By Melissa Brawdy

He was a three-sport athlete at Clarence High School and went on to play football at the University at Buffalo. Now, Doug Rifenburg uses his passion for sports, combined with his passion for his faith in God, to help lead Upward Sports camps for kids twice a year at Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church in Williamsville.

“God just put it on my heart to take my passion and love for sports and my passion and love for my faith and for God and combine those things into doing sports ministry at Eastern Hills,” Rifenburg explained.

The church has been running the camps for five years, with indoor street hockey in the winter and football and cheerleading in the summer.

With children of his own who play sports, Rifenburg understands the importance of sports in so many families’ lives and how demanding those sports schedules can be. When he realized that those families are more willing to spend time at a sports field than they are at a church, Rifenburg saw an opportunity.

“Our lives get so over scheduled with sports that families are spending a lot more time on a sports field than they ever are in a church,” Rifenburg said. “And so rather than waiting for families to come to our church, we’re kind of bringing the church to the families where they are in the sense of sports. Families put so much emphasis on sports nowadays that if you’re able to combine those two things — faith and ministry and sports — you’re able to touch a lot more people.”

But the focus of the camps isn’t only on faith. The coaches spend their time focusing on teaching the kids good sportsmanship and character, as well.

“The coaches spend a lot of time trying to teach the kids to be good sports and use good sportsmanship and be respectful to the refs and the coaches; be good teammates, and help each other out,” Rifenburg explained.

Some time is also spent reading Bible stories and talking about faith, but Rifenburg wants to meet these kids and families where they are. The most important thing he wants them to know is the love of God that he has experienced.

“It’s sharing the love of Jesus through sports,” is how Rifenburg explained the mission of the Upward Sports program. “It’s sharing our Christian faith through sports.”

Rifenburg believes that if kids leave the week-long camp with good sportsmanship and the knowledge that Jesus loves them, then he and his coaches and other volunteers have done their job.

“If kids take nothing else away, there’s two things,” Rifenburg said. “Number one, we want you to be better sports when you’re out there on a field somewhere. And number two, we do want you to know that Jesus loves you. If kids leave our camps with those two things ingrained in them — that I should be a better sport and that there’s this guy up in heaven named Jesus and he loves me — if those two things happen, then we’ve succeeded.”