August 29, 2009 ON A MISSION Charlotte Eagles play for God and a title
Charlote Eagles coach Mark Steffens: "Every year is really extra special here. We're definitely blessed that way. I sit back and ask, 'Why does that happen every year?' It transfer to the field. Sometimes I'm shocked." Photo courtesy of Charlotte Eagles
By Michael Lewis
BigAppleSoccer.com Editor
It takes a special soccer player to play for the Charlotte Eagles.
Sure, talent is a pre-requisite, but being a good person with faith are even higher priorities, such as a belief in God.
The Eagles aren't your typical soccer pro soccer organization as they a Christian organization.
They are also quite successful on the field. They hope to win their third title in seven appearances in the championship game against the Richmond Kickers on Saturday night (Fox Soccer Channel, 11 p.m.).
"Every year is really extra special here," Eagles coach Mark Steffens, a former Syosset, L.I. resident, said earlier this week. "We're definitely blessed that way. I sit back and ask, 'Why does that happen every year?' It transfer to the field. Sometimes I'm shocked."
Based in Charlotte, N.C., the Eagles are a division of Missionary Athletes International, which undertakes sports ministry to share the message of Christianity through the soccer. The Eagles, who field a women's team -- the Lady Eagles (W-League), are a sister organization of the Southern California Seahorses (Premier Development League). they also go on goodwill tours in the off-season.
"It makes my job really easy because the sacrifices they make," Steffens said. "They can make more money elsewhere."
While the Eagles players read the bible regularly, they don't want to be known as bible thumpers.
"We don't want to be portrayed or thought of or perceived as a bible beaters," Steffens said. "That's not what we want to do. We want people to walk away from our games saying something is different about those guys. We want guys who want to communicate the love of God through their playing. That's a difficult thing to do because it's a tough sport, a contact sport. And that doesn't mean that we're soft."
So, after defeating teams, many of the Eagles' opponents are surprised that they are so physical.
"In the beginning a lot of teams said, 'You guys are religious. You guys are dirty,' " Steffens said. "And its not. We're hard because we feel that God calls his children to be excellent, to be organized. He has a verse in the bible that says that everything you do, do it as hard as you can and for God's glory and for not your own glory, for man's glory. So that's what we portray to our guys.
"So they play hard. As the bible tells us, we play as hard as we can. We don't back down. We try to be organized. We try to be fit. We do everything we can to be the best that we can be. But yet be good sportsman and good role models in the process.
"That's what's something we felt was lacking, not only in this country, but in sports in general, not just soccer. look at the negative role models that kids are watching with the money -- and I'm not going to mention names -- of the negative players in basketball and football and some of the negative comments that are being made. Our kids and grand kids are hearing this stuff and they want to be like those people. We said 15 years ago, 'You know what? We had enough of this. We want to start a different trend in this country. We want to be sportsmen. We want to do it to honor God and to honor God, you have to be good sportsmen.' "
So, the Eagles feel they play the game as it was meant to be.
"We don't want to get in guys faces like you see in the game," Steffens said. "We don't want to pull shirts. We don't want to do the negative thing. We go in very hard for a tackle. If it's late and we get a yellow card, we accept it. You don't want to be late. You try to pick the other guy up, when we injure them or something like that unintentionally. but if there is anyone on our tell who will do those things intentionally, then they won't play. We don't stand a yard in front of the ball on a free kick because the rulebook says you're not supposed to do that. We try to get the rules and try to play the game the way the game was meant to be played."
The players are urged to follow their faith on the field as well as off of it.
"We train our players all the same way with an in-depth curriculum we have devised over the years," he said. "We want their faith to be on the field. We tell them it's no sense of having their faith if it can't go into every aspect and every area of their lives. What good is your faith if you're a God carrying person Sunday in church and then Saturday on the soccer field you're not or Monday morning in the work place you're cheating and stealing the boss? It doesn't make any sense. This is a lifestyle. This is a 24/7 lifestyle that if you're going to honor God with something that you're going to do, you need to honor in all aspects of your life and playing soccer is no different."
The background checks aren't done over days, but weeks and even months. The Eagles' player pool is small, but they receive hundreds of applications to play. Every religion is invited to try out besides Christianity -- yes, Muslims and Jewish players have tried out.
If a player is not open to following a certain lifestyle, then the Eagles are not for him.
"We make it very clear up front what they're joining," he said.
The team does background checks on every player.
"What kind of person is he? They're working with 2,000 kids all year," Steffens said, referring to the club's soccer camps. "Our player pool is small, but we have a great network out there."
Steffens felt that gives the team a special chemistry.
"I don't want to make this sound like we have a 12th man in God, because I don't believe God gets involved in the results," he said. "He lets us go out and have fun and do our thing. In a way we have an extra man because the players are so unified in their goal that there's an extra dimension to our team that a lot of teams don't have.
"You hear on the Yankees winning or when a football team wins a Super Bowl, the guys had a special chemistry, they enjoyed being together. There is something to that. We get that every year. We get that special chemistry in that common goal of honoring God in their play. It gives us a little something extra every game we go into."
Players realize they don't get rich playing for the Eagles. The average salary in USL-2 is around $12,00-$1,500 a month over five to six months. Players can supplement their wages by coaching at the youth, high school and college levels.
Some players stay at host families for no cost -- free room and board.
"They feed them and they feel it is their mission to help them," Steffens said. "It's kind of a neat dynamic we have going on here.
Prior to every match, the Eagles pray during a bible session. But it is not what you think.
"We don't necessarily pray that we win the game," he said.
The prayers about the game are usually more about playing to the best of their ability.
On a road game day, the team usually gets together for an hour and a half at 11 a.m. and talk about a particular part of the bible or even reading a portion from one of the books.
"It helps their character," Steffens said.
The Eagles have invited a local professional athlete who is a believer to talk to the team.
"It's all about building guys for the future, not so much for the game," Steffens said.
They have visited the world, from India prior to the tsunami in 2004, to Rwanda five years after the genocide to Gaza and Israel.
"It was life changing for our players, myself included," Steffens said. "The amount of pain and suffering these people went through, almost a million people were slaughtered. Everybody we had met had an aunt or uncle, a brother or son, somebody, sometimes two or three, slaughtered a few years back. It was amazing trip for us."
How as a Christian team received in a Muslim land such as Gaza?
"That's what a soccer ball allows you to do," Steffens "We want to show people that we're here because we love them. It's a goodwill tour. We want to build relationships. I would say that most people don't even know we're a Christian team. We don't go around with a banner. In some places we do. It all depends on who invited us."
On Saturday, the Eagles take on their archrival, the Richmond Kickers in Richmond, Va. They haven't beaten the Kickers in three meetings this season (0-1-2).
Still, Steffens likes his team's chances.
"Richmond over the years has been a great rivalry," he said. "They're kind of had our numbers over the years.
"We're playing well enough. If we play like we played against Wilmington last week, we can beat anybody. We're clicking on all cylinders."
