Servant Leadership Through Athletics

Dear Parkview Families,

Welcome back to the second installment of our athletic blog.  To continue my discussion on the purpose of an athletic program, I want to look at what a healthy, first-rate, athletic program looks like. 

What is the mission statement of the Parkview Baptist Athletic Department? 

“The athletic department at Parkview Baptist dynamically supports the spiritual and academic mission of the school.  The school sets high expectations for its coaches and student-athletes.  Our program will promote interscholastic athletics that provide lifelong learning experiences to student-athletes while enhancing their achievement of educational goals.  Our goal is to teach the values of servant-leadership, teamwork, pride, respect, commitment, exemplary work ethic, sportsmanship and development of the proper winning attitude”.

Competing at the highest level and winning state championships are great and wonderful, as we have been blessed with those, but that is just one of my aspirations for a healthy athletic department. If you reread the mission statement and focus on the values we want to teach, you will get a better understanding of what we are about. 

My son once told me, “Dad, you are just too philosophical,” as I tried to work through some situations with him.   Personally, I am a huge proponent of the concept of servant-leadership. On my teams, in my classrooms, or any chance I get, I try to stress the importance of this concept with the students at Parkview.  It is difficult for a teenager to understand this idea, but as part of what athletics can teach young people, this concept of servant-leadership starts to take shape.  What a joy it is when you see student-athletes think about the betterment of others over themselves!

If we tackle the concept of servant-leadership full-on, the rest of the characteristics in the mission statement line up like dominoes and it is a beautiful thing to see when a team has this mindset.

Currently, we have four fall sports teams competing:  football, cross country, volleyball, and swimming.  I encourage you to check all of them out if you have the opportunity.  At this past cross country meet, we had 9 runners PR. At the first swim meet, we had 3-4 swimmers already qualify for the state meet in November.  Volleyball is in full swing with a record of 7-3 in their first few weeks of play, and of course, it was great to see our football team be victorious this past Friday.