Spirituality in sports

Four top women athletes profiled

Interest in sports circles the globe. Go to the AltaVista search engine on the World Wide Web, type in sports, and you'll get more than forty-five million listings to investigate. Such avid interest isn't new. In the Bible, St. Paul used athletic imagery in his letters. And preachers over the years—Eric Liddell of Olympic fame, for example—have shown by their example that sports can be a great proving ground for spirituality. To gain some fresh insights into the subject, the Sentinel spoke with four women athletes who are also solid spiritual thinkers.

Shannon Miller won two gold medals in gymnastics at the Atlanta Olympics. Holly Gutelius played on the nationally ranked women's lacrosse team at Princeton University. [Name removed by request] is a cross-country skier, racing distances of five to thirty kilometers. She ranks eighth among women competitors in the United States. Holly Huff is on the NCAA Division I National Championship field hockey team at the University of North Carolina.

Says Holly Huff: "For me, spirituality is what makes athletic endeavor fulfilling. The external rewards—medals, trophies, newspaper headlines—are exciting for a few days, but their thrill quickly wears off. You wake up the morning after a big win and realize that you're still the same person. For me, true satisfaction comes from the spiritual growth I've experienced in training and competition."

[Name removed by request] echoes this. "My training and racing are a direct reflection of my thought," she explains. "The more spiritually uplifted I feel—the more I am aware of my true nature as God's child—the better my racing goes. When I am living in accord with divine Principle, God, all aspects of my life manifest that."

"Whether you are exercising or competing," adds Shannon Miller, "sports can bring a sense of accomplishment, excitement, and even peace. Spirituality gives you these same feelings, and when you blend the two, you can come away with a feeling that there are no limitations to what you can achieve—not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well."

Dealing with the body is a big part of sports. "Just because you have a big competition on a given day doesn't mean you are automatically up for it," says Shannon Miller. "Your body may be aching from hours of training, or you may be fearful, sluggish, or hyper. You may not feel fully prepared for an event or even a particular workout. Yet when you turn to God as the source of your inspiration and energy, you realize that you really are always ready. I never prayed to win a meet, but I did always pray to know that I could do whatever I needed to do without harm to myself, that God was guiding my every step. I also concentrated on being grateful for the opportunities I had and for the ability to participate in gymnastics.

"If I fell in warm-ups, I did not let that incident determine my performance during the competition. In some pretty big meets, such as the Pan-American Games and the 1996 National Championships, I fell on my first event, but I had long ago learned that God is always with me. And in these and other situations, I went on to perform well and even to win."

[Name removed by request] also finds that spirituality enhances performance. "I went over to my coach's house one evening to review video footage of a race. His wife is also a coach, although not mine, and she started making a lot of recommendations about my technique. It was kind of overwhelming, and I was wondering, 'How am I ever going to learn to do all this new stuff?'

"But then I got to thinking about how divine Mind is really the source of all movement, as Mrs. Eddy says (see Science and Health, p. 283). The true action I was shooting for includes freedom, joy, grace, balance, and strength, and all these qualities originate and have their expression in Mind, not matter. The next day I had another race, and I went out full of these ideas. I had raced on the same course two weeks earlier in similar snow conditions, and I'd had a good race, but this time I was twenty-four seconds faster. In a thirteen-minute race, that's a pretty big margin."

Spirituality also helps athletes overcome times when their performance isn't as good as they would like. Holly Huff spoke of a time when she seemed unable to hit three-point shots for her basketball team. She says the same idea from Science and Health that [Name removed by request] referred to really helped her also: "Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action" (p. 283 ). "I asked myself," Holly explains, 'What qualities does it take to hit a three-point shot?' Accuracy and control were at the top of my list. I reasoned that these qualities were actually spiritual and had their source in God. Because of this, I could never be deprived of them.

"I also reasoned that control and accuracy could not be compartmentalized. Since I took the same 'Holly' onto the basketball court that I took to the classroom and into social settings, it followed logically that I must express control and accuracy in all of these arenas. So I worked at that. When doing schoolwork, I paid more attention to detail. In daily conversation, I made a great effort to abstain from complaint and gossip, because I saw that these were not an accurate expression of my highest selfhood.

"I also decided to be grateful for every expression of control and accuracy I saw. For example, when a teammate or an opponent hit a great shot, I declared mentally, 'Thank you, God, for her example of accuracy. Because its source is in You, I can express it freely, too!'

"I've never shot better than I did in that district tournament. In fact, I hit a three-point shot at the buzzer to advance our team to the finals for the first time in our school's history."

All of the athletes spoke about how reliance on God has helped them deal with the physical aspects of training and competition. Shannon Miller described an event in 1996: "I had a very embarrassing fall in vault finals. This happened in front of millions of people, some in the stands and others watching television. I was in tears and feeling pretty sorry for myself until my mom urged me to be grateful for such a wonderful opportunity to compete in another event at the Olympics.

"That woke me up a little, but I still had a good dose of fear. Then something my mom said reminded me that God carries us through difficult times. It was as though a huge cloud suddenly lifted. God could never feel pressure, so how could I? I could be happy for the opportunity to express so many of God's qualities—energy, precision, balance, and joy. I was more relaxed during the beam finals than I think I have ever been in competition."

Practicing certain techniques can demand spiritual alertness. Holly Gutelius explains: "I felt uncomfortable my freshman year when we'd have to go to the weight room. I knew that my strength could never be limited or increased by lifting a heavy block of iron. Rather, it's seeing that strength is a spiritual quality, which comes from God, that gives me endless strength."

Physical healing also occurs. Holly Huff reports a time when she was ill and in pain just before a state track meet. "I felt strongly that it was right for me to use the speed and endurance that God had given me and that I had worked all season to improve," she says. "I called a Christian Science practitioner for treatment through prayer and was confident that healing would result.

"Although I still wasn't feeling 100 percent, I decided to run my first race, which was a team relay. Before the race, our team huddled to pray. We said this adaptation of the last line of the Lord's Prayer: 'For Thine is the kingdom in which we run, Thine is the power with which we run, and Thine is the glory for which we run, forever. Amen.'

"I remember feeling the power of this prayer and completely forgetting that I hadn't been feeling well. We won the event. After the race, however, I felt worse than before. I continued to pray, and stayed in close contact with the practitioner. The second race was an individual event, an eight-hundred-meter run. I decided to warm up for the race regardless of the fact that I still wasn't feeling up to par.

"During my warm-up, I prayed hard. One of the Biblical ideas that came to thought was, 'If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land' (Isa. 1:19). I realized that I hadn't been approaching the race with much joy or confidence, which are both signs of an inner willingness. My mental disposition immediately changed, and I started looking forward to the competition.

"I prayed to have the same trust in God's protection and provision as Moses and the children of Israel had when they stepped into the Red Sea (see Ex. 14: 21, 22). I stepped up to the starting line, still in pain, but confident that God was with me. When the starting gun went off, the pain disappeared, and I ran with complete freedom. By the end of the first lap, I had taken the lead, and from then on the gap just widened. As I crossed the finish line, all I could think of was, 'Thank you, God!' I was completely healed."

Holly points out that this kind of healing isn't the result of sporadic devotion. She says, "I pray every day. I was confident in relying on prayer in this instance because I had already disciplined my thought by relying on it in the smaller details of my life."

All the athletes mentioned a growing trust in God. Shannon Miller explains: "Fear is an emotion that almost every athlete encounters, whether it is fear of being injured or of letting people down. A verse that I find helpful is, 'Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness' (Isa. 41:10).

"When it became clear to me that I had a realistic chance to make the 1996 Olympic team, I had to remember, 'Thy will be done.' Maybe the plan was for me to be on the Olympic team and maybe it wasn't. But if it wasn't, then God had something equally wonderful in store for me. I might not be able to imagine what it was at the time, but I had to trust God's judgment."

Trusting God's judgment. Sounds like something anyone can do, whether he or she is waiting to get a "10" from the Olympic judges or hoping for a passing grade on a math paper. It's not a bad thing for those of us in the working world to dwell on either, particularly when a recognition of one's worth can at times seem uncertain. Trusting that God has something wonderful in store for everyone—that's a powerful thought.