Youth Sport and Spirituality: Catholic Perspectives ed. by Patrick Kelly (review)

In 1976, Michael Novak published The Joy of Sports, a seminal work in the philosophical appreciation of sports. In an Augustinian moment he explained he wrote this as a man of faith (in sports) seeking understanding. Play represents the Kingdom of Ends; Work, the Kingdom of Means, Novak argued. It is therefore the realm of play in which we humans experience the true identity of our essence, for play is reality and work a diversion and escape. Sports, he wrote, are radically religious in that players are animated by a spirit that seeks freedom and perfection and the overcoming of death.

Patrick Kelly has brought forth an excellent collection of essays devoted to this topic. The essays in this notable volume include a balance of theoretical and practical treatments on this theme including how coaches in youth sports can advance the spirituality of their young athletes. Spirituality is defined here as the human capacity for self-transcendence.

The essays in this volume help capture the essence of sports as an opportunity for seeking grace and transcendence. Richard R. Gaillardetz argues that sports should be seen as an activity in which we encounter Deus ludens. Following Aquinas and Rahner, he shows how human play can emulate the divine play of God’s creation.

Mike McNamee discusses the virtues of sports in an Aristotelian fashion, explaining how and why sports must be understood in terms of the virtues which sports promotes and those virtues necessary for their proper execution. McNamee surprisingly does not explicitly refer to Alasdair MacIntyre’s groundbreaking work in this area, but Kelly in his introduction does use MacIntyre’s distinction between the internal and external goods of sports to prepare the reader for the account of sports to follow.

Patrick Kelly’s two essays also provide the requisite historical and experiential account of how sports have been part of a Christian culture. And it was a felicitous choice to begin the volume with Daniel Dombrowski’s helpful philosophical and historical analysis of the origins of sports.

Finally, Shields and Bredemeier provide a clarifying response to Alfie Kohn’s case against competition. They rightly go back to the etymological origins of the word to remind us that com petitio means to strive with or ask with and that which we are seeking is excellence (Arête). Perhaps the classic statement of this rediscovery is Drew Hyland’s essay on competition and friendship published in the 1970s.

This move enables them to bring in considerations of sportsmanship and the many motivations for playing sports.

As to the chapters that emphasize the more practical aspects of this worthwhile exercise, I found the specific applications to youth sports and coaching to be an interesting mix of how-to suggestions, anecdotal examples gathered from personal experience, and exhortations to coaches to rise above the Vince Lombardi mentality of winning is everything. This is a collection that will be useful to scholars debating the nature of and the reasons why we play sports, as well as those in the field participating on a daily basis.