On July 24-26, the Total Athlete Camp 
took place on Athletes in Action’s Sports Complex. 110 kids, ranging in age from 6-12, came to Athletes in Action’s Sports Complex to do drills and play games of baseball, soccer, football, volleyball, and track and field. Along with learning drills and doing games in these sports, the kids were also broken down into “Huddles” where Bible content was taught twice a day. On the conclusion of each day of the camp, the interns performed skits to hammer home the Biblical concepts that were taught during the day. While the camp was being enjoyed by the kids, five interns from the Sports Complex and Retreat Center, were hard at work planning and facilitating this camp. Each of the five interns: Joel Fehrman, Jackson Smith, Toby Heidt, Maya Solomon, and Brittni Hoover were each responsible for various parts of planning and facilitating the camp.
The interns had to think about all of the logistics of the camp, from registering the kids, to trying to gather up volunteers to help chaperone the kids, to even laying out the plan for the games the kids would play, the interns were hard at work to make sure the Gospel would be spread to these kids this summer.
Jackson Smith, an intern from Corban University in Oregon, was the man in charge of laying the plans out for the games the kids at Total Athlete Camp played. Smith admitted that organizing the games that the kids would play was a challenge when he said that: “It was difficult to find the right activities to teach the kids basic fundamentals while still letting them have fun.”
However, Smith also knew that the struggle of trying to plan the logistics of a sports camp was worth it because when it all came down to it, when details were pushed to the side, the Gospel was shared!
“In the end I think we accomplished our goal of teaching kids the right way to play sports, which is for God or an Audience of One.”
Smith couldn’t have been more right in this quote. It can be easy to get caught up in the minutia of the task at hand, but when it all comes down to it, the goal of a ministry like AIA is to spread the Gospel to people who participates in sports. Since the goal was reached, it didn’t matter what obstacles the interns faced in planning this camp. The interns, along with the kids,certainly learned to play for God as their Audience of One.