2010 Catholic Schools Week Supplement

The bond of belief: High school sports strive to teach values and deepen faith

Father John Hollowell celebrates Mass on Sept. 25, 2009, for members of the varsity football team of Cardinal Ritter Jr./Sr. High School in Indianapolis. As a chaplain, teacher and assistant football coach at Cardinal Ritter, Father Hollowell celebrates Mass on the Friday afternoon before every football game—continuing the emphasis that head coach Ty Hunt has of making faith a crucial part of the teenagers’ football experience. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)

By Bob Kelly (Special to The Criterion)

The spirit and intensity often rise to a higher level when teams from Catholic high schools compete against each other in sports.

And yet there is a bond that connects the coaches and student-athletes of these schools—the bond of faith.

In fact, one of the emphases of Catholic high school sports programs is how coaches strive to deepen their players’ faith during athletic seasons.

Ty Hunt, the head coach of the varsity football team at Cardinal Ritter Jr./Sr. High School in Indianapolis, works hard to get his players involved in events where they have the opportunity to get in touch with their faith.

“One of the first things I did was to start going to Mass as a team on the Fridays before we play the game,” Hunt says. “We have started to transfer this program over to our basketball teams, too.

“We take the kids to the chapel, not to pray for a good performance or a win, but to instill upon them it is to pray for their blessings of good health and to give thanks for the support we get from our community.”

The girls’ basketball program at Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis also looks for opportunities to help the players build their faith in God and each other.

“We have a pre-game devotional, and we look at a passage of Scripture and find other motivational tools, such as poems to help them build life lessons,” says Alicia Michaelsen, an assistant girls’ basketball coach at Bishop Chatard High School.

Michaelsen recalled how the team reached out to others last season by raising money to support cancer research.

“I think the girls got a lot out of it because they were doing something special, and it just did not pertain to athletics,” she says.

As the head coach of the girls’ volleyball program at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis, Missy Marsh has her team end each practice with a prayer. She also tries to build team camaraderie and character through community service efforts.

“We are involved in a program called ‘Lucious’ Training Wheels,’ ” Marsh notes. “The girls teach special-needs kids how to ride a bike. It shows them how they can be a role model, and they find out that there is more to life than just playing the game of volleyball.”

Besides trying to help build the players’ faith in God, the girls’ softball program at Father Thomas Scecina Memorial High School has another goal—building the teammates’ faith in each other.

Scecina softball coach Tom Moorman sets aside times during the season when he doesn’t have a practice so the student-athletes can help each other with homework or assist each other with other concerns in their lives.

“It is to help build faith in each other so they can count on each other, and become friends and not just teammates,” Moorman says. “There is more to it than competition.”

Jean Kesterson says that faith is at the core of the girls’ volleyball program that she coaches at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis.

“We talk about our mission statement with the players on how we want to promote our faith on and off the volleyball court,” Kesterson says. “We are representatives of our faith, and when we play we want to set the example through our good sportsmanship.”

(Bob Kelly is the editor of the Web site www.sportschronicle.net, which focuses on covering a variety of sports for four Indianapolis archdiocesan high schools: Bishop Chatard, Cardinal Ritter, Roncalli and Scecina Memorial. The Web site also covers sports for two private schools, Cathedral and Heritage Christian high schools in Indianapolis.) †