Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 4

 For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople. https://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training

Embrace their sport’s culture.

Too often, we in the Church tolerate sport culture and try to relate to elite, professional, and high-profile sportspeople while firmly entrenched in church culture. Sportspeople are not against church culture; they just don’t understand it. They have lived in and are deeply immersed in their unique sport’s culture. Too many of my sport chaplain and character coach colleagues endure the culture of sport while anxious to get to their opportunity to speak. Competitors and coaches feel the distance and are hesitant to respond to those of such an attitude.

The way to break through this issue is to heartily embrace the sport culture, warts and all, and thereby communicate unconditional acceptance to those who live therein. Beware the temptation to simply add sports clichés to your vocabulary. Poorly applied sports language raises the red flags of “phony,” “poser,” and “wannabe.” As we learn to speak their language, to fit into their schedules, and to understand their values, we are more able to serve and to speak effectively.

How comfortably do you live in the culture of your sport? Does it fit like a well-worn batting glove or more like a size eight shoe on your size twelve foot? Do you find it relaxing or stressful? Do you speak its language and enjoy its nuances of gesture and posture or do you seem like an outsider? As you serve Christ in the world of sport, do you live in its culture and work to transform it or simply import Church culture into sport?

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 3

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople. https://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training

Respect their time constraints.

Wendy (Goodman) Bauersachs is my friend. She is 6’-2” (1.88 meters) of beautiful young lady, daughter, sister, friend, and teammate. She is now a wife, the mother of three, teaches second grade, and coaches junior high basketball. She was also #44 for Saluki Women’s Basketball (Southern Illinois University – USA). 

A few weeks after the end of her playing career, she called me asking, “Rog, what do normal people do with all this time?” She had encountered the sense of lost identity that most sportspeople experience at the end of their sporting careers. After going to the gym for practice most every day since she was twelve-years-of-age, suddenly she had no more practice, no more games, no more team, or teammates, or coaches. She suddenly used to be a basketball player. 

Every competitor, regardless of talent, level of competition, length of professional contract, or wealth accumulated, at some point experiences the end of their career and deals with the change in lifestyle including the unexpected abundance of time on their hands. Just like Wendy. 

Being a collegiate athlete is like going to school full-time and working a full-time job, at the same time. They have practice six days a week, they often spend extra hours in voluntary work on the mental part of the game, they must study just like any student, and they want to have a social life like any other student. Add on in-season travel, injury rehabilitation, off-season workouts, and mandatory community service projects and their lives are crowded and complex. 

The lifestyle of collegiate coaches is even more consuming as they have each logged hours of watching game video, building game plans, staff meetings, position meetings, personal video review with players, and more before they ever get to practice with their players. All that is in addition to the hours of video review, travel, visits with, and evaluation of recruits for their next class of players. For the coaches and competitors in professional sport, it is much the same. They just don’t have to go to class. 

Now their lives in sport are even more consuming with countless hours of time in the office, at training, and in practice. Sadly, many of these coaches spend the night sleeping in their offices rather than going home. 

The ministry point here is to respect the value of their free time. When we do events, I limit them to one hour. If they want to hang around longer, good, but if they need to get in and out, they are free. Be sure to ask lots of questions about their schedules and design your activities for them to fit their best days and hours.

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 2

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople. https://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training

​

Sports ministry leaders are often a little puzzled as they encounter elite and professional sportspeople. They expect them to be just like other people, but their lives in sport often present obstacles to their involvement in church services and ministry events that are a great fit for the general population.

I have been serving coaches and student-athletes at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, for nearly thirty years, as well as eight years with a professional baseball club, and in that time I have learned several factors that are key to effectively engaging, serving, building relationships with, and making disciples among the coaches and players in our community. I hope these simple thoughts serve you and your ministry well.

The following is a quick overview of those factors:

• Respect their time constraints.

• Embrace their sport’s culture.

• Communicate directly.

• Demonstrate genuine interest in them.

• Invite them into your home.

• Love extravagantly.

• Serve selflessly.

In addition to the expansion of each of these factors will be illustrative narratives for each, a final section with faith development exercises that have proven effective across many decades, as well as occasional notes of emphasis for service in professional sport from a forerunner for many of us, the late Walt Enoch of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in St. Louis, Missouri.

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 1

 After a lengthy hiatus from this post, I will begin again to write with greater regularity. Just over 2 1/2 years into my service with Nations of Coaches as Character Coach Director, I am finding a sustainable rhythm to my work. 

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople. https://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training

This project is directed toward the Christian faith development of elite level competitors, their coaches, sports professionals, and high-profile people of sport. It is designed to be used by those coaches and competitors themselves, or by the leaders of

sports ministries and local churches who serve them.

There are scores if not hundreds of books, discipleship guides, websites, and phone apps designed for the general public, but the people of sport we greatly respect and strongly love, are not like normal people.

Elite level sportspeople, their coaches, professional, and high-profile sportspeople are a miniscule fraction of the much larger set of millions of people who participate in sport for recreation, exercise, health benefits or social reasons. An exponentially greater number of people are those who consume sport as spectators. 

These elite sportspeople, in the USA mostly competing in collegiate sport, are fewer than four percent of those who

compete in high school sports. Professional sportspeople are an even smaller percentage of those collegiate competitors, fewer than two percent of the elite men and women of sport. Similar ratios between sports fans (greatest numbers), recreational sportspeople (fewer people), and elite sports people (very few people) are no doubt apparent in every nation of the world.

To be clear, anyone competing in college sport at any level in the USA is an elite level competitor. Anyone drawing a paycheck, of any size, for playing sport is a professional sportsperson. Anyone who coaches people at the elite or professional level is a sports professional. Any person of sport, regardless of age, who is widely recognizable beyond his family, teammates, and daily acquaintances, by a photo or one name only, is a high-profile sportsperson.

5 Mental Health Mountains

 Our friends and colleagues of Sports Chaplaincy UK (https://sportschaplaincy.org.uk/) have recently released a set of five videos addressing the 5 Mental Health Mountains many in sport face.

This is a tremendous service to the sporting community in the UK and around the world. You can access the videos at - https://sportschaplaincy.org.uk/podcast/

Please watch and share them with your friends and colleagues in sport. 

2022-2023 Herman Robinson Character Coach Award

 The 2022-2023 Herman Robinson Character Coach Award was presented by Nations of Coaches Character Coach Director, Roger Lipe, to Dr. Valerie Burrell, Character Coach for Bluefield University Men's Basketball.

This award is presented annually to one Nations of Coaches Character Coach who has demonstrated at least five years of faithful and excellent service to a college basketball program. Valerie was selected from among her over one hundred fifty colleagues across the United States.

Valerie received the award during the Bluefield College Athletics awards event, The Rammies, on campus Monday evening. Earlier in the evening Nations of Coaches hosted a team dinner for Bluefield University Basketball coaches, players, administrators, and the university president. The informal dinner was followed by inspirational and heartfelt expressions of thanks for Dr. Burrell's service.

This award was first given to (posthumously) and named after Herman Robinson in 2019 for his faithful service to the College of Charleston Men's Basketball program.

Report from the WBCA Convention

 

Report from the WBCA Convention at the

NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four in Dallas, Texas.

30 March through 2 April, 2023

The Nations of Coaches (NOC) ministry at the WBCA Convention began by setting up the NOC booth in the exhibition area. Coach Kelly Kennedy and her daughters set up the entire booth as Roger Lipe’s flight from St. Louis, MO was delayed by nine hours. He finally arrived at the convention hotel at 11:30 pm.

From 9:00 to 3:00 on Friday, Kelly and Roger were at the booth meeting with hundreds of coaches from across the nation. The coaches loved our gifts of Fox 40 whistles, pens, note pads, and whiteboard markers, each bearing the NOC logo. They were intrigued by our cards with information on the Coaches Edge, set for Saturday morning, as well as the FCA worship service and Kay Yow Breakfast set for Sunday.

We enjoyed strong partnership with our ministry teammates from Athletes in Action and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

On the edges of our formal service at the booth and in meetings, we connected with many coaches over coffee, breakfast, and dinner.

On Saturday from 10:30 to noon, Nations of Coaches hosted sixty-five coaches for the Coaches Edge. It was an enlightening discussion titled, “A Healthy Approach to the Transfer Portal and Name Image and Likeness.” Kelly gathered a panel comprised of head coaches from various levels of Women’s College Basketball – one Division I (Power 5), one Division I (low mid-major), one NAIA, and one Division II. Their insights and commentary were very valuable. In addition to their sharing, we had coaches scattered around the room with discussion questions in hand to facilitate discussion among all participants. The discussion was lively and insightful. Ninety minutes flew by, and several coaches stayed in the room for further interaction after the meeting was dismissed.

At 7:00 am Sunday, FCA hosted a worship service featuring Charlotte Smith, Head Coach at Elon College, with more than 150 people in attendance. It was followed by the Kay Yow Breakfast, both in the conference center at the Sheraton Hotel Dallas.

Coach Kirsten Moore of Westmont College in California was awarded as the Kay Yow Coach of the Year. Coach Moore was coached by Coach Kelly Kennedy as a graduate Assistant at the University of Oregon. Coach Moore said, “I’m in coaching to touch the heart more so than the ball.”

In summary of the convention, Coach Kennedy said, “It has been an incredible weekend connecting with coaches and sharing Nations of Coaches. The booth was great, but the Coaches Edge discussion about the Transfer Portal NIL was outstanding. It was a tremendous way to Equip coaches in their professional needs. The connections and awareness NOC made this weekend have been excellent. Only God can make the connections that have been and are being made.”