Our Uganda travels continued with our Notre Dame students having the opportunity to teach the Play Like A Champion Today® Player Champion Curriculum to the children in both Kkindu Primary and Hopeful School, both village schools, far from the city center. Every child received their very own book – much to their delight. The students helped the children identify that everyone can and should play sports because it is good for our health, it is fun and it is the opportunity to learn lessons and values. Then our students helped the school children identify the characteristics of a Champion and how each and every child can become a Champion in sport and in life. An integral part of this work was conducting research along with the classroom character lessons. The children were given pre and post tests addressing the role of sport in their life. Play Like A Champion Today® will analyze the results of these tests to assess the role that sport might play in a developing country. We will also analyze whether the city school children pose a different profile than the rural village school children when they are involved in sport. As our PLACT partners across the United States were presenting our PLACT youth coach workshop on Saturday in cities across America, Clark and Kristin were presenting an adapted form of our youth coach workshop on Friday in a classroom in Kkindu presenting to 25 coaches from the village and the surrounding sub-county. On Saturday, Clark and Kristin worked with Dr. Harriet Mutonyi, Faculty Director of Education at UMU, Uganda Martyrs University and Alex Ndibwami, Athletic Director at UMU. Sports leaders (tutors, coaches etc.) that are members of the National University Sports Federation of Uganda (NUSFU)and coaches from the surrounding Nkozi subcounty joined to experience how to most effectively lead children in an educational sports experience. We discovered the universal reality of coaching as a ministerial service; the full understanding of the spirituality present in the sport experience and the Universal values of a Champion. Coaches embraced the GROW approach to child development and discussed together how to effectively communicate the lessons of sport. Coaches from both workshops set off to their home schools/parishes to impart this fresh information to their home communities. PLACT now has trained trainers spread throughout the fields and cities of Uganda. Pictured here are coaches from the UMU workshop and the Village of Kkindu.

Some Videos from the Trip

A Champion Child at St. Peter’s Primary School

Notre Dame Fencer, Alex Coccia, works with some budding fencers in Kkindu

Uganda Cranes! WE GO!

The Universal Language of Sport = Joy and God's Grace

Pictured are Kkindu Primary Head Teacher, Joseph Kazibwe; John Kakande, Head of all PLACT activities in the village; Fr. Emmanuel, Pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Kkindu and Kristin Sheehan

On Wednesday in Uganda, our Notre Dame PLACT contingent traveled to the rural village of Kkindu outside the town of Masaka. Together with our students we visited two primary schools, Kkindu Primary and Hopeful School. We met with the head teachers and discussed their dreams for their sports programs and we played sports and games with the children. Our hearts swelled with love and our spirits soared with joy as we became a part of these childrens' lives – in the classroom as we taught lessons with their teachers and in the school yard as we kicked the soccer ball and sang circle songs. The big smiles that you see represent the true joy of connecting with God’s children through the glory of play.

Champions Throughout Uganda

On Wednesday in Uganda, Clark Power, Kevin Dugan and Kristin Sheehan gathered together with the leaders of the Catholic Church at St. Augustine Institute Catholic Secretariat. Together we explored the idea of sport as a means of educational development for all young people. We discovered that sport in Uganda is often reserved for only the most skilled athletes having the opportunity to compete. We presented the Play Like A Champion Today® philosophy of sport as valuable for all children in offering physical healthfulness and a mode of providing lessons that can lead to emotional, social and moral development. All children in Uganda can become Champions and “win” through playing sport. This message was heartily embraced by the group. Thus, we began discussions on how the Play Like A Champion Today® philosophy might best be disseminated to every sports tutor (Uganda’s name for physical education teachers or coaches) in every Catholic parish throughout the country. Ugandan church leaders expressed the desire to see the program in a two-fold capacity. First every sports tutor can be taught the Champion philosophy and ministerial approach to coaching sport and second, every child can be given the “champion” curriculum in understanding the powerful role that sport can play in their whole development. As members of one universal Catholic Church, Notre Dame’s Play Like A Champion Today® looks forward with excitement to partnering with the Church in Uganda to create sports programs that will deeply impact every young person in the county.

Happy Birthday Fr. Ted!

As the 2nd part in our series on Title IX, we would like to wish a very warm Happy Birthday to Father Theodore “Ted” Hesburgh, CSC today! A celebrated figure in the worlds of civil rights, academia, and Roman Catholicism, Fr. Ted has accomplished a lot of things in 95 years on the planet. He was one of the longest tenured presidents of an American university, serving Notre Dame for 35 years in its highest office. He has walked hand in hand with Martin Luther King Jr. in the struggle for racial equality, visited the South Pole, carried the Olympic torch, served as an advisor to multiple US presidents, and been awarded a world record 150 honorary degrees.

But among his accolades and achievements, none sticks out as more influential than his leadership to make Notre Dame a coeducational university.

Notre Dame became coed in 1972, coinciding with the passage of Title IX into federal law. So, right away, Notre Dame was doing something it had never done before: field women’s sports teams. A school that had been synonymous with its men’s football team entered into a new phase of history: one in which the Fighting Irish would become known for something other than their success on the gridiron. The women of Notre Dame brought their first national championship home in 1987 when the fencers took the title. Since then, women have secured 8 additional national titles in three sports for the Irish, and led the nation in academic performance on several occasions.

There was a time when thinking of Notre Dame with women would have been something of a joke. Notre Dame was an all-male institution. Simple as that. It wasn’t misogynistic, but thinking of a Notre Dame with female students would have been, at one point, laughable. It took a visionary, imaginative leader in Hesburgh to conceptualize a Notre Dame that saw no boundaries to entry, and no limits to the minds it could educate.

The same kind of vision and intellectual imagination is needed in viewing sports in our culture. There was a time in which sports were considered simply a male affair, but it took pioneers in women’s sports, like Pat Summitt, Billie Jean King, Muffet McGraw, Annika Sörenstam, and countless others to expand narrow conventional thinking on sports. Title IX was a start, but there are still boundaries to overcome, and women and men everywhere working to incorporate more women into sports, and help young girls and women live up to their potential in sports.

The beauty of bringing about equal opportunity in sports is that its implications lie far outside the gymnasium, the diamond, or the field. When we learn to see men and women as equals in sports, we learn to see them as equals in politics, in academia, in business, …in life. So often sports is a predictor of future social trends (much as Jackie Robinson was a harbinger for racial equality), and so as a society, we must think honestly, critically, and thoughtfully about the role of women and girls in sports. And to do that, we need thoughtful, visionary leaders. We need more people like Fr. Ted! 

Sports Day at St. Peter's Primary School

Kristin Sheehan, PLACT Program Director, reports from Uganda:

Play Like A Champion Today®’s delegation began today with the roosters crowing gloriously outside our windows as the sun rose. We boarded our transport and traveled back for our second day at St. Peter’s Primary School. Upon arrival, we gathered with the children in prayer and assembly explaining our “Sports Day” together. We unpacked our equipment and set up the biggest field day you can imagine. 400 Primary 6^th grade children were broken up into groups to play netball and to learn American Football, softball, lacrosse, and baseball.  The excitement was palpable as the children selected their game of choice and ran off to learn, to play, to have fun and to grow in ability and in spirit.

Our Notre Dame student/athletes acted as coaches, served as referees and most importantly became mentors throughout the clinic period. Then came the culmination of a large football (American soccer) competition. Boys from the four 6^th grade classes each competed to earn a spot in the final soccer competition while the girls competed in a netball championship. The action was not contained to the playing field as spectators joined in on the fun, shaking Irish green Kelly Care’s Foundation pom-poms and leading their favorite team in cheers. Green happens to be the school color for St. Peter’s School, so all the Green Pom-poms where left with the school children –much to their thrill.

The final soccer match went down to a shootout with P6 Blue ending in Victory. However, every St. Peter’s child was a Champion today in sport. After presenting the victorious team with a trophy and the entire school with two nets for their soccer posts, as well as many, many sport balls, the children sang songs for us while the school’s brass band (the oldest band in Uganda) played march music. It was a start to finish sport extravaganza.

The group completed the day listening to traditional Ugandan percussion music again at the National Theatre put on by the Percussion Discussion. We all enjoyed some traditional dancing and everyone even got to participate in helping keep the rhythm through beating the drums.  

Tomorrow, Kevin, Clark and Kristin with join with the Ugandan Catholic Secretariat and discuss the resounding potential of sport for holistic youth development. We will present our Player Handbook while the Notre Dame students return to St. Peter’s Primary to complete the classroom lessons in the Player Handbook with every P6 student, these lessons discuss what it means to be a Champion in sport and in life, particularly focused upon virtue development through the sport experience. Then, we will travel to the village of Kkindu near the town of Masaka. Excited for more great things!

Why Uganda?

Why is Play Like a Champion Today® in Uganda?

It’s a very good question that deserves a thoughtful answer. It is a long distance to travel to a small, lesser-known country, so the decision to go to Uganda merits an explanation.

At PLACT, we strive to make a positive impact on the lives of children, with a firmly held belief that youth sports can have a lasting effect on its participants. The PLACT philosophy aims to make that effect a positive one that is life-giving, character-building, and fun. We have seen the positive role that sports play on youth in our own country, and by going to Uganda, we hope to thoughtfully and humbly use our model to try to make a difference in the lives of Ugandan children.

Although we believe that sports can play a positive role in lives, regardless of their environment, we recognize that a child’s surroundings will greatly affect the role that sports plays in his or her life.

There are no frantic parents at Ugandan soccer games; if a mother has been lucky enough to live to see her child grow up to play soccer, chances are she is hard at work all day on the farm trying to eke out a living for her family. And Ugandan kids aren’t worrying excessively about becoming the next Michael Jordan; they are just trying to get a break from a day that can include 10 hours in a classroom of 100 students, hours of laboring in the fields, taking care of siblings, doing laundry by hand, cooking, and sharing a bedroom with 6 other people.

Yet there are cross-cultural beauties in athletics that this endeavor seeks to champion! The same joy that comes when a Notre Dame athlete wins a national title befalls a child scoring his first soccer goal in an obscure village. The same concern that teammates show for each other transcends location, whether it is an urban school in Kampala or the Super Dome in New Orleans.

So as Youth Sports and Community Programming Manager Kevin Dugan puts it, this trip is “a celebration of the enormous human potential of the young people of Uganda.” We hope to share with Uganda educators and children the insights we have gained through our years of exposure to youth sports. Equally as important, we hope to learn from Ugandans the best ways that sports can be a means of developing human potential, so that we may further develop our role as leaders in the field of child development. These partnerships are essential, because it would be impossible for us to maximize our potential acting alone.

I will leave you with a story from my time in Uganda:

Every morning before I went to school, I went out for a beautiful 7 mile run through hills surrounding the place I lived. One day it was raining heavily, and the roads became very muddy: impassible for any kind of vehicle. I fell down in the mud, but proceeded to continue running. Soon enough, I heard footsteps behind me. It was a student of mine, eager to run alongside me, and worried for my well-being in the rain. “It’s OK, I told him, you go take cover in your house,” I assured him.

“But sir you need me, just like I need you as a teacher. We run together.”

In this world, the fate of every human is tied up with one another. PLACT and the ND Athletics Department are amazed by the synergetic relationships we are forming in a little-known corner of the planet to change the lives of children the world over.

Tusangaire Uganda! (Welcome to Uganda)!

PLACT has hit the ground running in Uganda, wrapping up the group’s third day in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city!

Reports from the group are that they have been having an amazing whirlwind of a trip. From trying new foods, to adjusting to the newness of the place, to dealing with jet lag, the group is a bit worn out, but the Notre Dame students and PLACT staff love what they are doing in East Africa.  

The group has already had the pleasure of meeting with Penninah “Penny” Kabenge, an official in the Ugandan Olympic Committee, to discuss the role of women in sports in the developing world. Penny was the recipient of the International Olympics Committee’s prestigious Women & Sport Award for Africa earlier this year. In addition to providing insight into the role that women have to play in human development, she also provided advice on how best to teach the PLACT model in a Ugandan setting.

Students were also treated to a traditional Ugandan dance performance, and had the opportunity to volunteer at an orphanage for infants, bathing and playing with some of Uganda’s most vulnerable citizens.

And that was the first day!

Since then, the group has been hard at work, teaching for two day’s at St. Peter’s Primary school in the Nsambya neighborhood of Kampala. The students and PLACT staffers have taught our adapted curriculum, using the Ugandan PLACT CHAMPION HANDBOOK, and have held sports competitions at the school. PLACT staffers are also surveying students and staff to gauge the reception of the material.

Really exciting stuff, and we look forward to letting you know more about what’s happening in Uganda!

Banange, Tugende Uganda! (My friends, we are going to Uganda!)

Play Like a Champion Today® will be taking its work across the globe tomorrow as PLACT staff travels with Notre Dame students amd ND Athletics staff to Uganda for a two week trip to explore the role of youth sport in human development. Check out our recent interview about the trip with WSBT South Bend here. We are very excited by this endeavor, and we cannot wait to get our boots on the ground, and use this experience as both a learning and teaching experience. We certainly hope to impart our message of sport as a tool for raising good, healthy children, and we know we will learn a lot from the Ugandan educators, government officials, and religious leaders with whom we will be working.

 The University of Notre Dame is a wonderful place that seeks not simply to be a place of strong intellectual thought but to couple that intellect with a giving heart. PLACT is of the same philosophy, and we hope that we will do a great amount of good with this effort, as well as learn how we can best advance the common good of the children of Uganda with our work. We are thankful for this unique opportunity, and we invite you to follow our trip on our blog in the next two weeks!

Are Traditional Values too Rigid?

June 23, 2012 marks the 40^th anniversary of the passage of Title IX into federal law, mandating the inclusion and equal funding of females in school-based athletics. This is the first in a 6-part, weekly series of blogs exploring females in sports in America.

Last Thursday, two excellent high school baseball teams were scheduled to compete for the end of the season championship in the Arizona Charter Athletic Association in Phoenix. To be a part of such a clash of titans is what so many young people work for. Win or lose, the thrill of championship competition is something that can’t be matched elsewhere.

But the scheduled game between Our Lady of Sorrows and Mesa Preparatory Academy never happened. There was no rain delay, there were no suspended players, and there was no reschedule. Our Lady of Sorrows forfeited the game, because one of Mesa Prep’s players is a girl, and OLS has a policy forbidding co-educational sports.

Every private institution is entitled to create its own policies, and exercise internal control, and OLS did not complain or try to prevent Paige Sultzbach, Mesa Prep’s female player, from playing. In fact, Paige had graciously sat out two prior meetings to appease OLS’s policy. But OLS humbly lost a chance to compete for the title, and Mesa Prep technically “won” the ACAA championship.

No laws were broken, and no one’s rights were infringed, but doesn’t something just seem a little wrong here? Is this what sport is about? Paige obviously demonstrates a level of skill to beat out other male counterparts for a spot on a high-level team. Furthermore, baseball is a sport where a female’s natural build would make her neither more susceptible to injury nor superior to her male counterparts. So why did OLS forfeit, and not give their players, and Mesa Prep’s, the right to compete in one of life’s purest arenas—sport?

It would be wrong to condemn OLS for making this decision that in some way lines up with their value structure. This country is celebrated for our freedom of association and religion. But must their policy be so rigid? Women have come so far in our culture over the last century, but there is still so much beautiful potential for growth. It is so important for us, friends of sport, to think about the potential that sport still has to grow. OLS’s insistence on not making an exception in this case seems to be counter-productive to the progress we have made in our country.

Let’s imagine a sports world where men and women compete side by side, if they choose to. Part of the beauty of sport its objectivity and its merit-based achievement. If girls and women are skilled and have the courage compete in leagues where females typically do not, then let’s celebrate that courage, rather than shy away from the challenge! In this year when we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Title IX, let us not see its achievement as the pinnacle of progress, but as an opportunity for more progress towards equal opportunity for all!

Running the Tough Routes

Two weeks ago, former Notre Dame wide receiver Michael Floyd was drafted by the Arizona Cardianls with the 13th overall pick in the NFL Draft. It was undoubtedly a tremendous night for the Irish legend, and one that, a year prior, seemed anything but certain.

After an alcohol-related run-in with the law in the spring of 2011, Floyd was suspended from the Irish football team. His future as a student and an athlete at Notre Dame was largely in doubt. Although he had already declared that he would return for his senior season, it would have been understandable if he had entered the NFL’s supplemental draft to avoid a humbling path towards righting his wrongs. But Michael took that path. 

He had let his teammates down, and he realized that. He had a daunting task ahead of him to earn back the trust of so many people in his life. But one day at a time, Michael did that. He changed the friends he hung out with and he participated in alcohol education classes.  He moved back into Dillon Hall, a dorm on Notre Dame’s campus. He spoke at the Play Like a Champion Today® Leadership Conference and participated in the Athletic Department’s Youth Sports ministry. He maintained his physical focus and by the time his senior year began, Coach Brian Kelly and University officials recognized that Michael had made positive changes in his life, and reinstated him to the school and the team.

Floyd went on to break every major receiving record in Notre Dame football history.

Thanks to football, and the staff in the Notre Dame Athletic department, Floyd’s legacy at Notre Dame will be for his prowess on the gridiron, instead of the potential he let slip away. Floyd’s story is a tale of how sports can be a means of transformation and of reconciliation. Being a part of a team, no doubt, gave Michael the support and accountability he needed in what was certainly a rough period in his life. And the discipline of football provided the focus needed to make a change in his behavior.

Frequently in our society, we take away our youth’s right to participate in sport as a punishment for bad behavior. Sometimes the behavior is chronic, and rewards (like playing on a team) should be taken away, but too often we fail to recognize the positive role that sport can play in changing a young person’s behavior. The structure, discipline and humility gained from sport are unique in the way they mature young people, and removing them from a sport environment may only make social behaviors worse.

After seeing the humbling events in Floyd’s life, we can now respect him for not only his dominance at his position, but his commitment to personal betterment and his respect for his team and school. It was not an easy path, and his journey is not complete, but just as we’ve watched on the field, Michael is not afraid to take the tough routes.

A Teachable Moment

Two Notre Dame Football players were arrested early Thursday morning stemming from a run in with local law enforcement in South Bend, IN. The two young men, quarterback Tommy Rees and Linebacker Carlo Calabrese, were at a party celebrating the end of the school year and had been drinking. Both players ran from the party when police arrived, and were eventually caught. Calabrese, who is 21 years old, was released on bond the night of the arrest, and Rees, 19, was charged with 4 misdemeanors, including consumption by a minor and resisting arrest.

Tommy and Carlo messed up. Even though under-age drinking is commonplace at colleges and universities around the country, Tommy should not have been drinking. Neither of them should have run away. It was a mistake...period. But because of the dynastic nature of the program they play for, the whole country was watching as the news of the incident came out.

Being a Notre Dame Football player is a blessing and a curse. Players get to play in fabulous facilities, in front of sold out crowds, and get a top rate education while they are at it, but they sacrifice a certain level of privacy. If you wear the blue and gold, everyone knows who you are, and because of the history of the university, people have high expectations of your behavior. Not only is there a level of expectation by “outsiders” who look on seemingly waiting for scandals to break, but there is a great responsibility to teammates, coaches and the fine university that is represented every day…not just on Saturday afternoons. Is this level of scrutiny fair? Probably not. Is it part of the job description that comes with signing a four year letter of intent to play for the University of Notre Dame? Absolutely. In our ever-increasingly social and technological world, the spotlight shines brighter, and the expectations on and off the field grow higher. And when things are good, they are great. But when they are bad, they are horrid. Public adoration and scrutiny come only in excess when you play for the Irish.

But something we forget is that, despite the fame, these players are still very much kids. They appear on ESPN, they have thousands of followers on Twitter, and have legions of fans, but they are still growing in the same way that all other college students are. They pull all-nighters in finals week. They break up with their girlfriends. They take courses that challenge their world views. They doubt their own abilities. They search for ways to use their gifts in our world of need. They make mistakes. Although the public media builds them to be titans among men, they are on the same journey of discovery as everyone else. This isn’t to say that their behavior is acceptable. Even if they weren’t Notre Dame student-athletes, their actions still would have brought embarrassment to the team, the university and the entire university community at large. It only confirms their adolescence and budding cognitive development.

As we confront this issue of these young men wrapped up in a bad situation, let us step back from the temptation to build them into something more than they are. Tommy and Carlo made bad decisions. Instead of moving quickly to condemnation, let us support them and the administration, as they try to move from a bad situation, into what will hopefully be a teachable moment that will help them GROW not only as athletes, but as young men.

One Tough Buc

Not many young men who play football at Rutgers University expect to play at the professional level. They attend a good school in a major conference, but as with most schools, an overwhelming majority of its football graduates end up going onto careers outside of major professional sports. Eric LeGrand always believed he would someday be signed by an NFL team. Wednesday, his beliefs turned into reality.

 

During a game against Army in 2011, Eric LeGrand made a tackle on a special teams play that knocked him to the ground, unable to move. He was rushed to a hospital, and the diagnosis was that he was paralyzed from the neck down. His football career was over.

 

To imagine the pain that LeGrand suffered as a result of the injury he endured is enough to make any viewer cringe. But to fathom the mental and emotional pain that came from coping with an immediate and severe life change is something that not even the most empathetic among us can grasp.

 

Yet through the pain, Eric LeGrand has kept his spirits high, and has inspired millions of people with his huge heart and enormous smile. His tenacity is only outdone by his pure joy.  His physical therapy has progressed, he now has feeling in his legs, and doctors believe that he will someday walk again under his own power.

 

Eric’s dream of being an NFL star may have faded after his accident, but his former coach at Rutgers, Greg Schiano, never let his own dream of calling him his player again die.

 

And if you know Greg Schiano, you know he always gets what he wants.

 

Schiano became the head coach of the Tampa Bay Bucaneers this year, and on Wednesday made that dream a reality, signing Eric to an NFL Player contract with the Bucs. Although LeGrand will likely never play a down of football in Tampa, Eric will use his newly found gift for speaking to serve as a Bucaneers sportscaster.

 

Eric LeGrand could have let his injury get the best of him. He could have allowed his broken dreams consume him, and dwell in self pity the rest of his life.  Instead, Eric turned every challenge he has faced upside-down and has not let the pain get the best of him. Where he finds despair, he brings hope. Where he sees a dead end, he creates an opportunity. And where people saw in him only a weakness, he has found in himself a fountain of strength. In other words, he is one tough Buc.

Junior Seau dies at age 43

Our thoughts and prayers go out to former the family and friends USC Trojan and NFL All-Pro Linebacker Junior Seau, who died today. He had a strong commitment to the game of football, and his home town of San Diego.

Seau was as decorated professionally as a player can be, garnering the most Pro Bowl and All-Pro selections by a linebacker, missing out only on an elusive Super Bowl Ring. His work establishing the Junior Seau Foundation, which supports child abuse prevention, drug and alcohol education, recreational opportunities, and efforts to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents, has affected thousands of young people in its 20 years of existence. We are saddened by this loss, and today we pray for the communities of San Diego, USC, and Seau's family.