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Faith-based athletic academy Reality Sports announces new Tacoma training complex
Tacoma’s Reality Sports celebrates 20 years by opening a 20-acre training campus, expanding faith-based youth sports and making athletic programs more accessible for families.
By Ethan Bakogiannis, FāVS News Reporter
TACOMA, Wash. — Twenty years ago, high school biology teacher, wrestling coach and Young Life leader Brian Peterson dreamed of a way to overcome the separation of church and sports in his community. As a devoted Christian and an inspired coach, he sought for a way to spread the gospel and teach competitive sports, without the separation of the two that had become so normal in America.
However, that simply wasn’t a reality — until he made it one.
Two decades later, Peterson’s faith-based athletic organization, Reality Sports, trains thousands of young athletes, both athletically and spiritually, every year. Intertwining ministry and competition in one, Reality Sports has steadily grown since Peterson followed his calling, becoming full-time executive director of the Western Washington-based organization in 2006.
“We saw an opportunity to [minister] through the platform of sport,” Peterson said. “And so sport is a way; it’s not the only way. God can reach people in a lot of different ways, but for some reason, he has opened that door through sport in our country as a popular means to reach people.”
Now, Peterson and Reality Sports have found a permanent home after closing on the purchase of a 20+ acre training complex, a major step in the organization’s mission of reducing the physical, financial and mental tolls of sports, while amplifying the spiritual benefits of pairing sports and Christianity.
Progression and expansion
Before its recent campus expansion was announced in June, Reality Sports was able to both minister and train athletes without a true home. Despite its nomadic nature, the organization set up five sports programs and a handful of annual events that now minister to and train 3,000 unique faces each year, Peterson said.
“For the first 10 years of ministry, we really were just hopping around to different gyms,” Peterson said. “We were renting places, fields, gyms, whatever we could find, and yet God began to grow the people that were coming. We saw people coming to faith in Christ, to begin to walk with Jesus, to get connected to church. We saw disciples being raised up and sent out, and so the ministry was rich despite not having a place.”
A $9 million, donor-fueled capital campaign is currently being held to fund the purchase of a former private school campus in Tacoma, an upgrade over the organization’s previous 5,000 square foot home that ended a streak of 10 different spaces in the first 10 years of its lifespan.
Peterson’s staff, which includes 12 full- and part-time staff members, include his directors of sport programs such as baseball, volleyball or wrestling. Joe Walling, director of Baseball and Facilities, is playing a leading role in overseeing the renovation and preparation of the new, multi-building facility set to host athletes later this year.
“We’re going to be able to have something that really doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Walling said. “And what I mean by that is there are other baseball clubs, there’s other volleyball clubs, there’s wrestling clubs, there’s strength and conditioning businesses, but none of them are unified into the same mission and vision. And none of them are under the same roof. And so when we have the opportunity to be under the same roof.”
Battling costs
Peterson said Reality Sports aims to ease the various costs that youth sports exacts on kids and their families.While spiritually-infused sports is at the heart of its mission, Reality Sports wants to help alleviate societal and financial pressures felt by young families who participate in youth sports.
In its mix of competitive and recreational sports, Reality offers “Donation-Based Training,” an entry-level program allowing families to pay what they are willing and able to, despite what that program would normally cost.
“We want to protect the younger families getting swept up into this culture of, ‘If I don’t do this, I’ll fall behind,’” Peterson said. “And they’re dumping all of their money into something that the kids don’t even want at those younger ages. So, can we provide some skill development at the younger ages for much lower cost than what’s out there, and at the same time speak to the heart of the athlete?”
Now, the organization’s new Tacoma campus means participants won’t have to pay the usual overhead and facility fees that factor into what many families consider an uncomfortable acceleration of the cost to participate in sports.
“We don’t want the place to become a distraction,” Peterson said. “But at the same time, in the youth sports culture, we’re going to be a part of this $40 billion a year industry. We have to be in the world, but not of the world. And so we’re really excited about this being a premier training facility. But at the end of the day, we want to speak to the hearts of athletes without the cost.”
Practice makes perfect
Speaking to those hearts is done in an organized, intentional way, said Peterson and Walling. Spreading the word through sports begins with program directors, who coordinate much more than schedules, coaching tactics and logistics for the array of volunteer and stipend-paid coaches that head up specific teams for a variety of age ranges.
“The model is that our programs have a director,” Peterson said. “We would consider a director as a missionary to that particular sports culture. So, take volleyball for example. We have a director of volleyball that knows the language and the customs of volleyball, and so that person is going to go into the volleyball community and is going to raise up coaches that can coach teams and can coach athletes to reach the volleyball community with the message of Jesus Christ and to raise up more disciples.”
These directors, such as Walling, act as the heads of Reality Sports’ mission, dictating messaging, preparing coaches to minister to athletes and constructing lesson and practice plans based on curriculum crafted by Peterson himself.
These lessons are integrated throughout practices, Walling said. From beginning to end, there’s one intentional focus that’s talked about at the start of a session, then implemented thorough repetition and interaction between coaches and players throughout practice. At the end, a review and real-life application takes place to reinforce the curriculum that tackles typical reactions to adversity in sports exhibited by young athletes, such as a lack of effort, a bad attitude or being a poor teammate.
“Being able to disciple kids through sports is perfect,” Walling said. “It’s discipleship through all the life lessons that you learn through sports, through successes and failures, or dealing with other people. It’s just the failure and success piece of it, and just being able to redirect what the world says is of value, and saying, ‘Hey, your identity is in Christ and who he created you to be.’”
Spreading the Word
While originally inspired by legacy Christian sports groups like Fellowship of Christian Athletes or Athletes in Action, Reality Sports deviates from those longstanding organizations by taking on an academy-style structure, which focuses on year-round training and competition sessions to truly develop athletes. Peterson said that while you can find non-school, faith-based sports academies abroad, Reality Sports is one of the only ones in the United States.
While one might think its location in the Pacific Northwest — one of the least religious parts of the nation — is a detriment, Peterson said ministering through sports in the region is a challenge he and his organization welcomes as they bridge the gap between religion and sport.
“Sixty-four percent of the Seattle-metro area will never attend a religious service,” Peterson said. “And that has bypassed the Northeast. So what we found is that as we go on the ground outside the walls of the church, in a ‘secular sports culture,’ as we bring our coaches and literally stand up and open the Bible and begin to teach, is that we’ve seen a real reception of, ‘Hey, we may not attend church,’ but this we see the value in this virtue being combined with sport.”
Both Peterson and Walling said the reception among non-religious participants in Reality Sports has been positive, with many families willing to join programs despite some never having attended church.
“You would think that a lot of our athletes are coming from Christian families,” Walling said. “Here I would say, probably 50 to 60% are non-believing families. So it’s a huge mission opportunity. I think my biggest surprise is kids hearing God’s Word for the first time.”
While Reality Sports will be able to train athletes and spread the Word better than ever thanks to its new facility, Peterson looked toward the future as the organization celebrated its biggest milestone yet on the precipice of its 20th anniversary.
“It’s a sports academy that we would like to replicate across North America. Now that might take us 100 years, but what we’ve seen is in our region, it’s been a tremendously effective tool to proclaim the gospel and to make disciples through sport, and we’d like to see this happen in other places around the United States.”
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