February 4, 2010: Athletics

OWAC advisor Julie Duffy, Scott Hassee ’10, Sean Patrick ’11, President Rock Jones, and Athletic Director Roger Ingles display the NADA trophy recognizing the accomplishments of the 2009 Bishop Games.

Photo by Sara Tincher

Bishop Games Recognized by NADA
Plaque awarded at OWU-Wittenberg basketball game

The Bishop Games, a Special Olympics-type event sponsored by the Ohio Wesleyan Athletic Council (OWAC), was recognized by the National Association of Division III Athletics Administrators with an award for an outstanding continuation event.

Roger Ingles, Ohio Wesleyan athletics director, presented the NADA plaque to Sean Patrick ’11 and Scott Hassee ’10, who organized last year’s inaugural Bishop Games, at halftime of Wednesday’s men’s basketball game against Wittenberg.

The Bishop Games are just one of the many community service projects the Battling Bishops take on. Every athletic team is required to do community service projects, and other projects include the women’s basketball team hosting a workshop for local Girl Scouts and the men’s basketball team coaching elementary school kids.

“We feel it is an honor to give back to the local community in different ways.” Athletics Director Roger Ingles says. The teams also do fundraising for various causes and also support and donate to local charities.

“Community service is important, and every team does their own individual part, except for the Bishop Games. That is OWAC’s big project and all the teams come together to pull it off,” says Julie Duffy, women’s lacrosse coach and OWAC advisor. Though started only last year, the Bishop Games already rank as OWAC’s biggest project, with all teams involved to make the meet the best that it could be.

Patrick and Hassee will be reprising their roles as organizers for this year’s Bishop Games, scheduled for April 18 at Selby Field and the Gauthier Track.

Both students agree the biggest problem they had last year was time, only having about two months to schedule everything and get athletes to compete. All the countless hours and long nights were well worth it, though, as 97 athletes came to compete and there were just enough OWU athletes to help with the meet.

“Getting donations so that the participants could compete for free was very challenging, but in the end, we earned enough to pay for the costs and even had a little left over.” Hassee says. There will be even more fundraising events to raise even more money for this event and hopefully, there will be even more donations to local special needs charities. OWAC has even more helpers this year and it will make the overall event run even more smoothly and within the next two weeks, hopefully a Web page will be up and fully functional with a submission form, donation form, and images from last year’s event.

“An objective that we are working on for this year is to raise even more money so we can give the athletes even more free apparel and so we can improve the event itself. Last year the athletes received free admission to compete, a t-shirt, a water bottle with our logo, an engraved dog tag, and a gold medal for the winner of the events at each age group.” Patrick says. While the donations are what keeps the event up and running, there is more to the meet than that.

“Seeing the smiles on the faces of the athletes after they compete is something we all look forward to.” Hassee says. The smiles of the athletes are just another reason to continue this amazing event and for even more athletes to come compete—and for more of OWU’s athletes to help. The athletes were able to get even more interaction with the athletes in the final event, the Bishop Relay, where an OWU athlete was the anchor of a four-person relay team.

“Everything about the day was perfect because we as college athletes were able to touch more lives than we could have ever imagined.” Patrick says. “The ways that OWU athletes touched the lives of the special needs athletes was what made this meet so successful and what will continue to make it so amazing.”

– Danielle Rubinstein-Towler ’13