Originally Published: September 2012
Hang around the Syracuse campus long enough, and you’ll likely run into a young lady in Orange athletic gear hanging up fliers, chatting it up with fellow athletes and, if around a big crowd, letting out an occasional shout.
“FCA tonight!”
A year earlier, Jenna Rickan would have cringed at the thought of sharing her faith so visibly. Back then, the Syracuse soccer player was living out the beginning stages of her Christian walk.
“I wouldn’t have thought I’d be carrying a Bible around or talking about God in public because it was embarrassing,” Rickan says. “Now, God has made me courageous in Him. I’m still learning, of course, but He’s transformed my heart.”
FCA Syracuse director Nate Bliss didn’t know Rickan when she was too timid to share her newfound faith. Bliss’ first interaction with her came shortly after he took his role at the university, and he immediately noticed Rickan’s exuberance and visible leadership skills.
“There was this player running around the field, loudly encouraging her teammates, and having the time of her life,” he recalls. “Normally, when someone who is as competitive and highly skilled as Jenna is, I often wonder if they're actually enjoying their sport. But watching Jenna play reminds me of watching my 3-year-old splash in mud puddles.”
A Life Saving Injury
Two years earlier, during Rickan’s freshman season, the same joy was not to be found. She played in Syracuse’s first seven games, starting six, before tearing her ACL and meniscus and ending her season.
“It was devastating,” Rickan says. “I’d never been hurt. I’d never sat out a game in my life. Having soccer taken away from me was a really hard thing for me to deal with. I was really mad at God. I was thinking, ‘Why did You let this happen to me? I’m a good person!’”
Rickan wasn’t a very religious person at the time but had attended church occasionally with her family growing up. The injury, along with the anger towards God she was experiencing, caused her to steer further away from religious activities. She had finally fulfilled her dream as a Division I soccer player, but now it was gone.
That’s when the soul-searching began. While rehabbing with trainer India Trotter and former 'Cuse assistant coach Abby Minihan, Rickan sensed there was something different about them.
“They were both so encouraging to me and so loving, and I never knew why they were so happy all the time,” she says.
Not only was Rickan struggling to recover from her injury, she was also dealing with a long-term relationship that she now describes as increasingly “unhealthy” and knew she needed to make a change.
“My relationship fell apart, soccer was falling apart, and here India was telling me who God is and what Jesus has done for her,” Rickan says. “And I thought, ‘That sounds cool. I want that.’ We talked about it more and more, and a couple months after training with her I told her, ‘I want what you have. I want to live for a bigger purpose.’”
In the eternal sense, Rickan’s injury saved her life and set her on the fast track to significant change. After experiencing steady spiritual growth throughout that year, she worked with the Chicago Eagles Soccer Club, a division of Missionary Athletes International (MAI), during the summer and started to catch a glimpse of her newfound purpose.
“It was the most life-changing experience I’ve ever had,” Rickan says. “I really understood who God was in my life and what he wanted for me, what I was living for. I realized I didn’t have to give up soccer to glorify God. I could glorify God through soccer.”
But Rickan was admittedly still nervous going back in the fall of 2011 for her junior season. She didn’t have many fellow believers to lean on and FCA at Syracuse was small. Rickan assumed she would feel uncomfortable in a setting that only had a handful of regular attendees.
That assumption was false. Rickan collided with a passionate group of 20 or so fellow athletes, and she was emboldened by the worship and the relevant Bible study. By the end of the first semester, Rickan says God was calling her to get more involved. Bliss, still in his first few months on the job, recognized that calling and asked her to join five other athletes as the ministry’s core leadership group.
“Because her faith is so authentic and she lives it out so joyfully, the other athletes on campus are drawn to her,” Bliss says. “For Jenna, FCA is about creating a safe place for students to ask tough questions and get honest answers; fellowship around worship and the Word; and, most importantly, develop such a deep relationship with Jesus Christ that their identity is in Him, not in their sport.”
A Shrinking Comfort Zone
During the second half of her junior season, Rickan says the FCA group effectively “changed the entire atmosphere at Syracuse.”
“It’s taking over people,” she says. “They can’t deny truth. They can’t deny that their abilities are from the Lord. FCA has literally transformed people.”
Rickan helped organize three women's Bible studies while the guys established one of their own as the FCA group grew to more than 100 people with about 50 salvation experiences and subsequent baptisms.
But nothing could prepare Rickan for just how small her comfort zone would shrink this past summer when she traveled to Brazil with MAI.
“That was a life-changing experience,” she says. “I was able to see how big God is. He can break any barrier, no matter what language you speak. Most of us didn’t speak Portuguese, but they still understood why we were there. It was just Jesus. His love can break any boundaries.”
Rickan saw that principle play out before her eyes one night when 40 sports missionaries went into the streets of Sao Paulo.
“We brought out a soccer ball and started playing, and these kids came out of the woodworks to see what we were up to,” she says. “We ended up praying for two kids that night who were involved with drug gangs and had been doing drugs even before they came out to play soccer. Through our prayer, they were really broken down, and we were able to share God’s love with them.”
Bliss is continually amazed at the speedy work that God has done in Rickan’s life. When FCA partnered with a local ministry to assist several student-athletes who had received Christ or recommitted their lives to the Lord, Rickan sat through the water baptism class with them and watched every single one get baptized, even though she had two finals the next day. It was that display of selflessness that led Bliss to appoint Rickan as Syracuse’s FCA President for the 2012-13 academic year.
“Jenna is the consummate servant-leader, a term that gets thrown around a lot but is seldom actualized,” he says.
Rickan’s commitment to Christ has not only changed her outlook on life, but also her perspective on soccer. At first, it was challenging to reconcile an aggressive style of play with her desire to live righteously. But it all came together when she discovered Colossians 3:23, where Paul famously writes, “Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men...”
“I’m still learning, but after you get a grasp of who Jesus is and you know why you’re playing, you realize that it’s about glorifying God,” Rickan says. “If you’re a Christian, you should play the hardest, compete the hardest and practice the hardest. We play for the Lord. We serve the most powerful, amazing, loving, caring God. If you understand that and know that, you’ll never want to play harder for anything else.”
Photos courtesy of Syracuse University Athletics