Mass touts Catholic athletes
By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T
PHILADELPHIA — Its genesis was in tragedy. Carlton Kenty, a standout
player on the St. Thomas More High School Catholic League championship
basketball team with college and bright future ahead, was killed in an
automobile accident the September after his graduation.
Recalling this 1970s tragedy before a packed Cathedral Basilica of SS.
Peter and Paul on Jan. 30, Auxiliary Bishop Joseph P. McFadden related
how the Vincentian Fathers who conducted the school remembered the great
joy the championship brought to St. Thomas More, but they also remembered
the camaraderie that existed among the athletes of all of the schools.
What better way to memorialize Kenty, they reasoned, than to invite athletes
from the other schools to his memorial Mass?
That, Bishop McFadden explained, was the forerunner of the Archdiocesan
Mass for Student-Athletes, which this year drew athletes from 22 archdiocesan
and private high schools.
A former basketball player himself — who as a young man coached
the West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys basketball team —
Bishop McFadden drew upon sports analogies for part of his homily.
He quoted from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians; “Do
you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but
only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.”
Someone who thinks he is a good basketball player wants to play against
someone else to see if he is better. Some days he will win, some days
he will lose, Bishop McFadden said. “If you lose, recognize he is
better that day, work at it and say, ‘Next time we meet I may be
better.’”
“You and I are asked by the Lord to be a light of the world. Jesus
asks us, ‘Will you be my people?’” Bishop McFadden said.
“Be a light in a world of darkness. You and I have the capacity
to change the world. As athletes, we know the strength does not come from
the individual, it comes from the team.”
West Catholic’s Jessie Mattson plays soccer and softball at her
school, two sports unheard of in St. Paul’s day. “Athletics
teaches you to be a good sport and it’s not just about winning,”
she said. “You get to meet new people and experience news things.”
Offered Rich Van Buren who plays lacrosse at Roman Catholic: “Sportsmanship
helps people get along with each other.”
Jacquelyn Thomas of Little Flower is another lacrosse player as well as
a basketball player. “It’s hard balancing sports with school,”
she admitted, “but I enjoy it a lot and it helps me to be a well-rounded
person.”
There probably has never been an icon to Our Lady of Good Sportsmanship,
but the back of the Mass booklet had the image of Our Lady of Victory.
It goes back to St. Paul’s “play to win,” Bishop McFadden
said after the Mass. But there is an old saying, he added: “If you
lose you stand on the side and salute the winners as they go by.”
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo Parish and a freelance writer.