The Catholic way of sports
From the beginning, athletics and sports have been intertwined with Catholic culture and thought.
Think of St. Paul’s letters, or former Polish high school soccer goalie Karol Wojtyla’s – Pope John Paul II’s – 2000 homily on sports.
In archdiocesan Catholic high schools, the intersection of faith and sports continues through such scholar-athletes as Matthew Seramin.
Seramin, who will attend UC Davis on a golf scholarship, is part of a Marin Catholic High School golf team that has swept the competition for the past three years. A leader on the school’s senior retreat, called Kairos, Seramin says the golf team goes to Mass together before matches and prays as a group.
“Besides that,” the senior said, “we’re all respectful” of each other and of their opponents.
The archdiocesan high schools Marin Catholic in Kentfield and Archbishop Riordan in San Francisco require 100 community-service hours for a student to play sports or participate in any other extracurricular activities. Seramin completed his hours by visiting Guatemala as part of a mission project from his parish of St. Rita, joining parishioners on the trip to El Sitio, Patzun and Atitlan, and then helping organize a school drive to collect donations of clothing, household supplies and toys to bring back to the villages.
Spirituality and competition are important to students' development, said Dion Sabalvaro, Riordan’s admission’s director.
“Competition is very important to the well-being of all of our students,” Sabalvaro emphasized.
Sports and faith are interlinked at archdiocesan high schools. Athletes pray daily before class and at the end of the day, as well as at Mass on special feast days, Ash Wednesday, and holy days of obligation.
In December, Marin Catholic earned the Positive Coaching Alliance’s coveted Honoring the Game Award. The award goes to schools or organizations serving athletes of high school age or younger that embody Positive Coaching Alliance principles in using sports to teach life lessons. Award-winning schools must show a school-wide commitment to good sportsmanship, and parents are expected to do their part in upholding that ideal, Marin Catholic Athletic Director Rick Winter said.
In the Western Catholic Athletic League, which includes Riordan, Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory and Junipero Serra High School, contests begin with prayers. The prayers are a reminder that athletic competion is part of the larger process of character formation that Catholic students undergo, as Pope John Paul II noted in his 2000 homily on sports.
“Playing sports has become very important today,” the Holy Father said, “since it can encourage young people to develop important values such as loyalty, perseverance, friendship, sharing and solidarity.”
Mercy Burlingame Athletic Director Meave Fallon Ward put it this way: “They learn to work together. They also learn to push themselves.”
Mercy Burlingame incorporates an after-school retreat into athletics at the all-girls school. Beginning next year, the school will start the University of Notre Dame’s “Play Like A Champion Today” educational program.
Athletics builds “self esteem and dedication, teamwork, and time commitment,” Fallon said. “They learn to actually be tough in some ways they might not be. They learn to win and also to lose, and in life you are going to succeed and sometimes you are going to fail.”
Sports are a great tester and teacher, said nationally known Catholic author and pediatrician Dr. Meg Meeker.
“A lot of lessons you learn on the field, disciplining yourself, getting in shape – these discipline skills transfer very easily over to other fields, to academics, to when you have a job,” said Meeker, author of “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know” (Ballantine Books 2006) and “Boys Should Be Boys: 7 Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons” (Ballantine Books 2009).
“Most boys have an innate sense that they want to compete, that they need to compete,” Meeker said. “Also, it is very important for them to work their muscles against other guys. For girls in particular, physically challenging themselves builds their self esteem even more than with boys.”
At Mercy San Francisco, the girls’ basketball team coaches a Special Olympics basketball team each year, said Kathy Curran, community service coordinator. Some athletes count the hours toward their community service requirement of 100 hours.
“It’s a good thing to do - and through this fun service, the players build an even stronger sense of team,”Curran said.
The boys’ varsity team at Marin Catholic plays basketball in the winter and whiffle ball in the spring with developmentally disabled adults who are part of a special team, the Seals, said Winter.
At all-boys Riordan, Naval Academy-bound Rob Mungia, a football player planning to play rugby for Navy, was among the student athletes participating in the school’s rebuilding New Orleans immersion trip at Easter time last year. He spoke at the school’s welcome liturgy in August.
“In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus sets us an example by welcoming in children with open arms who were rejected by his disciples. By embracing the children, he demonstrates to us how we should treat all people,” senior Mungia told the students.
At St. Ignatius College Preparatory, coaches often encourage teams to take on a charitable project, spokesperson Paul Totah said.
At Serra, a fall speakers’ series emphasized positive behavior in sports, said Antonia Ehlers, Serra spokesperson.
Sports in Action is Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep’s signature program where teams sign up for a service project. At the co-ed school, the women’s varsity soccer team sewed blankets for sick children at UCSF as part of the archdiocesan high school’s Sports in Action program last fall. The women’s volleyball teams each year help with clothing drives and setting up Catholic Charities’ Loaves & Fishes fundraising dinner. The varsity football team visits patients at the Veterans Administration Hospital each August, and the cross country team collects shoes for people in developing countries with Soles for Souls.
“Sports in Action is a fairly amazing project that aims to build community while responding to real needs in the community, encouraging our young men and women to be great athletes and leaders on and off the field, court, track or pool…you get the point!” said Julia Rinaldi, campus minister, who noted that the archdiocesan school has daily prayer and Mass on feast days but does not have community service hours. Instead of a formal program, each team is encouraged to find a charitable project each year, Rinaldi said.
At Marin Catholic, President Father Tom Daly celebrates Mass for the varsity basketball team before each game. The coaches and each team pray a Hail Mary before and after each practice, said Athletic Director Winter, stressing that sports are important but always within the context of faith.
“We are a Catholic school,” Winter said. “That is part of the deal.”
By Valerie Schmalz
From March 12, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
