WHY I'M DEDICATING MY TIME TO THE FACTORY SPORTS TRAINING OF GEORGIA

After spending 45 years in the credit industry and much of my career building ScoreNavigator, I've recently found myself dedicating more of my time to something that may seem completely different: The Factory Sports Training of Georgia.

But the more time I spend there, the more I realize these two parts of my life aren't as different as they may appear. One involves credit, financial education and technology. The other involves baseball, softball, coaches, players and travel teams. But both are ultimately about something much bigger: helping people prepare for their future.

Baseball Has Been Part of My Life for a Long Time

My involvement in youth sports didn't begin with The Factory Sports Training of Georgia. I've experienced baseball as a player, spent more than 20 years as a volunteer coach, and today I'm experiencing the game from another perspective: as a parent. I have 14-year-old twins who play both school ball and on a Factory travel ball team.

That means I've experienced many sides of youth baseball. I've been the player trying to succeed. I've been the coach trying to develop players. And now I'm the parent sitting in the stands watching my own children experience the successes, disappointments, friendships, pressures and lessons that come with competitive sports.

Those experiences have shaped the way I look at The Factory Sports Training of Georgia. I don't see just batting cages, training facilities and travel teams. I see an opportunity to help develop young people.

Youth Sports Should Be About More Than Winning

Don't misunderstand me. I'm competitive. I want our Factory teams to win. I want our athletes to become better hitters, pitchers, catchers and fielders. I want them to compete at higher levels and reach whatever athletic goals they establish for themselves.

But I've been around the game long enough to know that trophies eventually collect dust. The lessons can last a lifetime. Sports can teach young people to show up when they're supposed to, practice when nobody is watching, listen to coaching, respect teammates and opponents, set goals, handle pressure, accept responsibility, deal with disappointment, get back up after failure, and understand that success usually doesn't happen immediately.

Those are athletic lessons, but they're also life lessons.

Faith, Character and Respect Have to Be Part of the Mission

Just as I have tried to keep my businesses grounded in faith, I want The Factory Sports Training of Georgia to be a faith-based organization where character matters. Winning is important. How we win is more important. How we conduct ourselves when we lose may be even more revealing.

I want our young athletes to understand that wearing a Factory uniform represents something. When they put that uniform on, they aren't representing only themselves. They're representing their parents and families, their coaches, their teammates, The Factory Sports Training of Georgia, and the businesses and sponsors who believe enough in these young people to invest in them. That deserves respect and gratitude.

I want our athletes to learn to respect their parents for the sacrifices they make, respect their coaches and understand the time those coaches invest in them, respect their teammates and never tear someone down because of a mistake, respect their opponents because competition doesn't require disrespect, and respect the umpires and officials even when they disagree with a call.

We can teach a player to disagree without becoming disrespectful. We can teach them to win without humiliating an opponent and lose without making excuses. We can teach them that talent doesn't give anyone permission to have a bad attitude.

One biblical principle I believe fits athletics particularly well comes from Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.”

Imagine what youth sports would look like if that principle became part of how we measured success. That is the culture I want us to build at The Factory.

What 45 Years in Credit Has Taught Me About Behavior

I've watched the credit industry change dramatically during my career. I've seen it evolve from index cards and manual files to sophisticated technology, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. But through all that change, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: human behavior matters.

Financial responsibility requires many of the same behaviors we try to develop in athletes: planning, discipline, patience, goal setting, accountability, decision-making, understanding consequences and delayed gratification.

At ScoreNavigator, I've always believed people are more than just a credit score. A three-digit number doesn't tell someone's entire story. I feel the same way about young athletes. A batting average doesn't tell me everything about a baseball player. A pitcher's velocity doesn't tell me what kind of teammate he is. A tournament record doesn't tell me whether our players are becoming better young men and women.

There has to be a bigger measurement of success.

Baseball Is a Great Teacher of Failure

One of the things I love most about baseball is that it teaches you how to fail. You can do everything right and still get out. You can hit the ball perfectly and somebody catches it. You can make an error. You can strike out with the winning run on third base.

Then you have to do something that is incredibly important in sports and in life: you have to prepare for the next opportunity.

As a former player, coach and now parent, I've seen how difficult that lesson can be. I've also spent decades watching people experience financial setbacks. The principle isn't that different. A mistake shouldn't become your identity. You have to understand what happened, learn from it, make adjustments and determine what you're going to do next.

That's something we teach athletes every day.

Parents and Coaches Have an Incredible Opportunity

Being the parent of two 14-year-old athletes has reminded me how much families invest in youth sports. It's not just money. It's time: practices, games, travel, hotels, equipment, lessons, meals on the road and weekends at tournaments. Parents make sacrifices because we believe we're investing in our children.

That makes me ask a bigger question: What return do we really want from that investment?

Of course we want our children to become better athletes. But I also want them to become responsible adults. I want them to understand the value of work, appreciate what they have, learn how to set goals, and understand that choices have consequences. I want them to know how to handle winning and how to handle losing. And eventually, I want them to understand money and financial responsibility before they're forced to learn those lessons the hard way.

Coaches have an important role in that development too. After more than 20 years as a volunteer coach, I've learned that sometimes a young person will hear something differently when it comes from a coach. That gives coaches an incredible opportunity and responsibility to teach more than the game.

Where ScoreNavigator and The Factory Come Together

This is where the connection between ScoreNavigator and The Factory Sports Training of Georgia has become exciting for me.

What if we could take some of what we've learned about financial behavior, goal setting, decision-making and personal responsibility and combine it with the character lessons already available through athletics?

Not by turning baseball and softball practice into a classroom, and certainly not by taking the fun out of youth sports, but by recognizing that the habits we're already teaching athletes can become the foundation for life.