AU Wackerlin Center for Faith and Action

Soccer, students and studying

My daughter Naomi and I have started supporting the men’s soccer team. When she (aged 15) talked about this with her friends at Rosary High School, they all had a laugh and one commented that the notion of a smart jock is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. In fact, turning out to watch their matches has been an eye-opener to me. The AU soccer team is really good; at this moment of writing, their present tally of ten wins and only two losses testifies to this fact. It’s possible to give some reasons why they’re so successful. Unlike the England national team (alas!), they keep their cool under pressure. A number of players combine athletic speed and precision, and sometimes even grace, with an ability to read a situation intelligently and quickly and so turn a game to the team’s advantage. Evidently they all think the world of Coach Watkins and are right to do so: it’s instructive, amusing and pleasing to hear his comments to the team during the matches; and also his suggestions to the referees and the linesmen, some of whom have a very creative attitude towards the rules of the game. Just before his death, Bill Shankly, once manager of Liverpool F.C, told a TV interviewer: “Someone said [to me] ‘Soccer is more important than life and death to you’, and I said ‘Listen, it’s more important than that’”. Some of the soccer guys seem to me to echo that spirit. At any rate, they hate to lose and they’re angry with themselves when they play badly. I used to work with a colleague whose motto was ‘If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly’. Nonsense! Real commitment to something should make us want to do it as well as possible even if, as I’ll shortly suggest, our busy lives mean that we can’t always attain that goal.

I’m now more aware than I was about the choices that our student-athletes make, and their consequences. I have three of the soccer team in one of my courses, and I chose to give the class a quiz in the middle of a time-period when they had three games in swift succession. These three students, at least, are smart jocks, for they all did very well indeed. Thus far, they’ve brought to the classroom the same qualities of determination, grit, flair and a desire to do well that they show on the soccer field. No doubt there are some student-athletes who fulfill only as many of the university’s academic requirements as will muddle them through a degree. It’s easy to give examples of the laziness and infantile behavior of some of our students, whether athletes or not. Others, however, organize their time well to fit everything in and do it very successfully. I find it heartening that they are so mature about time-management, and commitment to those things (including their academic work) which they’ve chosen to do. Some also realize that there may be trade-offs to make. When people’s lives are busy and complicated, they won’t always do as well at everything as they would if they were single-minded about one particular thing, however hard they try. Some of our athletes, and even some of my other colleagues (and, from time to time, I) have learned to accept this truth without whining, which I take to be a sign of true growth and maturity.

I started attending the games to support those members of the Values Council who play soccer. The Council is a group of students who meet on a regular basis, once a week or every two weeks, to talk about issues of ultimate value, over pizza (or cookies) and soda. It’s part of AU’s Center for Faith and Action, of which I’m Executive Director, and we talk about all sorts of issues. We’ve considered, for example: the relationship between science and religion; whether sexual intimacy is just a transactional thing or could be said to have something like a sacramental quality; the role of religion in public life; when and how meaningful human life can be claimed to be extinct; and the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Occasionally, we’ve taken the time to wonder whether a particular member of the university is human or actually an alien-life form, and have discussed the opportunities and difficulties of belonging to this particular institution of higher education.

Members of the Values Council enjoy reflecting, at a highly competent level of understanding, about issues of the human spirit. There’s no formal religious requirement. Rather, participants are open to wonder, mystery, quirkiness, and humor as part of the human experience. A British sociologist who had problems with some of the foolish and trivial ‘certainties’ of religious people nevertheless once wrote about every human being’s capacity to hear a ‘rumor of angels’. He meant that people can be open to mystery and wonder, and can tap into forms of intuitive knowledge that are not irrational but which co-exist with rational deductions. He was also aware of the sterile rationalism of some people that turns the poetry of life into prose, and thereby misses out something essential about being human. These are the sort of people who explain a quality like love in terms of genes and environment, and think that they’ve said it all. When in fact, all they’ve done is to describe the contexts and circumstances within which everything of real importance happens.

Members of the Values Council argue well. When someone makes a false argument, others are quick to point it out. But they’re willing to recognize that there’s more to life than meets the eye, and eager to talk about it. I’m not surprised that a number of them are athletes, for some of the best players I’ve seen on our soccer field demonstrate an even greater gift than the ability to read what’s happening in a game and respond to it in the way they play. They also have an uncanny ability to anticipate what might be going to happen, and to respond to that. That mysterious, intuitive flair is what I covet for my students, and it makes me proud and happy to see it demonstrated in some of our discussions, and thrilled to see it on the soccer field.

Martin Forward