Hi, I’m Will Lowrey… I am a high school baseball coach in Mississippi.  My wife, Jennifer, received a double lung transplant in January of 2011 at Duke Medical in Durham, North Carolina….only one month before my first official job in coaching was set to begin. 

Needless to say, it changed my priorities in a powerful way.  When Jennifer and I married in the summer of 2010, I had to come to terms with the idea that this life is only temporary.  My family and I will live out our lives understanding that everything can be taken away from us on any given day.  We have learned to walk in faith and through our journey, God has shown himself over and over.

Wins became secondary and Love became a priority.  My coaching philosophy revolved around God’s promises to us all.  Over the years, I have coached daily to my athletes the fact that everything we do and accomplish is “Bigger than Ball”.  There is always something greater than ourselves.

Jennifer is now in line to get her second Double lung transplant this spring. 

I have always struggled with understanding what God’s will has been for my life.  I’ve had the goal of becoming a college coach for many years.  God never released me to chase that dream.  It was always apparent that collegiate coaching would not allow me the opportunity to keep my family first.  It was only recently I received a vision on how God was calling me to become a Coach of Coaches.

The coaching industry is so competitive and time consuming.  During my journey of chasing that college job, I had one coach after another explain that this was not the industry to be in if you have a family, especially in my circumstance.  There are sacrifices that must be made.  The pressures to win are so great at each institution, it brings daily challenges to a coaches values. 

I have been inspired to begin a foundation that supports the coach and his or her family.  We now have the “Bigger Than Ball Foundation” that will offer opportunities for coaches to unwind from those pressures and allow them to get re-energized and focused on the reason they coach.

Proverbs 27:17 models to us how Iron sharpens Iron.  The foundation will begin raising funds to buy land and build a 5,000 sf cabin in which we can host coaches from across the nation. Through our foundation we will offer the platform to reshape the coaching industry one heart at a time.

www.biggerthanball.com