Athletic directors, coaches called to prioritize evangelization in sports programs

PLYMOUTH — It was about three years ago when Scott Bobin received a stern directive from his pastor.

“Everything at this parish and school has to be about the mission of bringing people closer to God. And if it doesn’t do that, then we’re not doing it,” Fr. John Riccardo announced to Bobin and the rest of the Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish staff in Plymouth.

Bobin realized his position at the parish needed to be about evangelization.

And he’s the volunteer football coach.

“After that direction came from Fr. Riccardo, all of us coaches looked at our programs and addressed how we are using our programs to evangelize,” Bobin told The Michigan Catholic. “Unleash the Gospel tells us to use our charisms to evangelize. Are we praying together as a team, are we going to Mass together? What are we doing to move the needle?”

On March 15-16, Our Lady of Good Counsel hosted SportsLeader, a national program offering guides and resources to pastors, coaches, principals and athletic directors about how to transform athletic departments into more Christ-centered missions.

The two-day conference served as an introduction to parishes and schools in the archdiocese about how to best mold already-successful Catholic athletic programs into vehicles for discipleship, as outlined in Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron’s pastoral letter.

“The idea of SportsLeader is to bring training and resources to coaches, so they could bring
Christ to their teams,” said Lou Judd, director of Louisville-based SportsLeader. “We want our coaches to teach leadership, character and faith development, but we don’t give our coaches the resources to do it. They still need a lesson plan, still need examples on how to do it.”

Judd cited a statistics from SportsLeader that 85 percent of the youth who go through the Catholic school system will play at least one sport, but many schools and parishes don’t have someone assigned to sports ministry.

“There is an urgent need to view sports as youth ministry,” Judd said. “With sports, you have youth and family gathering together on a regular basis for something they love, and that’s a good thing. This merits support from the parish, the schools, the archdiocese, to hire or assign people to oversee how to turn sports into an evangelization opportunity. What we’re talking about is forming inspiring coaches to instill character and faith development in our teams that carry on well after the season is over.”

The conference detailed ways coaches can better instill a Catholic identity in teams, from the basics like attending Mass together and beginning and ending every practice with prayer, to more advanced ideas such as assigning daily captains to teach their teammates about a saint or cardinal virtue.

“Catholic schools are the best at sports, and that’s good, but it can’t turn into ‘win at all costs,’ and in some cases we’ve allowed that to happen,” Judd said. “We aren’t anything if we’re not about bringing people closer to God.”

In addition to SportsLeader, the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Catholic Youth Organization will be hosting workshops sponsored by Notre Dame University’s “Play Like a Champion Today” Character Education Through Sports program and “Catholic Sports Ministry” from the National Federal of Catholic Youth Ministry.

“CYO sees coaching as a form of ministry. Therefore, in the spirit of ===Unleash the Gospel====, we are aiming to challenge coaches to develop the whole athlete — physically, mentally, socially, and above all, spiritually,” said Christopher Werner, executive director of CYO for the archdiocese. “We see these programs as tools to enhance our total Catholic athletic experience.”

Michael Suchy, athletic director at St. Pius X Parish in Southgate, attended the SportsLeader conference to better learn how the parish’s athletic program can bring families closer to God.

“Programs like this help coaches institute things like daily prayer and devotions, things that set us apart from public school programs,” Suchy said. “These are the kinds of things you look for in Catholic programs. We’re Catholics first, no matter what we do. Not everybody in our programs are Catholic, but sports serve as that shallow entry point we’re talking about, introducing people to the faith.”

Suchy added that a revamp of athletics across the archdiocese is necessary to fall in line with the archbishop’s vision of creating an outward, evangelizing archdiocese. With many Catholic schools in the area boasting championship-winning athletics programs that draw in families of many different backgrounds, sports must serve a role in evangelizing the region.

“I think we’ve forgotten that it’s not only important to say we’re Catholic, but to show we’re Catholic,” Suchy said. “We can do that by being upfront and emphasizing our Catholic identity with our coaches when we hire them and our parents at team meetings. If we do that, we’ll have all the great things you want in athletics — successful kids, but also making them successful in life.

“A good Catholic athletics program isn’t just good on the field or court, but kids who are going to carry on that mission beyond the court or field, taking that Catholic setting to the classroom, their home, to the world. That’s what winning looks like in a Catholic program.”