Concordia, Nike Hosts Faubion Middle School Students for NAIA Champions of Character Event
Note: With the spirit of giving back on people's minds as we enter the holiday season, here's a Thanksgiving edition of the Navy Spotlight that highlights a service project Concordia and the Cascade Collegiate Conference hosted in advance of the NAIA Cross Country National Championships last week.
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BEAVERTON, Ore.—The most visible part of any national championship will always be the competition itself. Concordia University and the Cascade Collegiate Conference know that from hosting the NAIA Cross Country National Championships for the past four seasons.
However, while the competition takes the most visibility, it has never been the sole part of a national championship, particularly within the NAIA.
The NAIA requires the host school/conference for each of its national championships to host an event that promotes its Champions of Character initiative of integrity, respect, responsibility, servant Leadership and sportsmanship.
“It's something that the NAIA really focuses on and it's a unique part that is a really neat part of being in the NAIA,” said Concordia athletic director
Matt English. “It's great that we can not only host people from around the country for a national championship event, but that we can also give them a chance to be involved with something outside of the competition because I think it helps those kids keep perspective. The running is important, the championships are important, that's something they've been striving for all year, but there's more to life too.”
Concordia and the CCC have addressed the Champions of Character requirement enthusiastically, hosting interactive, play-based lessons on the five core values of the Champions of Character Initiative during each season they have hosted the national meets for cross country.
This year, Concordia hosted 65 students from Faubion Middle School at the Bo Jackson Center on the Nike Campus last week, the third year out of the four that Nike has offered their headquarters to Concordia for the event.
There, Concordia student-athletes and cross country runners from around the country led the middle school students through five different stations, each of which tied a game to a core value of the Champions of Character initiative.
For instance, to teach servant leadership, the student-athletes had Faubion students pair up and have one lead their blindfolded partner through an obstacle course. Another station had students playing red light-green light while focusing on sportsmanship.
Concordia sophomore volleyball player Leslie Hanks helped come up with the different stations as part of her Faith for Life group at the university.
“We tried to come up with games that displayed the characteristic that we were trying to get across,” said Hanks. “For example, we matched responsibility with freeze tag since the game puts the responsibility on the players to unfreeze their teammates.”
Hanks led the freeze tag group last week, along with Concordia men's soccer player Matt Marquette. A number of other Concordia students led the different stations too, though they were all aided by a group of volunteers that featured cross country runners from around the nation.
English, Scott Ferguson and Jason Hagen, who all helped organize the event, sent out an open invitation to teams attending the national championships to participate in the event. Several responded, as around 75 student-athletes attended the event last week as volunteers.
Those volunteers surely helped pass the tenants of the Champions of Character initiative to the students from Faubion, but English and Ferguson also saw a benefit to the Faubion students beyond that.
The vast majority of Faubion students are on free and reduced lunch, putting college at a greater distance from them than it might be for other students in Portland Public Schools. However, last week's event put them in direct contact with several student-athletes, who could help bring the idea of going to college much closer to those students.
“I noticed some of the Faubion students have a Faubion shirt that says 'college is not a dream, it's a plan' and that's part of what we're trying to instill in a lot of these students, who might be first generation college students if they do go to college,” said English. “With events like last week, we're trying to make college a real, tangible thing and not just a far off thing that they think that they can never accomplish.”
The Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference takes over hosting the NAIA Cross Country National Championships for the 2013 and 2014 seasons, meaning Concordia will no longer have the responsibility of hosting a Champions of Character event. Despite the loss of responsibility though, Ferguson, the director of service learning at Concordia, says the university will continue events like the one last week in the years to come.
“We've seen incredible progress under these champions of character events,” said Ferguson. “We've seen both our partnership with Faubion and other Portland Public Schools be incredibly strengthened through these opportunities. Although we won't host the national championships next year, we see tremendous potential in continuing this legacy of service to our community.”
Note: Since today is Thanksgiving, here's the Faubion Middle School students who attended the event at the Nike Campus saying thank you to their hosts.