Prayer Warriors: Faith keeps Auburn together

Tom Peavy

Staff Writer

Friday, November 5, 2004

Members of any athletic team typically form strong bonds that last lifetimes. Those bonds come from months of hard work, side by side, battling for personal achievements as well as helping teammates achieve their own personal accomplishments - all with the goal of team success.

Auburn's football team has shown a strong, unified bond in 2004 - one that has helped propel the No. 3 Tigers into the national spotlight at 9-0. But Auburn's football team has not bonded strictly from on-field successes. Instead, many of the Tigers have turned to a higher power for inspiration and guidance. "You always have to have God first in everything you do," defensive end Stanley McClover said. "We all have devotionals and we do prayer requests and praise reports - and it's been helping us all year."

When head coach Tommy Tuberville took over the helm at Auburn in 1999, he entered a program in chaos after then-head coach Terry Bowden resigned mid-season. Auburn was also dotted with players who found their way into the headlines for off-field problems. The program seemed to be the epitome of dysfunction. So to bring in a little function, Tuberville brought on the Rev. Chette Williams to serve as the team's chaplain. Williams made an immediate impact on Auburn's players, and many openly shared how Williams' guidance had helped turn lives around - and helped pull a separated bunch into a tight-knit band of brothers.

In former Auburn defensive back Rob Pate's book, "A Tiger's Walk: Memoirs of an Auburn Football Player," he spoke of the beginning of team prayer meetings and how the meetings grew into a regular part of weekly team functions that ultimately bonded players together. "Attendance at the prayer meetings continued to grow over the last two weeks of the (1999) season. And as the room began to bulge with players and a handful of coaches, a bond began to form that was unbreakable," Pate said in his book. "You began to realize how little you actually knew the guy in the chair next to you, the guy you've lined up next to for years. You began to realize that everyone has a story, that everyone has pain in his life and that everyone needs encouragement. "And what those meetings did for us on the field was extraordinary. We were willing to lay down our lives and die for each other. We were ready to fight to the death for our coaches."

That same team chemistry is evident in 2004, and the spiritual bond seems stronger than ever. "Brother Chet has done an outstanding job. We have people on this team that show outstanding faith from top to bottom," running back Carnell Williams said. "From the best player down, we're all in this together and we're all pulling to please the Lord. We feel He is with us and we can do all things through Him. "Not to take anything from the other teams I've played on, because I've felt that bond and that chemistry. But this team is special. We're really out there for one another."

On-field guidance

It's the fourth quarter of the LSU game and Auburn is trailing 9-3, but driving for a winning score. Quarterback Jason Campbell fires a pass to the end zone to the waiting arms of receiver Courtney Taylor, who hauls in the bullet for the score and the Tiger victory.

With such a huge, game-breaking catch - the first of Taylor's career on top of that - one would expect a wild, jubilant celebration with a ball spike, a little dance, a salute to the crowd ... but no. Taylor simply dropped to a knee and prayed - and that was his celebration.

That scene has been played out numerous times for Taylor since that first touchdown. But while some will look at Taylor's end zone prayer as clich?, the sophomore, who lists one of his favorite movies as "Passion of the Christ" and reading the Bible as an interest in the Auburn football media guide, takes his prayers to heart. "It just gives you a lot of inspiration and lets you know there is always something there you can count on," Taylor said. "It's not so much as in just football, but outside of football spiritually. Just having that strong faith in God is important and it has really helped pull us all together."

But Taylor isn't the only Tiger who openly shows his spiritual side. On any given Saturday, a multitude of players can be seen huddled together near Auburn's bench in prayer following a touchdown or any other big play. And the huddle isn't just an exclusive group. The prayer group includes offensive players, defensive players, kickers, holders, white players and black players - all massed together to give thanks.

And it is that unbiased togetherness that Auburn's players cherish in their spiritual bond. "A lot of guys have the same belief and we all know you have to love your neighbor," Taylor said. "We go in and off the field every day pretty much Monday through Saturday. We all just have that bond and it pulls us together. It makes things so much easier to come in every day. We don't have any animosity on this team - it's just all of us pulling together for each other."

Their faith also carries into the locker room, and while fans in the bleachers never see it, many of the Tigers have stated on numerous occasions how their pre- and postgame routines include spiritual guidance in some form.

Hard Fighting Soldier

While many players on the 2004 Auburn team speak openly of their spiritual beliefs and show their use of prayer during games, the faith-based bond became no more evident than on Tuberville's weekly post-game television show following the Tigers' victory against Ole Miss this past Saturday.

A mainstay on Tuberville's show includes the team singing the Auburn fight song, "War Eagle" in the locker room following every game. But after the Ole Miss game, Auburn's players followed the fight song with a stirring and powerful rendition of the spiritual song, "Hard Fighting Soldier."

The song includes the repeated line "I am a hard fighting soldier, on the battlefield" and references Bible passages Ephesians 6:11, "Put on the full armor of God" and Psalm 60:12, "With God we will gain the victory!"

Credit for the team learning the spiritual song is handed to sophomore tight end Kyle Derozan, who decided to sing the song during a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting after the scheduled singer failed to show. "That song has always stood out to me and every week we're in a battle with opposing teams," Derozan said. "At that meeting Brother Chet asked me to sing and I figured I could share that song with the team and we could use it as a motto. "God said, 'Whenever you go to battle take with you the breastplate of righteousness, sword (of) salvation.' So I thought if I could relate that to the Bible and my life, my teammates could see where I was coming from with it."

Derozan's introduction of "Hard Fighting Soldier" spread quickly through the team, and it became a common song to sing during the team's prayer meetings. It was then adopted as the team's song and rallying cry, but did not make its first locker room appearance until the Ole Miss game. "That's our song. We sing it every Friday before games," McClover said. "It's something we started this year and it's working out good. I think it's something we're going to have to start up on Saturdays now too."

While opinions vary on favorite lines from the song, a common favorite is the thunderous, staccato line, "You gotta walk right, talk right, sing right, pray right, on the battlefield." The song has also become a favorite subject on Auburn Internet message boards - so much so that many fans have been searching for the history of the song and speaking of attempts to adopt the song for use in the stands - all to show the team's visible spiritual bond has carried into the fan base.

"The songs, Scripture - once everything came together we all realized we are all a family," Derozan said of the impact the team's spiritual faith has had. "We all look out for each other and take care of each other in everything. It just makes me proud to be a part of this team right now."

tpeavy@oanow.com | 749-6271 ext. 3111

This article was published by the Opelika-Auburn News

AU keeping the faith

Thanks to team chaplain, Tigers find their focus

Thursday, December 02, 2004

By PHILLIP MARSHALL

Times Sports Staff pmarsh9485@msn.com

AUBURN - Locked together, arm-in-arm, they sing loudly, forcefully, sometimes off-key. More than 100 men, young and old, black and white, sway back and forth to the words of the song.

I'm a hard fighting soldier on the battlefield,

I'm a hard fighting soldier on the battlefield

I keep on bringin' souls to Jesus

By the service that I give

I've got a helmet on my head, in my hand a sword and shield

I keep on bringin' souls to Jesus

By the service that I give

You gotta walk right, talk right, sing right, pray right, on the battlefield.

I keep on bringin' souls to Jesus

By the service that I give

I'm a hard fighting soldier on the battlefield

In that song, Auburn team chaplain Chette Williams says, is the story of Auburn football, 2004. He takes a medallion from his desk that shows a Roman soldier on one side and a scripture on the other. He points out the clip on the soldier's side. "Whenever they were in hostile territory and they saw the enemy coming, they would all hook together," Williams says. "A soldier had to be certain of the person beside him, that he was going to fight. Even if that person got hurt or wounded, the guy hooked up to him had to carry him through." Clinching moment

On the night before Auburn clinched the Southeastern Conference West Division championship at Ole Miss, Williams talked to players about "hooking together." That has become a rallying cry for Auburn's football team. And a song came to define a football team.

Defensive end Kyle Derozan, who sang the song "Hard Fighting Soldiers" in his church, introduced it to his teammates at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. Early in the season, they began to sing it at their Friday night meetings before games. After they beat Ole Miss, they sang it in the locker room.

The public got to see it when locker room footage was shown on coach Tommy Tuberville's weekly television show. "It's amazing," running backs coach Eddie Gran says. "You get in that locker room and you hook up with each other. "You have your arms around the guy next to you. It doesn't matter if he's black, white, red or yellow. You sing that song, and you have 140 of us doing that. It's something you'll never forget."

Auburn players plan to "hook together" one more time Saturday. The No. 3 Tigers (11-0 and 8-0) play No. 15 Tennessee (9-2 and 7-1) in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. They'll try to take home Auburn's first SEC championship since 1989 and make their case that they should play for the national championship in the Orange Bowl.

Family affair

Any conversation about this season turns soon to team unity and chemistry. Williams, a running back on Auburn's 1983 SEC championship team, is at the core of it all. Tuberville brought him back to the school as team chaplain in 1999. "This is a very special team," Williams says. "The senior leadership, the spiritual leadership, I've never seen anything like it. "Auburn is always talking about family. I've never seen it as much of a family as I've seen this year."

Williams is a man of many secrets. Players go to him for advice on the typical problems of college students and for help with deeper, darker problems. "Brother Chette" is always around - at practice, at study hall, at early morning workouts. "Brother Chette is one of those guys you are just glad you got to know," nose guard T.J. Jackson says. "He's done as much for this program as any football player. He's the kind of guy you name your kid after."

Williams went through turbulent times himself early in his Auburn football career. On the field, he was part of the demanding early Pat Dye years. "That's one of the great things about Chette," Tuberville says. "He's been there. "He understands what these guys are going through. He helps the older guys grow and the younger guys get on the ship."

Senior Carnell Williams says his coach is on target. "I think Brother Chette is like a father away from home," Carnell Williams says. When you know a guy has played and has been through what you've been through, you tend to hone in more on what he says. "I've seen guys come in here who were just complete troublemakers. We sent them to see Brother Chette and they turned (180) degrees."

His influence doesn't stop with the men who play. Chette Williams has touched the coaches and others who are part of the program. "That was probably Tommy Tuberville's greatest hire," Gran says. "There are players that are still here because of him. "He's helped them out of holes they never thought they could get out of. He's changed my life. I'm a better husband, better father, better coach because of Chette Williams."

Williams, who serves as campus director and state director of urban ministries for the FCA, has helped mend broken families and relationships. He has consoled in times of grief and shown strength in times of crisis. "When they are struggling with something or maybe they are in trouble with something that they can't talk to the coaches about or call home about, I think that's when I'm really there for them," Williams says. "I try to pride myself in being a positive role model. I think that is the more important to me than anything else."