SportsLeader has been at the forefront of Catholic ministry in sports for over eleven years now.
Most recently SportsLeader has been promoting a new position called the Director of Sports Ministry. We are working with multiple dioceses in an effort to beta test this new position. Our desire is for every Catholic school to identify and work with SportsLeader to form their sports minister.
It is vital to have someone provide not just training but formation for coaches on how to integrate virtue and the faith into their everyday contact with their athletes. Coaches are so dedicated, generous and hard-working ... providing them with some personal help to reach the youth they spend so much time with and have such a powerful influence over is crucial.
It is not necessary for each school to hire a new person for this position. You can find a coach, teacher, campus ministry person … who is already on staff and has a heart for sports and ministry and maybe give them some specific time during the day to work more intentionally on this.
This is probably not feasible for you this school year but maybe planning for next year.
Why? The overwhelming majority of our Catholic play youth play sports and if we could help, form, inspire and equip our coaches bring their athletes a little closer to Jesus and our Catholic faith in the process, the results would be immediate and extremely impactful.
SAVE THE DATE: Early April we will be offering a conference at Thomas More College in Edgewood, KY on this exact topic. We pray your school can send at least one person to learn more about this culture changing event.
We have a number of schools working with us on this initiative and we would like to bring some attention to one of them and their efforts in the hope that this will inspire you join us as well: Pittsburgh Seton LaSalle high school.
The Director of Sports Ministry Kathy Wray is doing a great job and it is really permeating the whole school.
She introduced me to numerous people in my most recent visit in the business office, admin office, janitorial staff and everyone knew about SportsLeader and had really nice things to say.
I was able to observe a Senior recognition ceremony with the cross country team and it was awesome.
I was blessed to give a presentation on the 4 pillars of SportsLeader to the parents of all athletes at SLS on their back to school night and one of the Moms summed it up best, "This is why we pay $10,000 to send our kids here. This is what we want."