MOUNT AIRY — More than 130 high schoolers, coaches, relatives and friends gathered in Mount Airy on May 21 to celebrate some of the best prep athletic performances of the year from a five-county region covered by APG Publishing’s local community newspapers.
The annual Best of Preps gathering — put on by The Mount Airy News, Stokes News, Yadkin Ripple, Elkin Tribune, and The Carroll News in Virginia — recognizes the highest athletic achievements and performances of the past school year. Selected by sports writers from those papers, with input from area coaches and athletic directors, the Best of Preps highlights the best athletes in virtually all high school sports played in the five-county coverage area of those papers.
Mike Muse, Director of Player Relations and Community Service for Wake Forest men’s basketball program, gave a stirring speech about GRACE — an acronym he preaches within the Demon Deacons’ hoops program. Muse, who also served as Director of Basketball Operations at Wake under the late head coach Skip Prosser, as well as an assistant coach for Dino Gaudio, said GRACE stands for Gratitude, Respect, Accountability, Commitment and Enthusiasm.
“I want to remind you a bit tonight about who you are, where you came from and what is really important is you going forward because you are the best of the best. It’s also important to remember of who much is given, much is expected,” Muse said. “Grace is the path to our civility and our compassion, and you have to have civility and compassion to continue to be successful, to continue to be the leaders that you are on and off the court, on and off the field, in the classroom and in the community.”
Muse said the G stands for Gratitude. None of the award-winning athletes in that room got where they are by themselves. Muse said along the way coaches, parents, teammates, teachers and people in the community helped each honored athlete in different shapes and forms.
“Make sure your are grateful for the people in your life that have made an impact to get you here. And when you leave tonight, take just a moment to thank those people who are important and special in your life,” Muse said. “That phone call might mean the difference to them and you never know what kind of impact you might have back on them, so be full of gratitude. Be thankful. Have a readiness to show appreciation and to return the kindness that people have shown to you. Pay it forward. You got here. Give it back. Somebody is watching you.”
The R in Grace stands for Respect, Muse said, which means recognizing the work of a person or a thing. Respect is important and includes how you carry yourself and how you treat people. Muse told a story of a high school baseball coach who instilled respect into him after he struck out and slammed his bat to the ground and threw his helmet.
“The next day of practice he made me pick up my helmet, pick up my bat and I had to go up and down the football field times 25 times, throwing my helmet and chasing it, picking it up again until I was finished. Coach said, ‘What did that helmet ever do to you?’ You respect that equipment as part of respecting the game. Respect the people around you. Today in society it is going more and more by the wayside. Respect your parents. Don’t treat them like something they are not. Honor your elders. That is important.”
Muse promised the athletes on hand that if they show respect to their coaches and athletic directors, those people will in turn “run through a wall for you and do anything they can.”
“Too many people don’t respect people anymore, so do that. The presence of respect means that you can accept somebody even when they are different from you or they think different from you, and that is important. Everybody likes to hide social media and then disrespect people with no name. Be respectful every day,” Muse said. “Take care of yourself. Take care of others. Be respectful of your teammates, of the equipment you are provided, of the fields you play on. When you leave the locker room of an opposing team, leave it cleaner than when you found it. When you walk into a person’s classroom, be respectful of that teacher and know they worked hard on those lesson plans to give it back to you.”
The A is for being accountable, Muse said, meaning be completely responsible for what you do and having a satisfactory answer for the reason you did it.
“When you say you are going to do something, do it. Be accountable. Don’t wait for the coach to tell you to do it,” Muse said. “And when you do it, do it to the best of your abilities…We really preach this in our program. We want our players to be accountable for their teammates. Too often today you look and you see somebody doing something that you don’t agree with, that goes against team rules that doesn’t fit into where the goals of the team are, and you don’t say anything. If you are the best of the best, which you are, then you are a leader. You stand up and you hold that teammate accountable. You get them out of trouble. You grab your arm around them and you get them headed in the right direction. That is part of being a good person, a successful person, and the best of the best. And you do it in a positive way.”
C is for committed, Muse said, a word that has quickly gone by the wayside in college athletics with the advent of the transfer portal and NIL. Muse said you can’t have one foot in the door and one foot out and still be committed.
“If you are looking at the next job or the next scholarship or the next play or where you can get more money…Skip Prosser told me this. You work with both feet in the door, you work the job you’ve got. You do it with your head down and you do it with everything you’ve got. You be committed to me and to this program and I promise you what will happen is you will get where you want to go,” Muse said. “And you won’t even have to toot your own horn because people will recognize you were committed and you did what you said you were going to do, and you were accountable as well.”
And finally, Muse said do everything with enthusiasm, the last part of GRACE.
“If you can’t show up every day and have some passion, and if you can’t show up everyday and love what you do, then quit doing what you are doing and find something that you do love. You are going to be more successful, you are going to put yourself into everything and you are going to enjoy everything you got, so do it with some enthusiasm,” Muse said. “Have compassion. Get up everyday and love what you do. Go do it to the best of your abilities. Have fun while you are doing it. Enjoy it. These awards tonight are part of your journey and I hope you enjoy it, but this isn’t the end. For a lot of you it is a springboard to something else. So whatever it is that you do, whether it is college or another year of high school or you are going to work, do it with some enthusiasm.”
After his remarks, members of the staffs of the five papers presented the athletes with awards, ranging from the top male and female athletes in each sport, to the overall top athletes, cheerleaders, coaches, comeback players, and others.
Stokes County Economic Development & Tourism, Slate Funeral Home and Chatham Nursing & Rehabilitation served as Elite Sponsors for this year’s banquet, while Hugh Chatham Health was our Premier Sponsor.
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