Mennonite Weekly Review

NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — Back in February, Bethel College campus pastor Dale Schrag encouraged students to participate in a meal-packaging event for earthquake-ravaged Haiti by invoking his late father.

Clockwise from lower left, North Newton community member Wade Brubacher and Bethel students Ziyad Laymoun (soccer), Ri’Tea Acosta (basketball), Austin Smith (football) and Jean-Yves Komayombi (soccer) package meals to be sent to Haiti. — Photo by Melanie Zuercher

“My dad used to say: ‘Meaningful work, done in community, is the purest and most delightful form of play,’ ” Schrag told a convocation audience.

Bethel student-athletes were already well aware of the truth of those words from Richard Schrag.

For the past decade, Bethel’s athletic department, under the direction of Diane Flickner, has been part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Champions of Character initiative. As part of that, each team commits to doing service.

In addition, each of Bethel’s 12 intercollegiate sports is represented on a Champions of Character Leadership team, responsible for promoting Champions of Character goals to their teammates and the wider campus.

Every year near the start of the season, Mark Fox, women’s basketball coach, takes his team to Memorial Home, a retirement community in Moundridge, to help out with the annual fundraising dinner and auction. It’s a chance for the players to meet and mingle with some of the folks who come faithfully to their games — and to give back.

Fox likes to use a phrase he heard from a coach he worked with at Newton High School: “Too many people have their hand out to ask for something — we want to have our hand out to give back.”

Krishna Phifer, junior basketball player from Humble, Texas, and a member of the Champions of Character Leadership team, said, “We’re setting an example for younger players, and for all other students. Our AOK Wednesdays, Acts of Kindness Wednesdays, help create a routine — if you can do this on Wednesdays, why not every day?”

This year’s Champions of Character Leadership team set goals of promoting Thresher pride and community-building. Two of the four ways they planned to do this involved service.

One was the T-Zone T-shirt Trade-In, where students, faculty and staff brought a shirt to give to the Harvey County Homeless Shelter and received a T-Zone T-shirt in return. Another was AOK Wednesdays.