The Ath­letic De­part­ment Con­tin­ues to Achieve Its Goals

MISHAWAKA—Every year, the Ath­letic De­part­ment aims to achieve four goals: spir­i­tual for­ma­tion, ath­letic de­vel­op­ment, ser­vant lead­er­ship and aca­d­e­mic ex­cel­lence. Through­out the fall se­mes­ter, the ath­letic de­part­ment has made strides in all four of these goals. 

“We try re­ally hard to keep it sim­ple with our four main pil­lars,” Ath­letic Di­rec­tor Tony Na­tali said. “We want to have spir­i­tual for­ma­tion; we want to make sure we are Christ-cen­tered. We want to make sure we are re­cruit­ing well so that we have full ros­ters and do well aca­d­e­m­i­cally. We want to make sure, thirdly, that we are com­pet­i­tive in all of our sports. And fourthly, we want to make sure that we have a good cul­ture on all of our sports teams, and that our kids are hav­ing fun with what they are do­ing.” 

One of the biggest chal­lenges for Bethel ath­let­ics is the fa­cil­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to Na­tali, the biggest thing that he pushes his coaches to­wards is ca­ma­raderie and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This is be­cause Bethel has lim­ited fa­cil­i­ties for its ath­letic pro­grams, so it is para­mount that the coaches com­mu­ni­cate with one an­other about var­i­ous things within the de­part­ment. 

“We want to con­tinue to have ca­ma­raderie, to­geth­er­ness and fo­cus,” Na­tali said. “There is not re­ally any event that we will hold, but we will hold the Helm Awards in the spring. We’re ex­cited about what we are do­ing. One thing we will be start­ing is an all-ath­lete Bible study in the sec­ond se­mes­ter on the sec­ond and fourth Mon­day of every month that I will lead.” 

The Helm Awards is an event that the Ath­letic De­part­ment has held the past cou­ple of years, and it gives them a chance to come to­gether and cel­e­brate the ac­com­plish­ments of the ath­letic year. 

For more in­for­ma­tion on Bethel Uni­ver­sity ath­letic visit bupi­lots.com.