By Hannah Bartlebaugh, Staff Writer
While most students were wrapping up the final week of Christmas break, the Wheaton College softball team had already returned to campus before leaving for a mission trip. The team had not been on a mission trip since January of 2019, long before any of the current players were on the team. This year, they spent Jan. 4–11 in Costa Rica.
While the NCAA allows athletic teams to go every three years on “foreign tours,” including mission trips, the long gap between trips for Wheaton softball happened for a variety of reasons, including coaching changes and the COVID-19 pandemic. Head coach Amanda Fazzari said, however, that leading up to this recent trip, the team was ready to go.
“Our program was just in a state that we were physically, mentally, spiritually ready to do this again,” she said.
While they were ready, Livi Figueroa, a senior Biblical archaeology and classical languages major who plays catcher on the team, said that team members were not totally sure what to expect going into the trip.
“Our main intention was just to serve,” she said.
Over the course of the trip, Wheaton softball partnered with High Performance Sports, a Costa Rican sports organization. Senior business and economics major Shylah Dozeman, who is a pitcher, said that High Performance Sports provided them with two guides who helped coordinate the team’s activities and also helped with the English-Spanish language barrier.
The trip included time at Casa Bethesda, a widows’ ministry, and at Funipar, a special needs school. At Casa Bethesda, the team was able to share a meal with widows and worship together, singing three songs in English and one in Spanish. Despite the language barrier, the worship experience was still powerful for members of the team.
“Seeing the joy and the way they were worshiping through a language they didn’t even know,” Dozeman said, “gave a new perspective on the universal ways that we can communicate.”
At Funipar, the special needs school, the team spent a day with the students. They made bracelets, played basketball and organized a kickball game. Senior elementary education major
Victoria Barbar, who plays pitcher and infielder, said that the player’s presence “showed their commitment to how much they actually wanted to spend time with us,” Barbar said.
Although they planned to teach the students about softball, the students were not interested in learning about other games or activities. Figueroa said that the time spent at the school was a reminder about how joyful softball can be, and for the team to not take themselves too seriously.
“At the end of the day, it’s a game in and of itself,” she said, “and it should be in a place of play and joy.”
While in Costa Rica, the team also hosted softball camps and competed alongside the Costa Rican national team. Rather than holding a Costa Rica versus Wheaton game, the teams were mixed together so that Wheaton and Costa Rican players could play alongside each other.
Younger Costa Rican players also participated in the game with the national team, allowing it to function like a community outreach clinic. Fazzari said that combining the teams was a good way to strengthen relationships between the Wheaton and Costa Rican players.
“It was a really good way to communicate with them one-on-one because you’re on the same team,” she said.
As one of the last components of their trip, the team helped build a concrete staircase for a church in the Los Angeles district of Costa Rica. Barbar said that because softball requires the players to spend a lot of time training in the weight room, they were able to use their strength to serve in a new, practical context.
“When we showed up, they were shocked that us, being women, were the ones making the staircase,” said Barbar. “We’re able to use the things that we’re doing here to bless others in a very fruitful way.”
For Dozeman, this was another example of how the team was able to show God’s love to the people in Costa Rica, even though there was a language barrier.
“That was just a time where we were able to serve by sharing God’s love through our actions and not our words,” she said, “which I think is the theme of this whole trip, no matter what happens, it’s all for the glory of God, and I’m not in control.”
Dozeman said an overarching takeaway for the team was how actions can reflect Christ, even when words are difficult.
Coach Fazzari wanted her team to be reminded of their true purpose for playing softball through this trip. “It’s really easy at this level to treat practice and competition and your opportunities to play college sports as a job and sometimes lose the love of it,” she said. She said that she wanted her players to remember their purpose for playing softball, specifically at Wheaton. “It’s a really unique experience, playing for the Lord and playing with the spiritual foundation. And that is absolutely what happened.”
