Going into his baptism weekend, the team was 24-0. “I thought we couldn’t lose,” said Moore. “Imagine the feeling. You really do start to believe it.”
The very next game, the team lost to Huntington.
“I often say, I don’t think God cares if we win or lose games, but I do think He cares how we win or lose games,” said Moore. “I had just talked about following Christ. I get baptized, and then we get drilled. It was a good lesson for me because I could have taken my witness and thrown it away. I would have missed the opportunity to follow my own words.”
The team took the loss as a learning opportunity and continued in their season. Even more, the testimony of Moore’s baptism remained influential. For Stoltzfus, Beck, and Osborn, this was the final push they needed.
“It was cool seeing Coach Moore be an example for us,” said Beck. “It made me want to be an example for my team, my friends at Grace, and the third-grade small group I led at Mission Point. I needed to obey the Scriptures and outwardly express my love for Christ and my commitment to follow Him.”
On Sunday, April 28, the team gathered again, this time at Mission Point Community Church, to witness the baptism of Stoltzfus, Beck, and Osborn. Stoltzfus and Beck asked Halstead to baptize them. According to Stoltzfus, it all comes back to relationship.
“If the coaching staff didn’t have a relationship with us, then the devo wouldn’t have connected,” he said. “We’d have looked at Coach Moore’s baptism and thought it’s a really cool thing, but it wouldn’t have hit home. When we see our coaches following Christ, we look at things differently and respond differently because of how they live.”
Prioritizing relationships has been a part of the DNA of Grace’s men’s basketball program, spanning back to Coach Jim Kessler’s (BS 70) 42-year run as head coach. Having both played under Kessler, Moore and Halstead invest in players the way they were invested in when they wore Grace jerseys.
“You don’t recognize how much of an impact a coach can have on you in the moment, but when I look back, there was always someone I could go to despite the circumstances, and I appreciated that,” Halstead reflected. “Now that I’m a coach, I try to get to know players personally and help them grow in every area of their life.”
But the secret sauce to the program’s success doesn’t stop with the coach’s investment. According to Halstead, the program strives to create a playerled culture where the seniors pour into the freshmen even more than the coaches pour into them.
“We are really competitive, and we care about what is happening on the basketball floor, but I want to impact these freshmen like coaches and former players impacted me,” said Stoltzfus. “When I came to Grace, all I cared about was basketball, but I didn’t realize how much it would affect my outlook on life and my journey in my faith.”
This is why Stoltzfus hopes to become a college basketball coach one day.
Now in his sixth year as head coach and his 16th year overall in coaching, Moore acknowledges that the trophies on his shelf pale in comparison to the reward of investing in his players.
“My heart belongs to the men up on the wall,” he said, looking at his office wall covered with pictures of his players. “Those are my trophies. I am much more fulfilled going home and thinking about them than about how many times we have won and lost or how many titles we have.”
Over the past year, men’s basketball is not the only team to witness player baptisms.
Blake Burns (BA 24) baptized his teammate, Frederik Christmann of Reichenbach-Steegan, Germany, on Sunday, April 7 after sharing the Gospel with him and mentoring him throughout the year. Jasmin Slump, a sophomore women’s soccer player from the Netherlands, was baptized at Grace Community Church in Goshen, Indiana, on Sunday, Sept. 15.
“We may be on different teams, but we’re really on the same team,” said Moore. “Every time one of the coaches talks about one of their kids getting baptized or accepting Christ, there is the ultimate win. Everything we’re worried about here, competing and stuff, just goes away.”
“It says a lot about Grace College as a whole to see that these things happen organically,” said Stoltzfus. “It’s what Grace is all about — growing in your faith. Sports are just a platform to use to connect with people. I think that it’s cool that these things are happening on different teams and across different cultures, but it all comes back to one Person.”
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Read Cassadi Colbert’s story to see another example of how athletics at Grace have helped our athletes mature in their faith.