Lightning in a Bottle: Elbie Fonda

"I can hold him, coach," he said to me, wiping the sweat off of his face. "Okay, what's the plan?" I asked him. He looked at me, dead serious, and said, "I'm just not gonna let him catch the ball."

This is a story about one of the best guys that I ever got to coach, Elbie Fonda. This was was a WINNER that we can all learn something from. Like my good friend Chris Sledge says in that Facebook post, Elbie was one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

There is a saying in basketball about guarding a great player, "You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him." I saw Elbie hold Greg Tucker (Charleston, All State, D1) to two points. I saw him hold Fred Garmon (Kennett, All State, D1) to two points. I saw him hold Fred Treadwell (Portageville, All State) to two points.

Elbie Fonda shut guys down. He erased their name from the scorebook.

Now I'm talking to all of you players, coaches, and parents reading this... DO YOU WANT TO WIN? You might be saying yes, but do you REALLY want to win? Keep reading...

Elbie averaged about 12 points a game for us. He was a really good shooter. I'm sure if he wanted to, he probably could have scored a lot more points than he did. Elbie wanted to win more than he wanted to score, and he knew on our team that he was the only guy who could take on the job of guarding the best player on the other team every night.

Elbie was only about 5'9, but he was really strong for his size, and he was quick. We always put Elbie on the opposing team's best player unless it was their center. I've seen Elbie guard quick little 5'8 guards and big 6'5 wings. He wasn't afraid to guard anybody. He wanted to win.

His best sport was actually football, not basketball. Elbie won the Carr Trophy (the SEMO "High School Heisman" Trophy) his senior year. He finished that year with over 2,600 total yards and 33 touchdowns. He would have had even more, but he wanted to share carries with a freshman on the team, Darryl Monroe, (Darryl ended up being pretty good himself!). Elbie and his coaches thought having two good running backs just made the team better.

Instead of getting the school record, Elbie said, "I had no problem with it. I wanted to win." If you have five minutes to watch the video of his highlights, you'll see it wouldn't have been hard for him to rack up a few more yards and break the school record.

Elbie was easy for me to coach and easy for his teammates to play with. Why? Mostly because he was unselfish. He put winning above everything. He wasn't trying to "get his." Sure, he wanted to do his part, but most of all, he wanted to win.

Here's how awesome of a guy Elbie is... a couple years after he graduated, Elbie came by my house to visit and show me his new motorcycle. His family loves riding bikes, and he had a pretty motorcycle he wanted to show off. The only problem was, I wasn't home. I was at Walmart buying a new TV.

Instead of going home, Elbie came to Walmart, found me in the store, and HELPED ME CARRY THE TV OUT OF THE STORE. If that wasn't enough, he followed me home and HELPED ME CARRY IT BACK IN MY HOUSE. Elbie is just a great person.

One more story about Elbie... When my son Trey started kindergarten he brought a piece of poster board home after the first day of school. He had to basically fill out a "get to know me" assignment, and one of the questions was "what are three things you like?" Trey picked cheese (the boy loves cheese), basketball, and the Number 5. Why the Number 5? Because that was Elbie Fonda's number, and Elbie was Trey's favorite player. Why? Because he worked hard, but also because Elbie was just nice to everybody, even little kids.

So today's message is if the world had more Elbie Fonda's, it sure would be a better place. What if we were all just a little more unselfish? What if we all were just a little bit nicer to each other? Being unselfish and nice to each other and being in a good mood, those things don't take any talent. Those are things we can all do.

Those are all things that will help make today a WIN for you.

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