Kennedy: Prayer, sports will always be mixed

My 9-year-old son and I were watching the Vanderbilt-Florida football game on television last Saturday when a player got knocked unconscious.

Commodore running back Zac Stacy took a wicked hit to the head and lay motionless on the Dudley Field turf for several minutes. Medical staff surrounded Stacy and then strapped him to a stretcher and slowly wheeled him off the field.

"What's wrong with him, Daddy?" my son asked anxiously.

"They're afraid he might have a spinal-cord injury," I said. "He could be paralyzed."

Game coverage panned to the stands where a woman -- I'm guessing Stacy's mother -- had her eyes closed and her head tilted backward. There were tear tracks trailing down both of her cheeks. The woman was talking directly to the sky, her words coming in emotional bursts.

"What does paralyzed mean?" my son said.

"It means you can't move your arms and legs -- maybe forever," I said.

I could sense the gears in my son's brain turning. He is beginning to mentally process that bad things can happen to good people.

"So how would you go up the stairs if you're paralyzed?" he said.

"You wouldn't, at least not without help," I said.

Meanwhile, players on both teams knelt and prayed.

As Stacy's stretcher neared the exit to Vanderbilt Stadium, he lifted his left arm and extended two fingers. The television feed cut back to the stands where the praying woman lifted both hands in the air in jubilation and dropped her head. (It was later reported that Stacy sustained a concussion but should be OK.)

Later that afternoon, at my son's soccer game, he rushed out from his position as goalkeeper to smother a shot. While on the ground, he absorbed a glancing kick to the head.

Ever since a co-worker told me that she once attended a youth soccer tournament at which a young goalkeeper was fatally kicked in the head, I cringe when my son goes to the ground.

For about three seconds, my boy remained in the fetal position, both hands cupping the back of his head. Instinctively, a one-word prayer took shape in my mind: "Help."

I was relieved when my son scrambled to his feet and heaved a pass with a grunt, which I recognized as anger.

The next day, in Sunday school class, we had an animated discussion about press-box prayers at public-school sporting events.

The debate boils down to two sides who, on some level, enjoy poking a stick at one another. There are those who like to play the First Amendment trump card to prove a point. And then there are public-prayer advocates who protest, but perhaps secretly relish these assaults on tradition as examples of persecution.

This I know: As long as athletes have parents, teammates and coaches, prayer will be ever-present at sporting events -- public or private.

And the most powerful demonstrations of faith are not the mumblings of a minister but the pleading prayer of a parent's heart in conversation with its maker.

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