Di­rec­tor of Ath­letic Ser­vices An­nounces Re­tire­ment

MISHAWAKA— Re­cently, Tom Visker, Bethel’s di­rec­tor of ath­letic ser­vices, an­nounced that he will be re­tir­ing in June. 

Visker’s love of sports goes as far back as he can re­mem­ber.  

“I kind of grew up as a sports junkie,” said Visker. “It’s been... a big part of my life.” 

Visker played through lit­tle league base­ball and ju­nior high sports, then par­tic­i­pated in bas­ket­ball, base­ball and cross coun­try in high school. In col­lege, he played bas­ket­ball and base­ball. 

Visker ob­tained his un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree at Calvin Col­lege, his mas­ter’s de­gree at West­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity, and his doc­tor­ate de­gree from  In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity.  

“I got a teach­ing de­gree in phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, and then was able to be in­volved in teach­ing and coach­ing since I’ve grad­u­ated,” said Visker. 

Visker has been at Bethel since 2003. Orig­i­nally, he was the chair of the ki­ne­si­ol­ogy de­part­ment, and taught there full time for “six or seven years.” Af­ter that, he ac­cepted an of­fer to be­come the dean of arts and hu­man­i­ties, and he did that for four years. Then, five years ago, the po­si­tion of ath­letic di­rec­tor opened, and he agreed to ac­cept the po­si­tion. 

In ad­di­tion to the day to day ad­min­is­tra­tive tasks that come with the role, one of Visker’s pri­mary jobs is to en­sure the qual­ity of the stu­dents’ ex­pe­ri­ences. 

“The main re­spon­si­bil­i­ties [are] to try to pro­vide our stu­dent ath­letes with the best ex­pe­ri­ence that we can, and to cul­ti­vate our coaches.” said Visker. “We call them pas­tor-coaches, as the spir­i­tual lead­ers of the team as well as the sport leader of their team.” 

Visker added that the de­ci­sion to re­tire has not been an easy one. 

“My wife and I started talk­ing about it se­ri­ously about a year ago,” said Visker. “As we prayed through this and we just fol­lowed God’s lead­ing with this we felt very com­fort­able with the de­ci­sion that now was the time that it’s okay to re­tire from Bethel.” 

Visker plans to use his time to be­come more in­volved in his church and to look for other ways to be in­volved in the com­mu­nity. He said that while he and his wife have no fi­nal plans, there are sev­eral op­por­tu­ni­ties they are in­ves­ti­gat­ing. 

“We aren’t big trav­el­ers, but I am a fairly avid mo­tor­cy­cle rider,” said Visker. “I hope to be able to take a few trips on my mo­tor­cy­cle too.”