Our Mission

Several years ago, the members of the Alchesay High School Basketball Falcons were stunned when they met their new coach, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The next season, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and six-time NBA champion served as assistant coach for boys’ basketball at Alchesay High on Arizona’s White Mountain Apache Reservation. Kareem’s salary for the season was $1.00!
The novelty of having an NBA superstar as coach wore off quickly. He treated them as professionals; practices were hard and fast. He broke them of many bad habits that they had learned, Kareem said, from watching today’s NBA players. What brought Kareem to the team was an affinity for what these kids were going through. He said, “In the neighborhood I was from, it wasn’t much different from a barrio or ghetto or even from the White Mountain Apache Reservation. Harlem is just about as disadvantaged as you can get. Yet I was able to be a student athlete and I was able to get a college degree coming from those circumstances. So I am walking proof that it can be done. I want them to get that idea. Our nation has so much, and people have things to give that they are not even aware that people need and want. People in my position, who have time and are not pressed financially, usually are the ones with the most to share.”
For the varsity team at Alchesay High, their coach truly modeled “the way, the truth and the life.” Kareem’s work ethic, integrity and compassionate sense of social responsibility were a living inspiration to them as these young men began their adult lives. In the same way, discipleship compels us to come to know Jesus, to try to understand his Gospel, to embrace the spirit of his work and to make the purpose of Jesus’ life the purpose of our own. For Kareem, his coaching in Alchesay realized the hope and meaning of discipleship: “to do the works I do.”
Regardless of our career path, pro-athlete, teacher, doctor, laborer, parent or priest, we are all called, through baptism, to do the work begun by Jesus - to bring forgiveness, justice, peace and the consolation of God into our homes and workplaces, schools and playgrounds! Every moment of every day this is our mission, should we choose to accept it. And it is not an impossible one if we allow the love of God to flow through us freely. We must be God’s instruments, God’s “good shepherds,” for the salvation of the world!