A story on the impact of a coach in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
It’s easy to underestimate the impact one person can have in a world with such great need, but the Fellowship of Christian Athletes has witnessed time and time again the influence one coach can have on an athlete, a team, and a school. God uses coaches to influence young people on and off the field every single day through their words and actions. One such coach is a young man named John Dewitt.
Coach Dewitt is a native of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. During high school, he played football, wrestling, baseball, and ran track and cross country. He grew in his love of running and found he was especially fond of the longest distances, like the two-mile run for track. When he attended UW-Oshkosh for secondary math education, he kept running, again gravitating toward the longest distance - the 10k. He regularly ran 80-110 miles per week in college (that’s 15-18 miles per day!).
After college, he just kept running and extended up to the marathon, where he has qualified for two U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. He has no plans of stopping and feels he has great running years ahead of him.
A Teacher and Coach for God
Dewitt’s love of running made him a natural for coaching track and cross country at Nathan Hale High School in West Allis, Wisconsin, where he has taught upper-level math classes since 2014. While he trains athletes and prepares students for post-secondary education, he is at West Allis for so much more than that.
What Dewitt learned through that study stays with him every day as he teaches and coaches in a school with a student population were fifty percent qualify for free and reduced lunch. He says, “The biggest is just the way you love the kids on a consistent basis. I can be stern and firm, but I coach very much out of positivity. I want to win, of course, but my number one thing is developing the character of the kid and loving them well. That’s my number one job as a coach. People see that and wonder, ‘Why is he that way?’” It goes back to the verse from Matthew: “Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” It isn’t about Coach Dewitt, but God has given him a heart to drive others to God.
Shining that Light
It has become increasingly more difficult to be open about faith in a public-school setting, but Coach Dewitt recognizes that it is often through persecution that more people come to faith in Jesus and learn to boldly stand on God’s truth. He says, “God worked all the time when the Romans were persecuting and in countries where the Gospel shouldn’t be spread. Persecution helps things grow.” He continues to strive to be Christlike in coaching where he can build deep connections with his athletes. He also gets to serve as the FCA huddle coach at Nathan Hale.
FCA Huddle
The huddle started in 2015 with a student who had a heart for the Lord and reaching his school. That year, only two or three came each week, which was sometimes discouraging. But Dewitt learned to ask himself, “Is God working in this one kid’s life?” When the answer was yes, it didn’t matter that no one else was coming. However, he still had a heart to see more athletes reached. Six years later, there is an 8-student leadership team, and twenty or more attend each week’s Wednesday afternoon huddle. Ten students from the school attended the Northland Region’s annual leadership camp in 2021, and those leaders were equipped not only to become better leaders but to grow in their relationships with God as well.
Glory to God
Through everything, Coach Dewitt wants to bring glory to God and reflect Christ’s love to every student, athlete, and staff member he meets. It’s even his hope that anyone who reads his story will be drawn deeper in relationship with the Lord. He says, “My hope is they won’t be like, ‘How cool is that guy,’ but I hope that inspires them in their faith and brings glory to the Lord.” Anyone who can run like Dewitt and spend hours upon hours teaching and coaching is pretty cool, but he’s right. It is all about bringing all the glory to God.
Coach Dewitt is just one of dozens of coaches around the region who have been empowered to bring Christ’s love to their campuses. If you stop and think about the influence of a coach, Dewitt rubs shoulders with hundreds of people every day. If he can reflect Christ’s love to them, what a difference it could make in the hearts and minds of people and how it could change a community! And moving beyond that, imagine the eternal impact if every high school and college campus around the region had just one empowered coach like Dewitt. Will you join us in praying for just that?
