Less than two weeks prior to opening the 2020 season at Western Kentucky this past Saturday, Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze did something unique. He canceled practice.
For three straight days, the Flames did not set foot on the practice field, but instead sat and talked, primarily about social injustice and racial equality. The outcome of those talks led to the #CreatedEqually motto and helmet stickers the Flames first wore at WKU, but it also led to a much more united team.
“I believe that football teams, the best ones, are families,” Freeze said. “For families, you don’t always agree on things. Everyone has a different perspective and everybody has a different thought on something. I think of these young men and our staff at Liberty as family. We all come from different backgrounds, different beliefs, different cultures, different religious affiliations. We’re all different, but yet we’re thrown together and we’re to be a family.”
These three days began with Freeze being open, raw, and honest with the entire team. Then, the coaching staff opened up, followed by several players. The team then broke into position groups to discuss the issues in more detail.
“I thought our staff, black, white, whatever colors we are, I thought they were awesome at being transparent and telling stories of how they’ve arrived at where they are and what their foundational belief is,” said Freeze.
It made a huge impact on the players.
“Everybody seemed like they grew closer as we got to talking,” said quarterback Malik Willis. “Coach was so uplifted when he started to get to talking about it. It’s a crazy world out here. We know that, and we can’t forget, even though we’re a team here, it’s a big world out here. A lot of people aren’t doing what we’re doing. It just brought us closer together as a family, just knowing that it doesn’t matter what you look like, how tall, how big, how anything physical, we’re all together as one. We’re just a big family in my eyes.”
As the team broke out into position groups, each group was tasked to come up with an action plan. Freeze gathered each group’s response, and formed one, united goal for the team to adopt. It was the beginning of the #CreatedEqually motto that has been placed on the team’s helmets this season.
Some of the action plans the team came up with was registering to vote, using the Angel Armies foundation to help in the community with foster care and orphans in Lynchburg and around the country. When Freeze compiled this list, he presented it to the team. They all voted on it and accepted it.
“#CreatedEqually was the one we thought best represented what we believe, and how we want to go about changing things,” said Freeze. “We’ve got an action plan. We’ve already registered 100% of our team to vote, Angel Armies, we finally have it in Lynchburg where we’re going to actively make a difference in foster care and orphans in Lynchburg along with 8 other cities. We’ve got a whole list. We’re putting out a video series. We’re excited about us being unified in our approach to the racial insensitivity, injustice, and other issues. We’ve committed to talk about all of the issues going on. Real proud of our kids and how they handled that.”
More than anything, these conversations, starting from athletics administration and the coaching staff, helped form a team that would do anything for each other and their coaches.
“For Coach Freeze and (Athletic Director) Ian McCaw and everyone else in the administration to take time and really listen and be able to make an action plan with us, it means a lot,” linebacker Aaron Pierre said. “Not just to the African-American players on the team, but everybody else on the team who feels the same way, that change is needed and we are all created equal.”
Willis felt the same way. “To see our university take a step forward and try to initiate some change, initiate some awareness, that was real big,” he said. “It put a bright spot in my heart.”
Senior starter at center Thomas Sargeant echoed those sentiments. “We wanted to make sure we were all together,” said Sargeant. “We didn’t want the team to be separated. We wanted everyone to have that drive, one goal. #CreatedEqually initiative, it’s awesome, especially for all of athletics to take a hold of that. The basketball team, we met with them some, we had dialogue with them, and they’re on board with it too.”
When the Flames returned to the practice field on Thursday, 10 days before the season opener, there was a renewed fire, a renewed sense of brotherhood.
“Ever since then, we’ve been real strong, as a brotherhood,” defensive end Durrell Johnson said. “Everyone got up there, spoke their feelings, the coaches, everybody, and we decided we wanted to be the example of how the world should be. No matter race, no matter color, we’re all a family at the end of the day.”
Going forward, the team is hopeful their unity and actions can lead to change, first on campus at Liberty, and then reaching outward.
“We want to create change,” Freeze said. “We want to help. We don’t want to add to the divisiveness or to anyone’s detriment. We want to build others up. We want to be an agent of change.”
Athletics can be a place where all humankind can unite behind one common goal. The Liberty football team is made up of a wide array of individuals from a vast set of backgrounds, but each and every week, they unite for the good of the team.
“Everybody has a job to do,” said Willis. “No matter what color you are, no matter what race you are, if you do that job the best, you will be on the field. We got to do our best regardless when you’re working together. It makes you get closer, and when you get closer, you realize everybody’s the same. Everybody’s a person, you know?”
Freeze and his coaching staff have always preached that their team is a family environment. This summer and these past few weeks have given them the perfect opportunity to prove that in action and not just in words.
“These coaches really take the time out of their day, not just to connect with us as football players, but to connect to us as actual people,” Johnson said. “That’s why we play so hard and work so hard for them. I’ve never been a part of something like that. They check up on us on the weekends, not even during practice. They will call us, ask us if we want to come over and eat. It’s real family friendly here. These coaches I will remember them way into the future. They will be at my wedding some day.”
“I tell them all, ‘I will get in any ditch with any player and fight a battle, if you’re one of mine,'” Freeze said. “As long as we can, number one, honor God in the way we do it, honor our school in the way we do it, even if it challenges our school, that’s fine, but we have to honor them, and, thirdly, that we’re unified as a team. Let’s go fight any battle that we need, and, certainly, our nation needs some more compassion for each other, some more care for each other. Hopefully our football team can be an example of that.”
