Education
(Photos by Paul Totah/St. Ignatius)
Anne Stricherz’ Irish grandfather was a half-miler who competed against Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner portrayed in the film “Chariots of Fire.”
SI teacher-coach: “What’s it mean to be Catholic in America?”
March 10th, 2010
By John Wildermuth
Sports is more than a source of personal joy and fulfillment for Anne Stricherz. It’s also an important way to reach the teenagers she teaches.
“I’m talking about spirituality with students every day,” said Stricherz, who teaches religious studies to juniors and seniors at San Francisco’s St. Ignatius College Preparatory and helps coach the girls’ cross-country team. “I often use the language of sports, since it’s something they’re comfortable with.”
It’s something the 35-year-old Stricherz is comfortable with herself. A 1996 graduate of Notre Dame University who cheerfully admits that she still “bleeds blue and gold,” she rowed crew for the Fighting Irish. As a runner for most of her life, that’s something else she has in common with the girls she coaches.
“It’s important to meet students where they are,” she said. “You talk about becoming spiritual, but you can make it personal by bringing in something that’s familiar to them.”
Stricherz started thinking about the sports angle to her classes when she began using Brennan Hill’s 2002 book “Eight Spiritual Heroes: Their Search for God,” in her “Path to Faith” class for seniors.
The book focuses on people like Mother Teresa, Edith Stern, Archbishop Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King – men and women of strong faith who often suffered for their beliefs.
But while her students can appreciate the work and dedication of a Dorothy Day, it’s hard for a teenager to feel a personal connection to someone who lived a life so utterly different from anything they can imagine.
“For young people today, their heroes are athletes, celebrities and musicians,” people who often aren’t the best role models, Stricherz said. “I decided to try and find others who are living their lives differently.”
The idea that Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme could give up a career in major league baseball to enter the seminary is mind-boggling to high school students who dream of a career in professional sports.
Then there’s former Heisman Trophy quarterback Tim Tebow of Florida, who’s so comfortable in his Christianity that he puts Bible verses in his eye black.
Or former Notre Dame All-American Ruth Riley, a WNBA all-star who spends her off-seasons traveling to Third World countries to push for health efforts like the battle against malaria.
It’s important to show students that living life as an athlete and living life as a Christian aren’t mutually exclusive, but that one can balance the other, Stricherz said.
Stricherz often uses a quote from the 1981 movie “Chariots of Fire” to illustrate the link between religion and sports.
In the film, Eric Liddell, a real-life Olympian from the 1920s, is explaining how his athletic career doesn’t conflict with his plan to become a minister.
“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast,” Liddell says. “And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”
The quote has a personal message for Stricherz, who wears a medal her grandfather, John Naughton, won in 1921 as a half-miler in the Irish Athletic Championships. Her grandfather ran against the Scottish Liddell during his career.
Stricherz, a native of Walnut Creek, grew up with sports. Her father was a football coach and a Pac-10 referee and she played tennis and ran as a student at Carondelet High School in Concord.
After graduating from college, she spent two years teaching at a Catholic school outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a volunteer in Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education program. Stricherz did development work at Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward before taking the teaching job at St. Ignatius seven years ago.
While the teaching is important, the example she sets outside the classroom means just as much to the students, she said.
As a cross-country coach, Stricherz runs with her team and talks with the girls about more than running.
“I might talk to them about the music I heard at Mass on Sunday or about a retreat I went on,” she said. “I invite them to share that part of my life.”
Stricherz wants the students she teaches and coaches to realize that religion isn’t just something you talk about in a class or deal with for an hour on Sunday.
“Being Catholic to me is a primary part of my identity,” she said. “Being a Catholic is who I am and everything comes from that.”
Stricherz is currently working on a book about sports and spirituality and is interviewing athletes about how they keep religion as an important part of their very public lives.
She also writes a “Sports and Spirituality” blog, which looks at sports, athletes and religion, with the occasional detour into Notre Dame athletics.
“The blog keeps me going and keeps me writing,” Stricherz said.
But it’s the daily work with her teenage students that continues to drive her. For many of them, religion is something they don’t think about too much, something that’s not really part of their daily lives.
Stricherz wants to change that and if it helps her students to compare religion to football, both team efforts with certain agreed-upon rules, well, that’s fine.
“The question I want my students to answer is ‘What does it mean to be a Catholic in America today?’” she said. “When you look at people of faith, is there a difference? Can you see it?
“You can’t force teenagers” to become more spiritual, Stricherz said, “but you can guide them. It just takes time, trust, conversation and an interest in them and their interests.”
Life, death and the Mahoney
In her “Sports and Spirituality” blog (sportsandspirituality.blogspot.com), Stricherz recounted the intensity of the Mahoney Trophy competition between St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep. This year’s competition will be decided at the April 16 Mahoney baseball game at AT&T Park.
After losing the Bruce Mahoney trophy last year, this year’s senior class came into this school year with hope for rebirth. The game itself is a battle. The stakes are so high that at one point you can smell the fear of death. One glance at the student section—a royal fire hazard or the lower seats—filled with a significant number of alums, gives witness to the reality that we grow up and we grow old. A win on Tuesday would have captured the Bruce Mahoney trophy for the year. Instead, our players and students had to confront pain and suffering not only on the court, but perhaps more palpably the next day at school.
It is amazing how one game can serve as the paradigm by which my students wrestle with limit questions and hopefully grow into wisdom. The day after the Bruce, two former students who are basketball players came into my classroom just to talk about the game. After hugs and listening to their thoughts about the game, I myself was struck by what Michael, the team captain, told me his coach advised. They were reminded that this game with this many fans, friends and family members was like no other. At some point during the game, their coach said they should take a moment to recognize what they were a part of, to remember to have fun and enjoy. I thought to myself, if a player, a student or an alum could do just that, how could he or she not feel good about their life? It is, after all, a spiritual experience.
Sure, I wish that the common faith of both schools still had the influence it once did. I would love for my students and their families to attend Mass regularly and willingly and not have to apologize for doing so. Reality is however, something different. It can be isolating, lonely and downright challenging to bear witness to all that the Catholic faith asks of us. But I find comfort in the words of Archbishop George H. Niederauer:
“It isn’t ultimately a question of numbers and percentages. It is, you know, the quality of the faith life and of the spirituality.”
From March 12, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
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