By Brian Carlisle
Imagine you’re at the pinnacle of your career. Whether it be a writer, professional athlete, teacher or musician it doesn’t matter, you’re living your dream and you’re at your peak.
Then one day something happens and you’re injured to the extent that you can no longer live out your dream. To make it worse someone intentionally did this to you to better themselves. How would you recover? Would you sulk and blame the world or would you be strong and overcome?
This is what happened to semi-professional Ugandan soccer player, Stone Kyambadde, whose knee was injured intentionally by another player during a match. This ended Stone’s career at its peak.
But as if he were the star in an underdog sports movie, Kyambadde was down but not out. Instead of slipping into depression and self-loathing, Kyambadde found a way to bring together the needy and abandoned youth of Kampala and established a soccer team called the wolves in 1989 that he continues to coach to this day. The boys he mentors are often from rival communities.
The nation of Uganda is war torn by these rivaling factions, but Kyambadde has found a common interest for the boys through soccer and brings them together to teach them love and forgiveness.
Students and the public will have a chance to hear Kyambadde’s message of forgiveness during his visit to Northwest Vista College on April 28 and 29.
“We hear stories like this from around the world that don’t seem real to us but they are and with Kyambadde we get to experience what he lived through,” said Valarie Fluellen, the Intern Organizational Learning Coordinator at NVC and the person responsible for Kyambadde’s visit.
Kyambadde’s story inspired Stephen Covey to include it in his “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” workshop. Kyambadde is a speaker of Habit 1- Be Proactive, in the “7 Habits” and travels internationally to speak at conferences, colleges and various groups. Habit 1 teaches to be proactive, or to assess the situation and develop a positive response not just reacting to events.
On April 28-29, Kyambadde will be visiting NVC to meet with students, faculty and staff about his approach to leadership. He will spend time on April 29th with NVC’s fourteen Leadership Lab participants to help strengthen leadership skills in the area of deployment and execution of plans, both locally and globally. The public may attend Kyambadde’s lecture from 11:00am -12:00pm and he will engage in dialogue in the form of questions and answers from 12:00pm– 12:30pm.
Brian Carlisle is a Northwest Vista College student.