Bethel Ath­letic De­part­ment Works to Build Fam­ily Cul­ture Among Ath­letes

MISHAWAKA—Since Ath­letic Di­rec­tor, Tony Na­tali, stepped into his po­si­tion, one of the things he has tried to push is bring­ing his ath­letes closer to one an­other. He has started to do this with a va­ri­ety of events within the ath­letic de­part­ment. This has in­cluded events such as all-ath­lete games or the helm awards.

“I don’t like si­los,” said Na­tali. “I don’t like it when you have dif­fer­ent sports that are in si­los. With as many ath­letes as we do on this cam­pus, it was im­por­tant for me to im­prove the cul­ture and the fam­ily cul­ture here. I want to make sure every­one is sup­port­ing each other.”

The idea be­hind the all-ath­lete games is to get ath­letes to sup­port their fel­low stu­dents here on cam­pus by at­tend­ing the first home game of the sea­son. By do­ing this it helps the at­ten­dance of some sports and keeps the fam­ily cul­ture around each team.

“I think be­tween the all-ath­lete days and the helm awards they have helped the com­radery,” said Na­tali. “By hav­ing all of the ath­letes in the same place, at the same time it has helped build that cross-sup­port sys­tem.”

For more in­for­ma­tion on Bethel Uni­ver­sity ath­let­ics visit https://​www.bupi­lots.com/​in­dex.