2020 presented challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was not known until the end of June if it would be possible to do anything with the refuge children we normally serve. Because of Corona, all activities with the refugee children had to shut down. This camp would be our first interaction with them since April of 2020. Alongside of our local network, we were able to structure a small camp for a handful of children for one week. The city applied rules to us only allowing 20 people inside a sport hall. With this restriction, we had 5 leaders and opened 15 places for children. The time together was a multi-sport camp introducing a different sport each day including fun games in between.
Each day also included a teaching time with values introduced at the beginning of each day and focused on throughout all drills and games of the day. The value lessons are intertwined with biblical foundations along with personal examples of how we interact with the children and each other. On the last day, an all-around fun day of activities to finish out the camp was enjoyed.
This year Corona could not stop what was to be an amazing work God is doing through the sport of baseball in the region of Zadar, Croatia. The Zadar region of Croatia is a beautiful region surrounded by mountains and bordered by the Adriatic Sea. It is a region that was once thriving but was hurt economically after the war. Many people and businesses left the region. There remain small pockets of villages trying to survive. Spiritually it is challenging as there are not any evangelical churches from Zagreb to Zadar.
This year SRS International came alongside HisPrint ministries to put on a baseball camp. We were also joined by a Croatian church in Zagreb who is trying to plant a church in this region. They served with a local team of Croatians to teach the sport of baseball and bring encouragement to the village of Gracac. The camp was a children and youth camp which averaged 25-30 young people each day. With baseball, we were able to maintain our spacing and limit our contact. It worked out perfectly!! We are thankful to HisPrint ministries for the invite and opportunity to serve alongside them. We will continue to pray for the region and for the relationships being built.
Over the summer, one of our teams served alongside a local school with various activities. The students learned and experienced all kinds of sports. Each day a story time was held to share different values and encourage the young people to apply them to their lives. This was just one of the stations in the “Complete Athlete Hour” where students experienced a complete workout as well.
Todd Pruitt sat down with Sarah Parsons, pro Volleyball player to discuss life and faith as an elite athlete.
In the fall of 2018, SRS-International was contacted by a partnering organization about the arrival of a young Christian female volleyball player and her husband to Stuttgart. One of the greater privileges SRS-International has is to come alongside high-level athletes to offer support during their season of competition. This support can come in many forms from navigating culture, prayer, connecting to local churches, to inviting them into our homes to spend time and encouraging them. It is our desire for their light to shine bright in the locker room. Under these pretenses we got to meet Sarah Parsons and her husband, Jameson.
Sarah grew up in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. This is just outside the big city of Minneapolis. Around the age of 10, Sarah discovered her passion for volleyball and she began playing. Sarah’s family encouraged her as her Dad and her sister practiced alongside her. By working hard Sarah received a scholarship to study and play volleyball at the University of Minnesota. Her time at the University would become a huge turning point for her in her faith.
During Sarah’s third year of college, she faced challenges as she became discouraged with injuries and the stress or pressure, she had placed on herself. In her words, “It’s theplatform of collegiate sports. Overwhelming.” She had come to a point in her athletic career where she was considering what her future in the sport would look like, but her love for the sport remained and her team encouraged her to continue. Sarah knew she wanted to continue her time in college. While Sarah had grown up in a Christian home, she realized she had placed much of her identity in sport. This year would become a “breakthrough” year in her personal faith. It happened during her journey participating with the Athletes In Action Ultimate Training Camp. As Sarah searched, she began to find answers. When Sarah was younger, she trusted her life to Christ, but now she was coming to a fuller understanding of who she belonged to. She began to grasp she was rooted in something much greater than sport, to understand that Christ love for her is greater then anything sport could do for her, and her identity was in Him and not the sport. Finding peace and her identity in Christ Sarah began to release the pressure of being an athlete and she began to make peace with her sport no matter what the future may hold. In her words “Ilearned more about the freedom I can experience in my sport through Faith.” Her biggest decisions and challenges were yet to come.
Her final year of university came with additional challenges. Sarah stated, “as moststudents are coasting their senior year, for me it was an absolute crazy time.” This year camewith the greatest challenge of all…whether to stay in the game or to be done. Her coach wasinstrumental in encouraging her to stay in the sport and helping to open doors for her in play after college. “He always believed in me and saw my potential,” Sarah shared. The opportunities came. At the same time these things were happening she became engaged to her now husband Jameson.
When asked about her faith in sport she responded, “At University I cared a great deal about what others said about me, my family, my coach or my team. Fans, news, social media were causing me great stress. My faith is what helped me to focus on knowing I am a child of God. It brings a sense of freedom. It then helped me to take all the issues and circumstances around sport and see them as not so overwhelming or stressful asI began to better understand my identity is in Christ not sport.”
Sarah’s passion and love for volleyball continued after university. Her coach was a key factor in encouraging her to stick with the sport and seek opportunities which he helped her find. This same year she received an invitation to play with the U.S. National Team. She would accept. After playing a season with them, Sarah, launched her overseas career to Italy. She would then return the next year to the U.S. National team.
She talked briefly about her faith at her first overseas team in Italy. “Italy waschallenging. I was alone. I was engaged to Jameson but he was stateside. There were no Christians on the team to connect with. Connecting with a church or small group was challenging because of our schedule and the lack of churches. It was hard but I focused on Christ and not on my circumstances. I spent more time just focusing on strengthening my faith. It was definitely a time of personal growth.”
In 2019 Sarah went to play in Stuttgart, Germany where SRS-International met her andJameson. MTV Stuttgart had put together a “Dream Team” of gifted volleyball athletes for the2019 season. After a long a grueling season it was no surprise that this team came out as National Volleyball champions in Germany. With Jameson by her side, they were able to connect with a local church and small group. Her husband (who played collegiate American football) was able to connect and coach with a local American football club. Sarah had a great support team and a blessed season. She explained how the different cultures from Italy to Germany have been challenging.
Some of Sarah’s most notable accomplishments during her university years include: 2016 AVCA Division I National Player of the Year and ESPNW National Player of the Year as a senior at University of Minnesota; NCAA All-Tournament Team in both 2015 and 2016 as the Gophers reached the semifinals two years in a row.
On the international side, she has played: 2018 FIVB Volleyball Nations League Prelim Weeks 2-5; 2018 Pan American Cup (Gold), 2018 FIVB World Championship (5th Place), 2017 Pan American Cup (Gold), 2017 FIVB World Grand Prix.
Sarah’s faith and trust in Christ over the last several years has helped keep her at peace with decisions she has had to make, and the path God has laid out before her. She continues to struggle now even more so with the identity issue as sport has now become her profession and not just a hobby. Again, she leans on the freedom and peace that Christ brings to help get her through.
Where is the future taking Sarah and her husband? They are back in the U.S.A. Sarah is in season playing with the U.S. National Team. Losing no time, Sarah has gotten into her groove becoming the leading scorer for the U.S. Women’s National team scoring 16 points in a win over
Bulgaria in May. Her hopes and dreams would be to qualify to play in the 2020 Olympics next year. Although the opportunity is super narrow, she is a great chance of accomplishing her dream.
SRS-International will be praying for the Parsons family, and we too are excited to see what may come of the 2020 US Olympic Women’s Volleyball team. Sarah made the team last spring but with the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Games she will once again have to tryout for the USA team. We wish her and her husband all the best for the upcoming season.
An American Football coaches tour travelled from the states to Germany to serve as part of our development project within the GFL. These coaches were top level coaches in collegiate American football, and they came from several universities across the US. The trip focused on GFL teams and youth teams and took place across southern Germany. It included both clinics and on the field training. This tour engaged over 200 athletes and nearly 100 coaches training them both in level of play and transformational coaching for both on and off the field.
All kinds of freestylers and believers meet once a year at the “freakstock festival” in Germany. Beside concerts, worship and meetings, it’s common to visit a workshop. The Actionsport Team of SRS offered a “Ready- Set- Go Training” about how to start an action sports ministry. The team’s goal was to equip and empower Christians within their sport network to live God’s purpose in action sport . 20 people from various backgrounds showed up including a paraglider pilot from Switzerland, a climber from Frankfurt and snowboarders who are living in a ski resort. There were also a group of local skaters who run a skate park as a chapter of “Jesus Freaks”. All of them are looking to start or improve their ministry. The training highlighted the potential of action sports, how to reach this culture and gave some practical advice collected from the world’s most established ministries. The session was filled with prayer and personal questions. After 1.5hrs, the participants left with a storybook of running local ministries in Germany to encourage them on their way.
Coaching Development within the German Football League
In March of 2019 SRS-International teamed up with the University of Alabama. A small group of American football athletes from the university came and spent a week touring Germany and the serving the GFL. For the athletes of the University of Alabama, this was a first trip to Germany and for some their first trip overseas. It was a great time to take in the German culture, food, sights and sounds. The trip provided an opportunity for them to come alongside clubs in the development of their coaching staff through actual on-the-field training. It was also a time for the student-athletes to make discoveries for themselves about Germany. They saw a Bundesliga football/soccer game, toured a Bundesliga soccer club, saw the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart, and toured a concentration camp. They were thankful and humbled by the generosity shown to them by Germany.
They also had the chance to come alongside American Football coaches and athletes, and it gave them a small glimpse of what NCAA D1 American football is like. They visited 3 cities and multiple American football clubs across Germany. They brought their strength, knowledge, and sheer passion for the game onto the fields. With this came an excitement that can only be described by German coaches as what they miss or lack on the field. The American football coaches and athletes had the opportunity to spend some quality time after practices with German coaches to gain better perspective on the coaching culture within American football in Germany. The idea was for the players to share from their perspective what coaching the whole athlete is like and to help empower the coaches’ focus on not just the player as an athlete but to a player as a whole person. We are praying for our partnership with the University of Alabama and what might happen in the future.
For the fourth summer in a row an SRS team went to Curtici, Romania as they continued to come alongside a local church and help provide two sports camps. One took place in the morning for children between six and eleven and the other one for teenagers between 12 and 18 in the evening. A total of 50 to 60 children learned soccer, basketball, rugby, athletics, floor-ball and American football. Along with sport, they participated in lessons on values and life skills.
The SRS team along with an active female softball player and coach from the US, had the opportunity to come alongside the Erd Wildcats softball team to run a camp. We went there to serve God and the girls in any capacity we could. While there. the team was able to cut the grass on and off the field, coach the athletes in softball, and basically equip and empower them to continue in their softball journey. For five hours each day, a group of five to seven girls aged 14 to 22 showed up to learn and play about softball. All of them were hungry to learn and were really coachable because they had not had a regular coach for their season and they really love this sport. On the first day of camp the focus was on defense, and on the second day the focus was on batting and running the bases. Besides softball, they shared about what makes them lose their focus during a game and how to regain it.It was a blessing to walk beside these female athletes for a short time.
SRS-In Sport News 