Student-athlete prayer group fosters community and belonging
‘School is hard, being an athlete is hard, but we all have a common denominator: We care about our faith.’
During his junior year, Patrick Coyle, BS ’25, first attended The Huddle, a prayer group for student-athletes, “on a whim.” Now having finished undergrad, Coyle says he “cannot conceive of a better, more fruitful, more growth-oriented environment” for student-athletes.
“It's like night and day where my faith journey has gone, and I think so much of it is due to time in The Huddle,” Coyle says.
The Huddle, run by Thomas Sheibley, director of Campus Ministry, meets at 8 p.m. weekly in Wolfington Hall. The group first started when Sheibley noticed that a couple student-athletes in his fall 2023 Theology 154 class “seemed to have a particular interest in the subject and in their own lives of faith.” He invited these students and some other student-athletes he knew to meet up, and they coordinated their availability.
By the end of The Huddle’s first year, over 50 student-athletes had attended at least once. This number had reached 80 by the end of year two, with students from all years cozying up in their Wolfington lounge.
“There's no registration, there's no sign up, there's no RSVP,” Sheibley says. “You just show up, or your teammates invite you, or you hear about it.”
In light of The Huddle’s growing popularity, Sheibley established a student leadership team called the “Cor Team,” with “cor” translating to “heart” in Latin. Liv Beddow, BS ’26, who was on the Cor Team last year and has been attending The Huddle since its first year, calls the group her favorite organization for student-athletes.
“We just sit and talk, it's so refreshing and a lot of people say it's the highlight of their week,” Beddow says. “It's like the end of the week. You go through practice, class, clubs, and then it's like, okay, let's take an hour in our day to just sit and pause. Let's just breathe and be humans. Recognize that school is hard, being an athlete is hard, but we all have a common denominator: We care about our faith.”
Discussions and activities at The Huddle’s weekly meetings vary from week to week, with the group considered a “faith-based community” and not exclusively Catholic. On Thursday nights, the group can be found talking through meaningful quotes, participating in a service night or listening to student or guest speakers.
A favorite guest speaker was Jill Bodensteiner, JD, MBA, vice president and director of athletics. Bodensteiner described her night with The Huddle as “one of [her] favorite nights of the year, no doubt.” Her speech was about her personal journey and dove into topics like social comparison.
“I like to be very vulnerable with our student-athletes and share that side of it so that they understand,” Bodensteiner says. “Maybe normalize anything that they might be going through and understand that failure and mistakes are expected and common, and that you can bounce back from them. So I just kept it real and told them about myself and my journey and how my own reflection and spirituality has impacted that journey.”
A distance runner, Coyle describes The Huddle as bringing him a sense of community, especially as a student-athlete who tied a lot of his self worth and identity to his running times. After getting injured, Coyle says he was “searching for meaning elsewhere.”
“It felt almost like I was the only person thinking stuff like this on campus or in my own head,” Coyle says. “And then to walk in that room for the first time and see a whole room full of people who also grapple with some of these negative aspects of sport or life. But then they're like, ‘just, submit, there’s something greater here.’ I remember feeling like, ‘wow, you guys are thinking this too?’ And it was such a cool moment. It just fueled the fire to come to every meeting possible.”
Beddow similarly says The Huddle brings student-athletes a sense of understanding that can be hard to find in other campus spaces where others may not understand the rigorous student-athlete lifestyle.
“It's just nice to not have to explain the craziness of being a student-athlete,” Beddow says. “You just go and you're like, ‘okay, you get it, let's talk about faith. Let's have intentional conversations.’”
