Camaraderie and connection: Members of the SMC Women’s Soccer celebrate after a match. A new initiative, led by Mary Volmer ’01, MFA ’05 support programs across the country to bolster inspiration, inclusion, and involvement. / Photo courtesy SMC Athletics
'Sport is Sacred': SMC's Mary Volmer on the Value of Athletics at Catholic Colleges and Universities
The Mission Fellow for Athletics, Volmer is also director of SMC's College Sport For Humanity Higher Education Initiative—a newly-established effort to champion athletic programs emphasizing "character development and care for the whole student."
On a frigid Thursday night at the end of January, I walked into the gym at Jesus the Good Shepherd Catholic Church, in Owings, Maryland, to play basketball with my friend and mentor, Michael Galligan-Stierle, and eleven perfect strangers.
I was not on the East Coast to play pickup games. Michael and I were due in Washington D.C. the next day for the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) Annual Meeting, where I would present on the Saint Mary’s College Sport For Humanity Higher Education Initiative. Yet, those few hours in the gym affirmed the message I would soon offer. You see, after one short encounter on a court, I felt for those eleven strangers an abiding kinship. I knew Ed, the taller of the two bald fellows, had a knock-down corner jumper, four kids, a bad back, and a powerwashing business. I’d learned to get Bill the ball at the top of the key and that he’d come to the gym after two days in the hospital with a tooth abscess. I learned…
I could go on. The point is sport had bridged the miles, the years, and the experiences that separated us only hours before.
Sport is (or at least can be) sacred in the way it facilitates these kinds of meaningful encounters; sacred, too, in the way it teaches devotion, compassion, and presence. This is one of the reasons US Catholic colleges and universities have historically embraced sport, incorporating athletics as part of the formation of the whole person. Nationally, roughly 10-30 percent of our student bodies compete in NCAA or NAIA athletics. That proportion does not account for the large number of students who play club and intramural sports. Catholic colleges and universities in the United States are athlete-serving institutions.
Now, in this time of rapid financial and structural change within athletics, we have an opportunity, indeed an imperative, to examine and perhaps re-vision the role of sport in Catholic higher education. By establishing the Sport For Humanity Higher Education Initiative (SSHI) in 2025, Saint Mary’s College has become a leader in these re-visioning efforts.
Funded by the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation, the SSHI offered grants to US Catholic colleges and universities that utilize the Pillars and Principles of the Sport For Humanity Movement to create curricular, co-curricular and service programs that champion character development and care for the whole athlete.
By organizing our efforts around the 3 Pillars (Inspiration, Inclusion, Involvement) and 6 Principles, we created a common language across our charismatic differences, and in this way, we have been able to learn from and further the common goals of our singular efforts. By May 2026, our cohort of universities will have served thousands of kindergarten through college students nationwide. This, after only one year.
It is true that universities nationwide are reeling over chaotic legal and structural changes to intercollegiate sports. But we who cherish a Catholic vision of higher education in the US are anchored in a tradition that embraces athletics as part of the education and growth of the whole person: head, heart and hands. The chaos of the moment gives us new opportunities to find to use sport as a vehicle for good in the world. This is good news.
Mary Volmer ’01 MFA ’03 is the Mission Fellow for Athletics and the director of the Saint Mary’s College Sport For Humanity Higher Education Initiative.
