FOCUS and its Varsity Catholic ministry for student-athletes are training 500 young people this summer to live and grow the Catholic faith in others
By Jay Sorgi
for the Register
This summer, 500 young people are receiving a month of intensive training at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It’s not sports training, but a time of molding for a life’s calling of both becoming missionary disciples and the process of growing discipleship in Christ within others.
Those 500 young adults who have descended upon Lincoln are missionaries with FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students), including some who are part of their Varsity Catholic mission for college athletes. The training kicks off FOCUS’ 20th year at the University of Nebraska with Varsity Catholic.
These missionaries are sharing their postgraduate lives with college students, helping them develop deeper personal relationships with Christ within the Catholic faith.
“There’s just so many of us (training). Every daily Mass is packed to the brim with people, which is a really cool sight to see,” said Leah Manning, a FOCUS missionary who serves year-round in Lincoln and who gets to play host to colleagues who have traveled from the northern and western regions of America.
FOCUS Senior Director and Varsity Catholic Founder Thomas Wurtz believes that this is nothing unusual for Lincoln and the University of Nebraska’s Newman Center, St. Thomas Aquinas, to be a Holy Spirit-filled hub of evangelization, encouraging the buildup of Catholic missionaries. His organization has been doing it for 19 years already.
“Nebraska is different. For some reason, I don’t know if it’s the feel of the town, the state, the university, the athletic department, but we’ve always had a good chunk of student athletes involved in Bible studies, involved in discipleship, especially when you compare it to comparable Division I schools,” said Wurtz.
He credits the Newman Center and Father Robert Matya, who ran it for more than a quarter of a century and was there when Wurtz came to Lincoln from FOCUS in 2007 to launch its first Varsity Catholic ministry. Father Matya is now pastor at St. Mary Church in Ashland, while Father Ryan Kaup is now pastor of the Newman Center.
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Wurtz also notes how UNL’s size of 24,000 students, and the university’s relative friendliness to religious groups, allows for a large population of students and student-athletes to encounter the faith.
“The university itself understands this is an important part in many students’ journey in college. The athletic department is supportive of groups like Varsity Catholic, like FOCUS, that come in and want to support the student-athletes in their faith journey,” he said.
“God’s grace is there, building these young people, hundreds of students involved in Bible studies. For a student athlete that steps foot into that Newman Center, they’re seeing hundreds of their peers who are just amazing and love the Lord.”
Husker soccer player Kayma Carpenter is one of those peers. A lifelong Lincolnite whose family was part of St. Michael and St. Joseph parishes, some of Carpenter’s teammates invited her to a Bible study.
“I went and didn’t really want to go, but I knew I should go, and it was the best thing ever,” Carpenter said. “I made some of my best friends. I got hooked on the community that was centered in God, and all the great people. It’s just such a good community to connect with other athletes who have the same purpose in their life, which isn’t their sport, but it’s glorifying God through it.”
Manning has received the joyful job of accompanying the lives of students like Carpenter in her role at Varsity Catholic. A former basketball player at Carroll College in Helena, Mont., Manning encountered a FOCUS conference, discovered her mission in ministry, and found a vibrant outlet to live it in Lincoln.
“Coming here, I got to see people our age going to daily Mass. There’s people our age praying (and) no one’s forcing them to go. They don’t have to be there,” Manning said.
“Young adults actually set aside time to pursue their relationship with the Lord and not only set aside time, but put Jesus at the center of their lives and build their lives around that relationship. I was struck by that when I first got here, because that’s just not the norm,” she said.
Wurtz sees relational discipleship like what Manning and her team have built with athletes like Carpenter as continued seed-planting in fertile soil like Lincoln, the kind that turns future coaches into missionaries.
“Young people that are athletes, probably the most influential voice in their life is their coach,” Wurtz said.
“What if that coach knows how to proclaim Christ clearly, lives this Catholic faith, is a witness, which is where we always start? Pope St. Paul VI talked about it. We have to start with our witness, but it doesn’t end there. We need to proclaim the Gospel, and a coach that can do both of those things for decades will reach generations of young people.”
Perhaps that may become Carpenter’s vocation. If so, Lincoln, FOCUS and Varsity Catholic may turn out to be the perfect place for that calling to germinate.
“There’s just a lot of joy in Lincoln,” she said. “That plants a seed for a lot of people to see the joy that just a normal person has who lives their life for Jesus.”
