As a professional athletic trainer, I have worked with Olympic-caliber athletes and coaches all the way down to adolescents and kids. In my work, I have noticed one thing that consistently sets apart the best athletes and coaches from all the rest: discipline in preparation. Preparation is far and away the defining factor between a championship team and a team that “just didn’t have it.” Of all the different aspects of sports, preparation is the one that fascinates me the most. It’s also the one that has had the greatest impact on my own life - both spiritually and otherwise.
For the past seven years, I have participated in an organization called Biking for Babies. This pro-life organization develops young adult leaders in the pro-life movement through a 6-day, 600-mile national bike pilgrimage—all the while raising money for pregnancy resource centers around the country. The pilgrimage is grueling; it tests your physical, mental and (yes) spiritual strength. There is only one way to complete a 6-day trip averaging over 100 miles a day. You guessed it: disciplined preparation. There is not a day that goes by in the months leading up to the pilgrimage that our cyclists are not exercising, eating well, sleeping or quieting themselves in prayer. Our preparation directly correlates to the success of the ride and the people we get to serve through our efforts.
Organizations like Biking for Babies are proof that athletics can serve altruistic ends. In fact, most 5k races do just that. But focusing on fundraising or external ends misses the more intrinsic value of athletics. What do we say when our children ask to tryout for the school soccer team? How can this athletic endeavor bring him or her closer to Christ?
At the start of Mark’s Gospel, John the Baptist is “the voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’” He is not just a messenger, a reed shaken by the wind; he is a preparer, both in word and in action. He prepares himself by a life of asceticism in the desert. He prepares God’s people by a watery baptism of repentance. If John the Baptist had to prepare himself and his neighbors for the coming of Christ, then I absolutely know I need to prepare my heart continually for when I meet Christ. My question then for athletics is, “How can sports help me prepare for life in Christ?”
You are true athletes when you prepare yourselves not only by training your bodies but also by constantly engaging the spiritual dimensions of your person for a harmonious development of all your talents. - St. Pope John Paul II
As Catholics, we are not strangers to the idea that the actions of our body can help train the soul. We fast. We kneel. We mark our bodies with the sign of the cross. All of this to prepare a way for the Lord in our own hearts, minds, bodies, lives and in our very selves. But this spiritual preparation somehow always seems so much less obvious than in sports. When an athlete commits themselves to winning, they do obvious things like: hire a coach, refine their diet, practice daily, train with peers.
If those things work for sports, then they can work for the spiritual life too. Plus, the more experience we have with these forms of growth through sports, the better we will be at applying them to the spiritual life.