Kalani Sitake spoke in front of a packed Marriott Center on the Provo, Utah, campus of Brigham Young University on Tuesday, March 11, at a campus devotional, marking the first time a sitting head football coach spoke in a devotional since legendary LaVell Edwards in 1976.
When Edwards spoke at that time, he talked with students about having a game plan for life. On Tuesday, Sitake testified about what to do when that game plan doesn’t go the way an individual hopes it will go.
Sitake began by sharing some of his own experiences as a student at BYU 30 years ago, saying if he could go backward and tell his younger self anything, “it would be that God has a plan for you. It’s important to realize that there is a divine design for us.”
That realization for Sitake came after experiencing his own heartache and challenges in life. As a young boy born in Nuku‘alofa, Tonga, and raised in Laie, Hawaii, his parents separated and then divorced. He said that put his life in “complete disarray,” which resulted in living in multiple other states, apart from his siblings and with different family members in each location.
As a fourth grader, he and his siblings were again united with his father and lived in Orem, Utah. Sitake said he still felt broken at that time and longed for the life he had known before moving and before his parents’ divorce.
The BYU football team visited his elementary school following its 1984 national championship season. Football had been Sitake’s respite, and he was excited to see the players he had cheered on each week of the season.
His favorite player singled him out and talked to him, despite his shyness in the moment.
“Everything is going to be fine,” the player said to him. “I love you, and God loves you.”
Sitake said he had heard similar words many times before.
“But this was the first time I actually believed it,” he said.
Read the rest of the story at the Church News.
“100 Years of BYU Football”
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