Dr Dobie Moser
Episode 120
17 MAY 2021
This interview includes the guest sharing from his personal life about having gone through something that no parent ever wants to experience. On the vocation side, he has worked in youth and young adult ministry and CYO athletics for 37 years, including five years in the Diocese of Columbus. He has worked for Catholic Charities in Cleveland for 26 years. On the sports side, he played high school and college tennis, coached high school girls’ volleyball and coached Special Olympics teams in Pennsylvania and Texas. He is a tennis teaching pro and has coached boys and girls’ varsity high school. Plus, he was a Head Tennis Pro at a camp and resort north of Toronto, Ontario, for five summers and in the North Shore area of Chicago at a private club. He also even served on the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Notable guest quotes:
“We started CYO tennis in the middle of a pandemic. It actually is a great pandemic sport — you’re 80 feet from the other side! And the kids can stay away from each other.”
“We’ve kind of taken that approach throughout the pandemic and this whole current year of, what can we do to invite parents and kids and coaches to be engaged with each other, to be engaged with CYO sports, and, most importantly, engaged with their Catholic faith.”
“There’s a line in my work about how to have courageous conversation, and the line is this, that, ‘Reflection and prayer is what turns experience into insight, and insight into intentional, compassionate action’.”
“…Embrace the healing that is available to us, through God’s grace, God’s spirit, and, through our sacramental life.”
“We integrate prayer into our beginning and ending of every session. We’re very mindful about coaches training and formation in ALL of our CYO programs… And the centerpiece of that… is the coach seeing athletics as a ministry by which to help young people and families go as disciples of Jesus Christ.”
“There are SO many opportunities to experience God’s love and grace in athletics, that frankly, we have to have coaches who are trained and aware so they can see those and use those and do it in a way that says, wow, sports in a Christian context really can be very powerful.”
“I was working at a job… running a large Special Olympics program… I taught kids with physical and mental disabilities how to be physically active. And I’ve got to tell you, it was my ministry. As a Christian, at that time, that’s where God had me called to be.”
“The development of the child as a human being and as a Christian disciple is definitively more valuable and important to us than winning any championship or game.”
“One of the things that life teaches us if we’re open to learning it, is that we do not choose our own sufferings. They choose us. And we do, by the grace of God, choose how we respond to them.”
“Who does Jesus favor, and it would be the least, the lost, and the left behind. So, we have mentored refugees, literally have lived in our home with us. And I’ve got to tell you, we have received far more than we’ve given in that process.”
Related link:
CYO website/programs in Cleveland
