An Interview with Mike Riemersma advocating the NAIA Champions of Character Program
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. A weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. And now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, this week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Mr. Mike Riemersma. Mike is the Sports Camps Director at Cornerstone University, and he is also the Champions of Character Director. Our topic today is Champions of Character, a program of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), designed to promote character development in youth and to change the culture of sport. Welcome Mike, it is a pleasure to have you on our show.
Mike Riemersma: Thanks, it's great to be here, I appreciate it.
Rob Huisingh: How did you come to be involved with the Champions of Character program?
Mike Riemersma: Well, I came to Cornerstone, Dave Grube, who is our Athletics Director, had contacted me. The Sports Camps actually was the first thing that I was involved with. They had someone in part-time; I was just doing some stuff part-time at that point. So, I came, and the desire was to really get into Champions of Character. At that time NAIA had -- it was fairly recently launched from NAI so it really wasn't that big, but philosophically it fits really well with the vision of our institution in the Athletic Department. So, Dave really wanted to go after that really aggressively, and wanted to hire somebody in a full-time capacity that would be at the University to be able to facilitate that on campus with our athletes, as well as within the community of Grand Rapids.
Rob Huisingh: Well, this is probably a good chance for us to have you tell us a little bit more about what is Champions of Character; can you tell us about the program?
Mike Riemersma: Champions of Character is a character development program specifically geared toward three main audiences; which is athletes, parents, and coaches. What we do is we talk about -- for athletes we talk about choices that they make as athletes. We talk to coaches about how they can intentionally teach character into their programs, integrate it into their programs, into their practices, into their reward system. Then talking to parents about what their kids really need from them as parents when they're going through the whole experience of athletics.
So, the central basis of Champions of Character is based around five core values, not that there is anything magical about those five core values, but those are the ones that the NAIA kind of set as the five core values of respect, responsibility, integrity, servant leadership, and sportsmanship. So, we talk to athletes about those and what it truly means to be an athlete with respect to those five core values and the choices that they make.
Rob Huisingh: Now, it seems that these days there's an awful lot of money involved in sports, and it would also seem to me that as a natural result of the big business, that is sports, and the fact that people in colleges are being groomed for big business and what it means to universities, that there is an underpinning of sort of, I don't want to call it a lack of morals, but that there is this sort of path that we're on and you're attempting to prevent that.
Mike Riemersma: I think that you can -- I mean you open the paper today, you turn on SportsCenter and everyday you read stories about poor choices of athletes. I mean recently you got Michael Vick, you've got Barry Bonds, who was been in the news forever it seems like with regards to the allegations surrounding him. Donaghy, the NBA official, that's huge, I mean you talk about betting on games, particularly games that he was involved with, officiating; it blows my mind really to think about that.
We have an eroding sports culture, and for a long time -- when you grew up and when I grew up it was always play sports because it builds character, that was always the thing you heard, but it's not the playing the sports that builds character, playing those sports reveals your character. But now we're trying to talk to coaches about intentionally teaching character and making a part of their program, because we want to make sure that it's not something that just happens by chance that a kids gets some life lessons out of the sport that he played, but that it's intentional, that we're making sure that we're teaching that to our kids at a younger and younger age, and that's what we want.
Our main goal is to move down through high school and into the middle school and elementary schools so that we can get this at younger age so that kids are hearing about Champions of Character earlier and earlier, so that when they become high school athletes that they are familiar with this and hopefully that we can change the culture of sport.
Rob Huisingh: Now, I found out about your program because you came out to our high school, you were invited out or you came out and Jeff Cook did that?
Mike Riemersma: Yeah, we have a partnership with the OK conference and through those contacts we've gotten other schools out of the conference that have called me up. I had a guy who came to our town hall meeting that we had last year. He was out at Tecumseh and so we drove all the way out there to talk to their athletes and parents about the program too. So, really it's starting to get out there a little bit, and the word of mouth is getting out there, and we really want to go as many places as we can because we believe in the message.
Rob Huisingh: Now that message, could you tell us a little bit more about that, because I heard about it -- I wasn't able to attend that particular meeting, but you came out to the school and what do you do?
Mike Riemersma: What we do -- what has been the formula for us that has worked really well with the schools that we've been to is that usually all schools have their parent meet the team nights, meet the coaches, go through all the rules and expectations, all that stuff. What we like to do is tag team on that, and so I and somebody else from our institution will come out and we will take them for 45 minutes and give the presentations. Somebody will take the athletes separately and go to give them their presentation, and I usually take the parents and talk to them in my presentation to them.
The athletes, like I said, are talking about choices that they make as athletes, challenging them that under the definition of Champions of Character, would they really be considered to be an athlete under that definition. Then for the parents we talk about what does your kid need during this whole experience. So, I talk to parents about what they need before competition, during competition, after the competition ends, and lot of it is expectations. We talk about do we even know what our kid's expectations are when they're playing sports, and what are our expectations as their parents. A lot of times they're 180 degrees...
Rob Huisingh: May not be similar…
Mike Riemersma: Oh, yeah, and lot of it is, I look at parents when I'm talking about this and it's almost like they got this look on their face like yeah, I never thought about that before. So, that's kind of what my goal is to make them think and to kind of get them -- as they walk out the door to kind of, I never really thought about that before, but maybe I'm not acting properly at a game. What am I doing at a game, am I yelling at the officials, and am I, all those kinds of things. It kind of hits some people between the eyes, but the thing for me, and the nice thing about having somebody else, if you're an AD and you have somebody else come in. We can be pretty honest because we're going to give our presentation and leave, and we have no agenda, so it has been very well received by the parents and by the athletes as well.
Rob Huisingh: Well, I have to say, I have talked to people that actually were at the show, the program, they enjoyed it and they thought that it was very enlightening. Also, I have to say, there have been times I've been at sporting events and I've lost my cool when a particular event happens...
Mike Riemersma: It's easy to do, and I've talked to parents about that. When there is an emotional tie to things it becomes very difficult to watch at times, so we have to actually teach ourselves how to watch what sport our kid's chosen to play, and some are easy and some are harder.
Rob Huisingh: So, is there a process, if the Athletic Director out there that's listening to the show or if there is Superintendent, or a Secondary School Principal that's listening to the show and they call it to the attention of the Athletic Director, how do they go about getting you to come out and to give a presentation?
Mike Riemersma: They can email me, call me, we have a Champions of Character webpage attached to our athletic site at www.cornerstone.edu/athletics/coc , and all the contact information for myself would be on there, but just give me a call and we can look at the schedule and try to set something up.
Rob Huisingh: Now, I could bet that if you look at some 600 odd schools that are throughout Michigan that eventually this might not be possible for you to make all of these presentations.
Mike Riemersma: Not by myself, no.
Rob Huisingh: So, are you looking for people to help you out?
Mike Riemersma: NAIA is pretty -- they have a program that we have to go through to be certified as facilitators or instructors, and so our goal is we have several on our staff that are certified instructors right now that are helping, and we're looking for some more of our coaches to go through that training process. So, we are actually hosting one of those training sessions next July and majority of our coaches will be able to go through that, and so we should have more people available. If we have to end up getting more staff to be able to do it, then we're moving in the right direction, and so we would love to do that too.
Rob Huisingh: Well, Mike, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today and for sharing information about Champions of Character program. If you would like to contact Mike Riemersma, he can be reached by telephone at (616) 254-1671, again, that's (616) 254-1671. You can read more about the Champions of Character program online at www.championsofcharacter.org, again, that URL is www.championsofcharacter.org. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
Announcer: This has been the Inside Michigan Education Podcast. Comments are welcome through our website at www.insidemieducation.com, or by email to feedback@insidemieducation.com. We hope you have enjoyed the show.