By James Parker
At a recent breakfast at the University Club of Western Australia, principals and sports teachers from 67 schools were honoured for their dedication to supporting young people across a wide range of sporting disciplines.
Hosted by the Associated and Catholic Colleges, an independent, secondary schools sports association providing Sport in the Right Spirit to schools in Western Australia, the 2014 Spirit Awards Ceremony included numerous accolades offered to teachers for ten or more years of outstanding service. Recognition awards were also presented for substantial involvement in sport.
Guest speaker at the event was Australian dual Olympian in water polo, Canon Richard Pengelley, a former high school PE teacher, school chaplain and lecturer in Sports Science and Sub-Dean for Community at UWA, who was recently appointed as the incoming Dean to St George’s Anglican Cathedral.
Pengelley shared broadly of the role of faith and religion in the history of the ancient and modern Olympic Games.
“The Olympic Games,” he began, “were just one of four Greek Games with the Olympics becoming the dominant one in 776BC. For 400 years, 100 Olympiads ran a sole race called The Start, a 120-yard dash, and spent the remaining 30 days of the Olympics in religious practice and ceremony at the foot of Mount Olympus.”
He spoke of how Christianity eventually condemned sport, with Theodosius, a Roman emperor closing the Olympics in 393AD as a form of worship of the flesh. “This attitude prevailed,” he said, “for the next 1,500 years in Christian thinking.”
Pengelley gave an overview of the contemporary rise of sport thanks to men such as Matthew Arnold and his chaplain, George Cotton, from the Rugby School in England. It was these teachers, he said, who came up with the theory that “sport was very important and an excellent, good avenue for producing Christian men and manhood”.
It was Arnold and Cotton who inspired the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, “to resurrect the opening festival of the Olympics as a Christian festival on Easter Day, April 5th, 1896 in the cathedral in Athens–something they never tell you about the Olympics”.
The Christian churches then led the way in revolutionising the approach to sport, Pengelley pointed out, as a way of drawing young men with too much time and money on their hands away from the bars and brothels, “like some of today’s young footballers”. He reminded those present that the Scouting movement, the YMCA and YWCA, all of them founded as Christian organisations, used sport to form Christian values within young people.
“Every single professional sporting team in Australia has at least one chaplain and most have two,” Pengelley said. “Every Olympic village has chaplains which is where I received an enormous boost to my faith in my early twenties.” He spoke about the Vatican’s department of sport set up by Saint John Paul II and talked of how sport in private schools is a place where Christian values can deliberately be inculcated.
Touching on psychology, Pengelley observed how “sport is replacing religion for many people but it can never fully replace it even though it can act as a temporary fix”. He made the recommendation that, when sports psychologists engage with a spiritual athlete, “you must care for that side of them. There is no point solely talking theory to them”.
Reflecting on Eric Liddell, 400 metres Olympic gold medallist in 1924, whose choice between his religious beliefs and competing in an Olympic race were depicted in the movie Chariots of Fire, Pengelley suggested that Liddell’s motivation of “pleasing God and using the skills he has given to share his love” should also be that of all Christian athletes and the teachers who care for them.
Speaking briefly about ethics, Pengelley noted that ethical problems arise when athletes are paid too much money and finances are permitted to dominate professional sport.
Also in relation to ethics, he shared the importance of setting the right culture for children through sport. “There is a well-studied, five-level progression of ethics that we teach,” he said. “This begins with an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth mentality between 2 to 5 year olds. We progress athletes through four other stages until they reach, we hope, the stage where they would ‘do unto others as you would like them to do unto you’.” That includes respecting the rules and umpires, and also caring for opponents, especially when one is badly injured.
“When you pay people a million dollars to play sport, the attitude comes down to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth every time because it is no longer sport but entertainment, and that is somewhat concerning.”
The critical role that sport plays within the lives of indigenous communities was also highlighted. “I spend a lot of time in remote, indigenous communities taking kids to do service work,” Pengelley said. “There is no question that football, basketball and swimming pools are crucial elements of engaging with these children, trying to get them to come to school.”
He described how one school principal in the Pilbara possesses all 18 AFL shirts and wears a different shirt every day, choosing to umpire recess and lunchtime. “Footy,” he stated, “is the key hook and lure to get kids to school. This principal has an 84 per cent attendance rate. Sport has a really important part to play in indigenous culture.”
Pengelley’s compelling talk ended with his three-point wish list.
He desires that schools reflect a bit more on the origins and deeper meanings of sport. “It is great getting students out there playing sport but do our kids really understand teamwork and discipline – from the same word as discipleship – winning and losing with grace, developing resilience and sport’s origins being from our Christian faith?”
He recalled in 1984 being in the presence of Carl Lewis, American former track and field athlete, who held up his ninth Olympic gold medal and said, “one day this will rust, but Jesus Christ will be the same today, tomorrow and forever”.
Secondly, Pengelley believes, “we emphasise winning and success too much. There are too many ribbons and trophies. We can learn heaps more from our injuries and losses than from our wins and our power.
“It is the same at our camps and in our assemblies. We hold up heroes all the time. I think we ought to hold up broken people sometimes, people who have shown you can get through life with all of its challenges and tragedies. Sport is a great example of that. You can learn more from your setbacks than from your victories.”
Finally, Pengelley spoke passionately about the leadership program he had run for the Special Olympics. He told how Special Olympians were “more committed to the program and much better at it” than many of the professional sportspeople he had taught. His last point, therefore, was that “our sport needs to be utterly inclusive”.
Chair of the Associated and Catholic Colleges, Shaun Kenny, thanked Canon Pengelley for his inspired sharing and encouraged sports teachers present to boldly take Christ into the sporting departments of Western Australia’s independent schools.