Student-athletes have crazy schedules between practices and games, but one thing many Yutan student-athletes carve out time for on Wednesday evenings is FCA. FCA stands for Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an organization whose goal is to help student-athletes change their perspective on how they play their sport.
“There’s a lot of pressure in sports, and FCA helps kids to remember that the most important thing in life is what is happening to you after life is over. It helps you to become a better person and Christian,” cross country coach and FCA leader Alyssa Hansen said.
FCA started in Yutan during the late 1980s and has been led by many different teachers and coaches throughout the years. It has been most recently led by Mike Higgins, an assistant football coach at Yutan High School, Alyssa Hansen and Jessica Scheuler, an FCA of Omaha staff member and Yutan alumnus.
“The overall purpose is to empower coaches and athletes to go out and teach the world about Jesus, teach people how to be more like Jesus and to spread the gospel,” Scheuler said.
The FCA program at Yutan meets every other week on Wednesday evenings from 6:00-7:00 p.m. at the high school. The sessions are centered around a handbook called “Doing Sports God’s Way.” Once the students arrive at the school, there is a main teaching for everyone together, and then the girls and boys split up into small groups to go over the Bible study and have discussions over the questions and Bible verses. Towards the end of the discussion, all the students make prayer requests, and the leaders pray for everyone.
“My goal would be to bring Christian athletes together to give them an opportunity to talk and discuss the Bible and grow in their faith to become not only stronger leaders on the court but anywhere else they go,” said Hansen.
The FCA directors at Yutan also allow the upperclassmen student-athletes to help lead the underclassmen in the Bible studies.
“It’s important for students to get comfortable sharing the gospel, and sometimes it can be hard to have conversations that might be kind of controversial. So one of our goals is to empower students to take the range a little bit and help each other focus on something that they believe in,” Scheuler said.
One of these upperclassmen leaders who has been positively impacted by FCA is senior Jordyn Campbell, a two-time wrestling state champion and member of Yutan’s state champion softball team.
“The program has helped me to know what I’m playing for and what I’m doing my sports for, knowing that there’s a bigger purpose. I think that it’s helped me understand that in the long run, my sports are just a small piece of me, but the reason that I’m doing them is for a purpose bigger than myself,” Campbell said.
Another student-athlete leader who is consistently at FCA is Emmy Tederman, who is involved in varsity volleyball, basketball and track. Tederman has seen growth in the school since students have started to incorporate knowledge from FCA into their daily lives.
“I know a lot of people can be tough on themselves when they might lose in sports, and FCA just helps remind them that they’re more than their athletic career, and that really changes their perspective on things, and I think it is cool seeing that growth in other student athletes,” Tederman said.
Despite what people may think, FCA membership isn’t limited to just Christians because the qualities Jesus exemplified, like kindness and faithfulness, can apply to everyone.
“The more people that we can teach to act like Jesus and the more athletes we can teach to behave in the way that He did, the stronger our teams will be, the more well-rounded our kids will grow up to be and the better our community and our school will be,” Scheuler said.
Because of the many benefits those involved have seen, FCA members encourage others to try it out.
“I would definitely recommend FCA because it’s a good learning experience for students, and you can connect with other students on a deeper level than you didn’t maybe know was possible. I think it’s really cool to see that some of the things you’re going through as a student-athlete, you aren’t alone, and other student-athletes are going through the same thing,” Campbell said.
