BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Take the Bo Jackson Center on the Nike campus, add the student body from Portland's De La Salle North Catholic High School, sprinkle in NAIA cross country student-athletes from around the U.S., and what do you get?
Easy. After a three-hour interactive clinic on the five core values of the NAIA, you end up with more than 300 Champions of Character under the same roof.
The nearly 200 De La Salle students made a field trip to the Nike World Headquarters on Thursday, Nov. 19, where they were involved in activities and messages led by visiting NAIA student-athletes centered on the five core values of Champions of Character.
Student-athletes from Concordia (Ore.) lead a Champions of Character session prior to the NAIA Cross Country National Championships.
The event, which took place inside the Bo Jackson Center, was followed by a Nike-sponsored lunch for the participants.
“We felt it was important to give something back to the community here in Northeast Portland as part of the cross country national championships,” said Matt English, Director of Athletics at Concordia. “We are excited that the student-athletes had an opportunity to teach the core values of the Champions of Character program to young people in an area of Portland where many youth are underserved. We were proud to partner with De La Salle, an inner-city school that shares our mission to develop tomorrow’s community leaders, and we are very thankful to Nike for helping provide an extraordinary opportunity for these deserving youth.”
Said Dave Haglund, commissioner of the Cascade Collegiate Conference: “Our Champions of Character outreach effort was a critical component to the entire championship week experience. We are grateful to Concordia University, Nike and De La Salle North Catholic High School for creating such a unique and interactive format in which to reinforce these important messages.”
The NAIA’s Champions of Character program has established five core values – integrity, respect, responsibility, sportsmanship, and servant leadership – that go well beyond the playing field to the daily decisions of our youth. These character values help young people – and those associated with their development – make good choices in all aspects of their lives and reflect the true spirit of competition.
An NAIA-based non-profit organization whose mission is to change the culture of sport, Champions of Character is designed to instill an understanding of key character values and provide practical tools for student-athletes, coaches and parents to use in modeling exemplary character traits.
Matt English, director of athletics at Concordia (Ore.), addresses more than 200 students from De La Salle North Catholic High School at the interactive Champions of Character Clinic prior to the 2009 NAIA Cross Country National Championships. The clinic was held on the Nike campus in Beaverton, Ore.
De La Salle North Catholic High School provides a rigorous, faith-based education for youth in North/Northeast Portland, where more than half the students do not achieve the minimum standards for state benchmarks by the eighth grade. Each student works one day a week through the unique Corporate Internship Program to help defray the cost of their education. This program promotes self-sufficiency by providing career and life-skills training, personal mentoring and paid employment.
As part of its nationwide outreach efforts, the NAIA conducts student-led Champions of Character sessions in every locale where NAIA national championship events are held.