Accountably is important

I’m not going to sit here and be so insensitive to say that I know what it’s like to be abused. But there is such a thing in this world called accountability.

I was watching “A Football Life” on the NFL Channel the other day about the life and times of NFL Hall of Famer Charles Haley, who once threw a football helmet so hard at team owner Jerry Jones that he left a massive hole in the locker room wall. Those of you that don’t like Jerry might have wished it hit him, but go into your office and throw your bowling trophy at your boss and see if you still have a job.

I don’t care if you’re a pissed off kid or a spoiled superstar – it’s called accountability, get some.

It also reminded me of a story I wrote a few years back where a young man, kid really, from Gillette, Wyo., showed us all how to live. He did the right thing because it was the right thing to do, and touched many lives in a good way.

Deric Johnson was a 14-year-old kid that wrestled for the local wrestling club. The Sage Valley Junior High seventh-grader made a decision to let an opponent with Down syndrome win. Joey Pinkerton of Douglas, Wyo., was a high functioning guy on the Douglas team, but had never won a wrestling match no matter how hard he tried because his thought processing didn’t allow him to react fast enough. The other kids saw him as an easy mark and an easy win.

Johnson made a conscious decision to let him taste the thrill of victory at least once. “I made him wrestle,” Deric told me. “I made him work for it, but when it was all over, the look of amazement in his eye made it worth it.”

The Associated Press picked up the story and it ran all over the country, New York, Jacksonville, Houston, San Francisco, all over wrestling country in the mid-west. Even ran in the Royal Gazette in Bermuda. Johnson was later nominated for the Liberty Mutual Responsible Sports Program “Moment of the Month,” a program that recognizes acts of selflessness and goodness at the youth sports level. Liberty Mutual even donated $1,000 to his wrestling club.

I got to talking with his dad a month or two later. “He still doesn’t know why he’s getting so much attention,” he said. “He just felt like it was the thing to do.”

It’s not just a feel-good story. It was about a decision to think of someone else instead of yourself all the time. The media will always jump all over the negative story. That’s the way the world goes round, but it sure is nice to see a guy be recognized for thinking of someone else.

It doesn’t matter if you are raised that way or not, doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do can become a way of life … one person at a time.

Rodney Harwood is a sports writer for the Columbia Basin Herald and can be reached at rharwood@columbiabasinherald.com