Above: A large group of middle school and high school youth gather for a frisbee tournament in Manlius on June 19. The youth group from Holy Cross in DeWitt took home the trophy. Submitted by Steve Nepil
Youth from around the diocese enjoy frisbee tournaments this summer
By Elizabeth Landry
Staff writer
Sometimes the best and most fruitful events are those that are organic, relaxed, and just focused on having a good time with friends.
The youth ministry Ultimate Frisbee tournament that took place in Manlius on the evening of June 19 is one such event that grew naturally out of a friendship between Steve Nepil, director of youth ministry at Holy Cross in DeWitt, and John Sheridan, youth minister at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Baldwinsville. Nepil, who has worked in youth ministry at Holy Cross for eight years, said he and Sheridan have been facilitating casual yearly or bi-yearly frisbee tournaments for the youth in their parishes for about the last five years, as a way of supporting each other and facilitating fun in the summer, which is usually a slower season for youth ministry.
“Recently, there’s been a couple other youth ministers that have been interested, and so — just for community’s sake, for fun — we just invited them in. Some of these other youth ministers are kind of growing and developing [their ministries], so out of a desire for shared friendship and mission, we did it. … We all competed together, just for fun,” Nepil said, adding that over 100 teens came to the tournament, including young people from Our Lady of Hope in Oneida, led by youth minister Mark Raneiri, a youth group from the Binghamton area, as well as Totus Tuus missionaries who happened to be training at Holy Cross that week.
Nepil explained how activities like a frisbee tournament that are less structured and more about having fun can be instrumental in helping young people develop stronger ties to each other and grow strength and confidence in their youth ministry communities.
“I think there’s something really edifying to a high school kid when they show up at a fun frisbee event and there’s a lot of other high school kids and [they’re] like, ‘Oh, I’m not alone. There are lots of kids that are trying to follow Jesus in my area.’ So, I think the community helps us. The tactic of the devil is to kind of isolate and [cause] an experience of failure … and I think teens feel that, so the more that it can be communal and just fun and friendly — it doesn’t always have to be deeply spiritual — you can pray together, too, and take retreats together, which the Diocese organizes for us. But, just to play together sometimes is really kind of edifying and strengthening, and kind of overcomes that difficulty,” he said, adding that the teens also often feel more comfortable inviting their friends to these types of low-commitment activities, which are a great segue into more spiritually based events in the future.
Perhaps just as important as the effect on the teens has been the effect on the youth ministers themselves, Nepil shared, saying that youth ministry can often be a very difficult, isolating career, with high turnover and many youth ministers struggling to see the fruits of their labor.
“The average career [length] of a youth minister is something like two years… It’s very hard to have youth ministries develop community… I feel like every youth minister feels like their youth group is on the verge of, like, total success and total collapse. Right on that knife edge of like, ‘If it went one way, I would have every kid in the world, and if it went another way, you know, this whole thing is going to come apart.’ It’s a really fun profession, but it’s kind of difficult. I think what’s really helpful and needed…is essentially for youth ministers to have friends, because if you do events together, you begin to kind of share the victories, and you share the low moments. And I think when you share in those together, it makes your high not as high and your low not as low, and you kind of do it as a team.”
Although the summertime frisbee tournaments are great tools for building community and fellowship among the youth groups and youth ministers, Nepil emphasized that running parallel to these activities are the more organized, deeply spiritual events that occur all throughout the year, like trips to the Steubenville youth conference, bible studies, and retreats.
“There’s a really deep component, where they’re really going deeper [into their faith]. They’re doing Adoration, developing prayer lives, trying to live the moral life. [Frisbee] is just kind of the fun expression, where it’s like, we labor all year, and then every now and then we just have those fun expressions, where we get together and have fun … these are faithful kids that are kind of taking a break from the deeper stuff to just compete and have fun.”
And faithful kids they are — Nepil also emphasized how encouraged he feels by the strong expressions of faith he sees from the young people in the Diocese, which go directly against the current of the wider, secular culture.
“The one thing I would really love to share is just, I don’t think people in the Diocese see that young people really are responding to the Gospel. … When Jesus is really presented to these young people, many of them are all in and want to become saints, and I think it’s something that people don’t see as often, but there really is a movement of the young people. … All you read about is the youth leaving the Church, but there is this group, this faction of those that are choosing it, and they’re all in. They have no problems with tradition. They have no problems with the moral life. They have no problems with what’s asked of them. They want to be totally Jesus’s. … They are deeply faithful and deeply love their Catholic faith. These are the young people who will be taking the Church on very soon. This little tournament is a great example of that,” Nepil explained.
And what’s next for the frisbee tournament? It’s certainly growing: Youth ministers Claire Walters from Immaculate Conception and Rose Kane in Lafayette, who are new and building a youth group, will be a part of it in the future. At the time of our interview, the next tournament was planned for July 24 in Oneida, and another is set to be hosted by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in August.
Nepil summed it up best: “I think people need to read good news sometimes, and these are really encouraging signs of life in the Diocese.”
