By Chad Bonham

On July 12th, SportsLife Wrestling held its first clinic with newly appointed Executive Director Brandon Slay in Lake City, Florida. Director of Field Operations for Wrestling Steven Jude and Director of Wrestling Wynn Michalak joined Slay for this impactful one-day event in partnership with Christ Central Church and Lake City’s Royals youth wrestling program.

Nearly 100 athletes, ages four to 18, attended the clinic as parents watched from the stands. An opening two and a half hour session led to lunch and fellowship time and was then followed by another 90-minute training time.

But for the SportsLife Wrestling team, the most important aspect of the clinic was when Slay closed out the day with one-hour leadership talk and Gospel presentation.

“I shared a message about God being the creator of the universe and how He created them in His image,” Slay said. “I explained to them how we messed up and how Christ paid the price for us.”

Afterwards, Slay, Jude and Michalak handed out SportsLife Wrestling New Testaments that feature testimonies from Slay, Jordan Burroughs, Kennedy Blades, and Bill Zadick, and include a 30-day devotional on Matthew and a 30-day devotional on John—both written by Moody Theological Seminary professors.

“After the two training sessions and the leadership talk, we get those Bibles in the kids’ hands and try to connect the message back to God’s Word,” Slay said. “It was a really special day.”

The impact of his message was solidified in several tangible ways including a social media post from one of the female wrestlers in attendance who shared some of the verses Slay referenced in his talk and one of his key talking points: “If you can believe Genesis 1:1, you can believe everything in the Bible.”

“It was awesome to see that this girl was really listening,” Slay said. “And she wasn’t just listening. What she was hearing clearly had an impact on her life.”

According to Slay, outside of a few squirmy youngsters, the vast majority of the athletes were “zoned in.”

“After it was over, I had to chance to meet most of them and sign t-shirts, wrestling shoes, and the Bibles that has my testimony,” Slay said. “It’s such a powerful way to plant seeds of truth into these kids’ lives and to everyone else there. Even the referee was paying attention. He got there early and talked to me afterwards and had some really nice things to say. Most importantly, peoples’ hearts were warmed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

For Jude, clinics like this continue to be about building relationships.

“As we build those relationships, we get the opportunity to share Christ with people and to also help them grow in their relationship with God,” Jude said. “These clinics allow us to infuse life into wrestlers, coaches, parents, and anyone who is able to hear. This happened through small conversations during the day as we served the kids and tilled up the soil of their hearts.”

The athletes weren’t the only attendees that were impacted by the Lake City clinic.

“During the entire day, Steven and Wynn and I were building relationships with coaches in the area,” Slay said. “We were building relationships with parents. We were building relationship with the business leaders from places like Lake City Toyota who helped sponsor the event. So when you step back, the plan isn’t just to impact the kids, but to impact the coaches—so they want to bring you back—and to have an impact on the parents.”

Several parents thanked them for holding the clinic and specifically for sharing the Gospel message with their kids. Slay recalled one parent’s grateful response in particular.

“I don’t like to leave without talking to as many people as we can,” he explained. “But as we were on our way out, I felt like we’d talked to everybody when a dad ran after me. He said, ‘Look, I don’t want to be weird but, dude to dude, that was really awesome.’ And then he just turned around and walked away.”

Also after the event ended, host coach Luke Smith approached Jude about doing a two-day event next year.

“Coach Smith was super excited about what he saw and was already thinking about doing it again and expanding,” Jude said. “We want to do everything with excellence because that’s the way God calls us to do it. Like Colossians 3:23 says, whatever we do, we’re doing it for the Lord.”

While the immediate focus continues to be one-day clinics, SportsLife Wrestling hopes to expand into multi-day camps in the coming months and years.

“We’re stepping out in faith,” Slay said. “We’re taking this faith journey with SportsLife Wrestling and we’re committed to our mission, which is to use training, resources, and events to infuse life into the wrestling community. As we’re faithful in doing that, we believe God will open doors accordingly.”