Team Chaplains
Team Chaplains work with the coaches and Athletics Staff to provide spiritual care to their student-athletes by attending games and events, and by being a constant resource for their well-being and growth.
Team chaplains, commonly called “sport chaplains”, have a funny place somewhere circumscribed within the roles of mentor, cheerleader, and minister. Even among chaplains, the mission of sport chaplains is often under-represented or at least unclear. Put simply, the distinct and challenging role of a sport chaplain is to act as a spiritual resource for athletes immersed in a world of high-stress, high-stakes, and fast-paced competition.
Cornelia Connelly's Legacy
Our Rosemont Ravens Team Chaplains get to unpack that “spirituality” in a distinctly SHCJ way, which is certainly a blessing. Spirituality in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and in the mission of its foundress Cornelia Connelly, is decidedly incarnational: that is, bodily, active, and attentive.
We provide that spiritual care by presence, by seeing and treating student-athletes as individuals with full lives that play out mostly off the field and court. In an intentional and fitting way, chaplains also respect and recognize the complex relationships that student-athletes have to their own bodies as simultaneously empowering and limiting.
The SHCJ emphasis on humility further shapes our Team Chaplains: the manner of our attentiveness and presence must be marked by the openness and receptivity that grows from a humble spirit. Our athletes know humility. In victory, it shines in their genuine gratitude. In defeat they feel the wounds of disappointment and frustration.
They push their bodies to their limits and constantly redefine those limits, but they still know fatigue and injury. We care for their spirit, their disposition, with our spirit and our humble presence, with open ears and open hearts.
Current Team Chaplains
Christine Hagedorn, DMgt, MBA
Professor, Discipline Coordinator,
NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative
(610)527-0200 x2308
christine.hagedorn@rosemont.edu
