Chaplain at ’88 Olympics recalls seeing parable of the talents unfold

The minister saw a great need for spiritual fulfillment among the athletes.

McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Rev. Carey Casey didn’t take home any medals as a chaplain at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

But his work at the games did reinforce what he already knew to be true: Be yourself and be available to God.

Twenty years ago, the Rev. Mr. Casey was standing on an Athletes Village balcony overlooking the Seoul evening sky.

At his side was 25-year-old Carol Lewis on the night before her Olympic long-jump competition. When the rest of the world would have expected Lewis to be asleep, visualizing a perfect leap to victory, she was restless.

She missed her father, who had died shortly before the Olympics.

“I think it was (her father’s) birthday that night when we were on that balcony, and she was just sitting there, talking about her dad,” said Mr. Casey, now CEO of the Shawnee, Kan.-based National Center for Fathering. “So what was my job? Not to say a lot but to listen to her talk about her dad.”

Carol’s brother, Olympic legend Carl Lewis — en route to winning two gold medals and one silver — joined them on the balcony later to reminisce. “Here are a sister and a brother in the Olympic Village. Greatest athletes in the world, but they’re missing their dad,” Mr. Casey said.

All Mr. Casey, then 32, could do was listen and be available to whatever was needed.

In this case he was an ear. At other times he was a word of encouragement, a hug or pat on the back or a shoulder to cry on.

For athletes competing at this summer’s Olympics in Beijing, the pressure to perform at the highest level is no less than it was 20 years ago.

To enter the complex lives of Olympic athletes, Mr. Casey had to be flexible. He had the common ground of being an athlete — he had been a star running back for the University of North Carolina’s football team in the late 1970s, and he had already started serving as chaplain for NFL teams while working for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But Mr. Casey never had to deal with weight of a nation on his shoulders.

He recalled meeting a 19-year-old U.S. swimmer in an elevator after the young man’s race. Mr. Casey asked how it went.

“He unloaded,” Mr. Casey said. “And before it was over, his head was on my shoulder. He was crying, but he had put his shades on. Although I knew his pain, knew his burden, knew his failure, he still didn’t want me to see him cry.”

Here was a 19-year-old with plenty of great years in front of him, but he had missed his shot at winning, Mr. Casey said. And it might have been his last. The expectations are tremendous.

“I’ve never been in a place where they were so celebrated but under so much pressure,” Mr. Casey said. “You were not just representing your school, your family or your town, you were on a worldwide stage. And if they didn’t have it together mentally, physically and spiritually, it would be very tough for them to make it.”

In his daily chapel time, among 62 other Christian chaplains — there were also representatives of other religions in the Olympic Village — Mr. Casey ministered to both American and non-American athletes. He saw the great need for spiritual fulfillment among the athletes.

“Believe it or not, some of them, that’s where they got close to God, because they realized that this was a dream come true, and they could not make it on their own,” he said. “It came through a lot of prayer, a lot of hard work, a lot of times when they could have been injured and they were not, and someone else was.”

In one instance, it all came down to talents.

Mr. Casey was approached by U.S. women’s basketball coach Kay Yow before the team’s gold medal game against Yugoslavia to address a problem: dissension among older players on the team about playing time.

The younger, faster players were getting the limelight while the veterans sat on the bench as reserves. The team needed motivation to push through the medal round.

The chaplain knew the right message. He spoke to the team about Matthew 25, Jesus’ parable of the talents. In the story, the master gave three servants different amounts of money — one, two or five talents — each according to their abilities, to keep while the master was away. The servants with five and two invested the money; the servant with one talent put it in a hole in the ground. The two who invested were praised, while the servant who put his talent in the ground was punished.

“I said the issue is not how many talents they had,” Casey said. “The issue was the head coach knew how much (playing time) each one of them needed, and she gave to them each according to their abilities. ... It’s the experience that no one else had.

“The master was upset with (the servant given one talent) because he did not do his best with it, and I shared that that night.

“Don’t get caught up in who’s going to get the glory,” he said to the team. “Do the best with what you have. Invest it in tomorrow.”

Little did Mr. Casey know, but his message was about to bear fruit.

The U.S. team was struggling to keep its lead in the gold-medal game. “Some of our great players got in foul trouble, and Ann Donovan (one of the disgruntled players) had to go in,” Mr. Casey said.

“I’ll never forget it: She tipped the ball here. Got a rebound there. Tipped it in. Banged on a girl. Got a steal here. From what I remember, it was eight times in succession that she touched the ball for the few moments she was in the game.”

Donovan helped the American team close out the game and win gold. “I’m convinced to this day — you can watch the clips — that they wouldn’t have won if she hadn’t gone through that spurt where she really gave her best. She frustrated those big girls from Yugoslavia.”

Mr. Casey sees his time 20 years ago as a major period of growth, one of the pieces to the puzzle that molded him into who he is today.

“I took advantage of not just my role, but to learn from others,” he said. “I took the opportunity to be teachable. That Olympic experience catapulted me into a whole other arena.”

“It helped me to learn that we don’t have it all together. (And) to be yourself, because you can’t be someone else, and people can see right through you.”

Mr. Casey grew up in Salem, Va., and attended Andrew Lewis High School. As a sophomore, he contemplated quitting the football team after an argument with the coach. Advice from his father persuaded him to stay, and he became part of history: He played against T.C. Williams High School in the 1971 state championship — the same game depicted in the 2000 film “Remember the Titans.”

He summarizes himself in one sentence: “I’m a man of God, a husband and a father.”