Saturday, November 29, 1997

Prayer on the 50-yard line

By MAUREEN HAYDEN

Scripps Howard News Service

For the last 25 years, after every victory and every defeat, the football team at Castle High School in Warrick County, Ind., has headed not to the locker room but to the middle of the game field for a moment together as a team.

The players, sweat-stained and exhausted, drop to their knees and shut out the crowd, the lights and the details of the game they have just played.

Quietly, the athletes bow their heads, listen to a few words from coach John Lidy and say a silent prayer.

"It makes me remember what the coach has always told us," said Tim Rodgers, a sophomore on the Knights' defensive team. "That without God on our side, we are nothing."

The team doesn't pray for victory the next time around.

"You don't ask God to win," said Lidy. "You ask him to help you remember that you are playing for more than yourself and more than a victory. You're playing to honor him."

Although formal prayer has been taken out of public schools for more than three decades, on football fields and in locker rooms throughout many parts of the country coaches are keeping the faith.

While lawyers and civil libertarians say what they are doing borders on or outright violates the constitutional separation of church and state, those engaged in prayer say they are simply following a higher law.

"I have a message that is 100,000 times more important than math, English, science and all of that," said James "Mojo" Hollowell, a successful high school football coach in Western Kentucky. "I feel like I am here to put God's word out. I am totally convinced that's my main job."

Hollowell believes that his success on the football field - 278 wins in 39 years as a head coach - is a blessing from God.

But his beliefs may have cost him a job: The 69-year-old Hollowell was coach at Henderson County (Ky.) High for more than a decade before school administrators decided not to renew his contract. Hollowell believes it was because of his decision to "witness" his Christian faith to a student he described as a devil worshiper.

School officials declined to comment, but whatever the reason he was let go, Hollowell's dismissal was seen as an opportunity for Owensboro (Ky.) Catholic High School, which hired him as football coach in 1987. Hollowell is a member of Bethel Temple in Evansville, Ind.

There's little limit now to how Hollowell and his current players can display their faith.

His players go to Mass before every game and huddle in prayer on the field after every game. Often, parents of his players and fans stream out of the stands to join in.

Both Lidy and Hollowell say they have never had a player or parent object.

"As long as I've followed Castle football, it's been a tradition," said David Hadley, whose son, Chris, is a senior on the Knights' squad. "It is part of building character. It's part of this team's concept that there is a greater being than 'I.' "

It's a sentiment echoed by Tim Rodgers' dad, Brian.

"I never was for them taking prayer out of school," said Brian Rodgers. "As far as I'm concerned, we need more of it."

High school coaches say prayer on and off the football field is common.

Eric Redman, an assistant coach at Castle, said he's coached at five public high schools in his career, and players have been encouraged to pray at every one.

Redman, who is the sponsor for the Castle chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, said he sees the power of prayer every day.

"There is a lot of pressure in high school to do the wrong things - to smoke and drink and have sex," he said. "It takes a lot to resist it. I tell students, 'Any dead fish can go with the flow, but it takes a live one to go against the stream.' "

But prayer in a public school system, whether it's in the classroom or on a game field, too often violates the constitution, says lawyer and First Amendment expert Patrick Shoulders.

"Unless it's student-led and student-initiated, it's probably illegal," said Shoulders, who represents the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp.

Shoulders recalled that when he played football for Harrison High School in Evansville more than 20 years ago, a local minister would routinely lead players and coaches in prayer. "There's no place in our locker rooms for that any more," he said.

A leading advocate for the separation of prayer from public schools is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is currently suing two high schools in West Virginia that broadcast a Christian prayer over the public address system before every home football game.

It's a clear violation of Supreme Court decisions that have banned officially sanctioned prayers in schools and at school functions, said ACLU attorney Hilary Chiz. The broadcast prayers trample on the rights of non-Christians, she said.

"There are plenty of faiths that are not Christ-centered," said Ms. Chiz. "And there are plenty of people who don't believe in a Christian God who lead good, moral lives."

Ms. Chiz said the ACLU is not interested in taking God off the football field, just out of the hands of school officials.

"There is nothing wrong with students who gather together spontaneously to say a prayer," said Ms. Chiz. "And there is nothing wrong with a coach who says, 'I'm a Christian and that's been life-changing.' Anything beyond that, there's a problem."

At Castle, Lidy's players huddle for a few moments after the game and kneel for a "moment of silence."

Many of them will recite the Lord's Prayer, which Lidy used to have the players say in the locker room before a game.

Their coach doesn't tell them how to pray, but he may offer some guidance. What he wants them to know is that there is life beyond the gridiron.

His own faith as a Roman Catholic was cemented when his now-grown son, Vince, was 4 and nearly died from what doctors thought would be a fatal bout with spinal meningitis.

"That he lived was a miracle," said Lidy. "I have no doubt that God saved his life."

After Castle had a painful loss to Harrison, Lidy reminded the players they should be grateful.

"I told them to thank God for giving us the chance to play this great game of football," Lidy said. "Not many people get the opportunity we do to play in this kind of competition."

Hollowell, too, uses prayer for perspective.

A sign in the Owensboro Catholic locker room reads, "God Hates Pride." Below it are 17 Bible verses dealing with arrogance.

"I tell my players that anybody who gets too puffed up about himself is going to be humbled by God in a real hurry," said Hollowell.

"When they start thinking they are hot stuff, I tell them the only things any of us ever do well we do through a gift from God."

(Maureen Hayden is a reporter at The Courier in Evansville, Ind.)