Someone who will not only let them know what is right from wrong, the importance of knowing what it is that you put into your body and knowing who you hang around with.
It sounds much like what may normally go on at a Boys & Girls Club, the difference is that today's speaker has done the same with the heroes of every kid on this floor, the San Antonio Spurs.
THE San Antonio Spurs? The same San Antonio Spurs that just blew out the two-time reigning champions of the NBA in five games to win their fifth NBA title? That's right, for the last seventeen years, Rich Garza has served as the official chaplain of your Silver & Black Attack San Antonio Spurs.
Garza gave The News Gram an exclusive interview when he arrived in our fair city on Thursday afternoon and this is what this former USFL player and NFL football player from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania had to say.
"For seventeen years I've been making myself available to the guys an hour before every game no matter where the NBA guys are playing the players from both teams get together in a room called a chapel in prayer for about twenty minutes where we do a little Bible study from the Word of God then as the Lord leads we may have breakfast with the guys and get together as couples with their wives. We've got a super group of people within this organization from top to bottom from ownership to executives, coaches and then the players," said Garza who informed The News Gram that this is not the first time he's come to Eagle Pass as his son Daniel Garza was a starting lineman for Alamo Heights and now will play for a fledgling Houston Baptist Football Program in the Southland Conference this fall, "It was exciting to win that fifth championship, it would've been six, but we don't want to talk about last year, do we? I mean we were one rebound away."
Garza played with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Denver Broncos before coming to San Antonio in the eighties to play with the Gunslingers. This is where he met his wife Jan and the rest as they say is history.
"I've been here for thirty one years and I love it."
When we asked him about the players on the Spurs, for him to tell us a little bit about the players behind the scenes, he said, "I got the chance to meet and speak to David Robinson, Avery Johnson, Malik Rose and those guys in the tunnel at half time recently, but the guys we have now, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are super individuals and Coach Popvich is amazing. Jeff Ayers, he and I have become really close. He comes in and gives Tim a breather every once in a while. I really like our backup point guard Cory Joseph who grew up in Canada and went to UT, a tough hard-nosed kid and a great guy."
The task at hand though is the speech he gave to our kids on this day, "For 30 years I've been traveling around the country, the Spurs is just a little thing that I've been doing and it's a great honor, but really I speak to youth. I've been to over four thousand public schools and a thousand penitentiaries. I do this with kids in the summer time when the kids aren't in school. I'm trying to get the children to make good choices. Seventeen years ago I penned a phrase that's trademarked that goes like this, 'You're not born a winner or a loser, your born a chooser' their life is about making choices. What they're putting in their bodies, what they're looking at, who they're hanging around with. You know it's not rocket science it's as old as the hills, but maybe hearing it from me today the message might drop eighteen inches from the head to the heart."
The News Gram salutes Coach Luis Padilla and Rich Garza and wishes him, his family and especially his son the best this coming year as they continue their labor of love. We asked him to take the message of Eagle Pass basketball to our favorite NBA team as who knows, maybe one of our very own may be on this international roster one day.