luther athletic staff

Participants:
Dave Mitchell, Paul Hefty, Jeff Olinger, Dan Marlow, Jeff O’Gara, Jeff Wettach, Jane Hildebrand, Jan Koenig, Brian Huinker, Gwen Van Gerpen, Jason Berg, Roger Jaeger, Brian Gillogly, Lance Huber

Topic:  The vocational paths of prominent coaches & roles we play as coaches at Luther in helping our student-athletes realize their vocational calling.

Four books would be read and discussed with coaches & colleagues at Luther.

The books are:

(1) Marx, Jeffrey. 2004. Season of Life. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 192pp. ISBN: 0743269748.

(2) Zavoral, Nolan. 2003.  A Season on the Mat: Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection.  Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 288 pp. ISBN: 0743254228.

(3) Smith, Dean Edward, and Jenkins, Sally, and Kilgo, John. 2002. Coach’s Life: My Forty Years in College Basketball. The Random House Publishing Group, 464pp. ISBN: 0375758801.

(4) Todd, Kim. 2001. Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotics in America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 288 pp. ISBN: 0393323242.

One of the books is autobiographical and includes a chapter on the coaches faith and incorporates faith & ethics in coaching (3), one traces the impact an NFL player who became a minister and also coached high school football and ran a program called Building Men for Others. He was changing lives by teaching boys how to be men of substance and impact by focusing on relationships and a cause beyond themselves (1). One traces the final year of coaching and biography of legendary wrestling coach Dan Gable and addresses how the death of his sister brought him faith and motivation (2), and one is the summer reading suggested by the Paideia I staff (4).

Participants will meet four times during the summer for a BBQ & book discussion. The first three meetings will be dedicated to discussing the first three books listed above and for each book the following 9 questions will be explored.

• What theological influences are evident in their choice of vocation?
• What experiences as a youth influenced their choice of vocation?
• How much change in vocation occurred during their life time?
• What are the prime motivations and rewards associated with their vocation? To what extent are motivations and rewards based upon theological perspectives?
• Did they choose a vocation or did a vocation choose them?
• Are there specific individuals in the life of the person who had a major impact on the person's choice of vocation?
• What role does the individual in the book play in helping his/her student-athletes in theological explorations of vocation?
• Two things that impress me most about this individual that I would like to incorporate into my coaching are:
• What role did recruiting play in their success as a coach? What makes the individual an effective recruiter? Do they see recruiting student-athletes as part of their theological calling?

The final meeting will be dedicated to discussion the Paideia I Summer Reading book, Tinkering with Eden. These four questions will be addressed.

• What type of impact do we have on the choice of vocation of the student athletes we work with at Luther?
• What specific things could/should we do as coaches at Luther to help our student-athletes in theological explorations of vocation?
• To what degree do we/should we address theological exploration of vocation with prospective student-athletes in the recruiting process?
• What specific things can we do to become more effective recruiters and how can we help each other in this regard? Is recruiting student-athletes to Luther part of our theological calling to vocation?

We plan to hold a brown bag seminar to share what we have learned with the Luther Community. There is also interest in formulating a chapel talk from our discoveries and we hope to have 2 or 3 people working together to follow up with this idea. There is also interest on having 1 or more participants helping with the Paideia discussions during freshmen orientation. Thus, we are eager to share our experiences with the greater Luther Community.

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