Coaches encouraged to get players to practice faith

PISCATAWAY — John Glynn, director, diocesan of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, addressed the athletic directors from schools throughout the diocese in advance of the upcoming CYM basketball season at the St. John Neumann Pastoral Center Oct. 1.  
Bob Berger, the CYM sports coordinator, also briefed the attendees. He discussed the new online registration process as well as the role coaches must play in the evangelization of student athletes through participation in sports.
“I used to teach high school math in Houston and I was the head coach for freshman football and baseball,” said Glynn. “I coached under this guy named Danny and I asked him if he had ever been thrown out of a game. He told me that when he was a young hothead, he walked up to the umpire during a game and asked if he could be thrown out for something that he was thinking. The umpire said no. So he said that he thought the umpire was blind. The umpire immediately tossed him out of the game. It was a hilarious story, but looking at it from the point of virtue, it probably was not very virtuous to say that. There is a difference between saying something and thinking something.”
Glynn stressed the need for coaches to act as both teachers and communicators when dealing with their young charges.    
“What happens to a fourth-grade basketball team is not going to make or break someone’s life. We need to teach our youth that success brings with it really cool consequences yet when we lose we can also learn from that. We need for them to know that hard work and dedication equals positive results. The result may just be that we got better. They need to know the why behind the things that we do.”
Glynn is a firm believer that organized sports can be a valuable teaching tool about life and an important exercise in the development of virtue.
“Saint Ignatius of Loyola taught a couple of things that I absolutely love. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, which means for the greater glory of God. In everything we do we try to focus for God’s glory
“The second was something he called spiritual exercises. Our faith life is similar to our athletic careers. This idea that we have to practice in order to get better at it. It is the same thing with our kids and prayer. In their journey towards Christ, they have to practice.  If we can articulate that to our youth, it goes beyond fourth-grade basketball, eighth-grade basketball and beyond college. They say that basketball starts with a prayer and ends with a fight. I believe we should replace that saying with one that says basketball begins with a prayer and ends with a prayer. I think that puts the two bookends in place as far as glorifying the Lord with what we are doing with our bodies.”
Berger addressed many questions that athletic directors had concerning the specific rules that govern participation on school basketball teams. There was concern over the policy of allowing kids from the diocese that do not attend a particular school to play for that team.
“We have to remember that we are ultimately providing the opportunity for evangelization,” said Berger. “These are kids whose only experience with the Church may be through participation on these teams. We also have to realize that in some cases a team may be short by a player or two. Given the choice of having one or two kids from outside the school participating versus having six or seven kids from the school not being able to play because there aren’t enough players to field a team, I think you weigh those considerations.”