A serendipitous meeting

I don’t really believe in serendipity. Things don’t just happen. I believe that God directs our steps if we will listen to Him. 

(If you don’t know what serendipity means, look it up in the dictionary! I have added a really neat feature to all of my blogs. Just put your mouse pointer over the word and right click [if you use a Mac, control click], select “Look up in Dictionary” and you will see the meaning of the word! Try it.)

As I drove eastward on US-80, I began to see signs for the University of Iowa. 

“Well, I have to stop there.”

Why, you ask?

As you probably know, my son is in his first year of wrestling and is doing EXTREMELY well. Well, the University of Iowa has been the epicenter for US wrestling, winning 20 national titles between 1975-2000! That streak of dominance started when Dan Gable became their coach. He has since become the university’s athletic director.

I got off the freeway and was immediately reminded that this was the area that was hit by the severe flooding about one month ago! The road was right next to the river and areas around it are still under water! I saw businesses tearing out their interior wood construction and pumping water out of their buildings. Seeing that quickly brought me out of my own little world!

I crossed a bridge over the Iowa River and drove onto campus. It is a very large, impressive campus.

It seemed that everyone that I asked knew nothing about the wrestling program or the arena, etc. I finally found Carver-Hawkeye Arena where all of the championship banners hang and called my son on my cell phone.

“Guess where I am?”

That was great but I wanted to find the wrestling room, the place where they practice, where the championships were actually made. After many more people who couldn’t help me, I finally learned that it was in the bowels of the arena. Back to the arena only to find a small room with no windows. It wasn’t really all that spectacular. In fact, the wrestling room at Blue Spring High is about the same size!

I called my son again, “Guess where I am now?”

As I left, there was an unimpressive man about 25 feet in front of me heading to the right to get into his car. I turned left to head to get back to my car before the meter ran out. As I did, another man loading a van called out to the unimpressive man, “Hey, coach.”

I replayed that little scene over in my head several times when a thought occurred to me!

I jogged over the the van man and asked, “Who was that coach that you called out to?”

“That’s Coach Gable.”

I turned and sprinted over the man’s car, convinced him to roll down the window and we talked for 10-15 minutes!

What are the chances…? It would be like walking onto UCLA and bumping into John Wooden! Not very likely! His jaw dropped when I told him that I just dropped in because I saw the sign on the freeway. He was only on campus for 10 minutes to check his mail!

I am going to introduce my son to him at the Nationals in a few weeks in Fargo, ND!

I called my son again, “Guess who I just talked to?”