,

where every Saturday we discuss the art of Dragon Seine.

This summer, we've been going through an acronym of the word sports.

We talked about self-discipline, perseverance, obedience, and repetition.

Today, I'd like to discuss the letter T, which stands for teamwork.

In most sports, you're part of a team who's working together to reach a common goal.

Even in running races, which seems like an individual sport, I learned that I was able to perform much better when I took my focus off my individual accomplishments and strove to do my best for my teammates.

Relay races were the most fun to run and the easiest for me to find motivation to push through any pain to give

my best effort because I knew my teammates were counting on me and I didn't want to let them down.

And even though I ran individual races, track was a team sport.

And the best place I was able to get in a race friend of mine and a wonderful Catholic role model for all of us. Craig went to the same high school as me. He was four years younger than me back then, and still he's actually still four years younger than me.

So he probably learned everything he knows about sports from me. After all, I did mention a few episodes back that I had a 1.42 ERA in my son's coach pitch league a few years back. And as a

major league baseball pitcher, Craig has never quite had an ERA that low. But anyway, he's now 38 years old and has been a pitcher in the best

baseball league in the world for 13 years. I know what you're thinking. 38, that's old. And in

baseball years, that's more like 83. So I asked Craig, how you've been able to be a pitcher in

the major league baseball for so many seasons. It's such a competitive sport.

To get out of the minors, you had to beat out all those other guys trying to make the majors.

And then to stay in the major leagues, you had to beat out all the new and up-and-coming pitchers

for all these years. How did you beat out all these guys to make the team? And do you know what

Craig said? He said, I wasn't trying to beat out my teammates. I just focused on being the best I could be to help my team win. And I shared all the wisdom and advice I learned from other coaches and teammates over the years to try to help all those guys get better. The guys who just focus on their individual success to make themselves look better and try to beat everyone else out, they never, never usually make it to the

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