This Year… Rode The Team Bus To Games

The “This Year…” series looks back at lessons learned in the past year of YL. It will feature several posts and guest posts.

Here is one from my friend Dan from St. Francisville, LA…

A new thing we started doing is riding the team buses to away games.  We are a small town ministry, and there is only one school within a half hour of us which means every away game is a good drive.  Since we started Young Life here four years ago, we have built relationships with the coaches and athletic director, and we show up at practices—not just games. This year we started asking if we could ride to away games, and the coaches were very much in favor of the idea.  Now our leaders have the chance to not just watch the games—but interact with the players on the way to the game, watch the game, and usually stop for dinner on the way home with the team too.  It is great for career leaders that can only commit one night to contact work a week, and it is also a great chance to get to know kids that never come to Young Life but are on the teams with Club kids.  It takes a little time to build the relationships with the coaches, but having a leader that is a teacher/coach or a parent approach the other coaches would help.

Thanks Dan! What did you learn this year? Let me know at smcgever (at) yahoo dot com.