This is the third in a series of profiles of researchers who were awarded a 2024 Lasallian Research Grant or Lasallian Research Travel Grant by the Lasallian Region of North America (RELAN).
Mary Volmer is the mission fellow for athletics at Saint Mary’s College of California, her alma mater. In this interfaith, lay chaplaincy position, she counsels and attends to the spiritual well-being of NCAA and club athletes and coaches. Volmer specializes in meditation, deep listening and centering prayer techniques, and teaches athletes and coaches to manage and alleviate anxiety, rediscover joy, and develop their gifts in a balanced and healthy way.
With her Lasallian Research Grant, Volmer will study how to facilitate meaningful discussion about Lasallian spirituality in sport and learn how to improve spiritual health within Lasallian institutions, tertiary and secondary, that serve students of many faith traditions. This research will build upon the work of scholars at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona. In addition to studying De La Salle’s Method of Interior prayer and revisiting the resource “Lasallian Spirituality Today,” she will interview chaplains, coaches and Brothers at Lasallian colleges and universities nationwide.
In the following reflection, Volmer shared about her personal experience with this topic:
When I arrived at Saint Mary’s College of California, I knew very little about the college’s Lasallian and Catholic foundations. I had been offered a scholarship to play basketball and, at 18 years old, all other concerns – social, academic, spiritual – came second to my obsession with the sport. Though a capable student and drawn to the divine, my identity and sense of self-worth were then so tightly tied to the game that any struggle on the court sent me spiraling into existential crisis and despair.
It was, therefore, a very good thing, an act of grace, that I had landed at a college rooted in Lasallian spirituality and dedicated to the education of the whole person. Slowly, under the guidance of professors, coaches and mentors, my academic and my faith life began to grow. As they did, my athletic self became an integrated part of my identity, rather than the whole. This was a great gift and one of the reasons I became a professor, and later an interfaith lay chaplain for athletics, at Saint Mary’s.
(With this research grant), my goal is not only to identify and articulate the unique charisms Lasallian spirituality offers student-athletes, coaches and support staff, but to consider how sports participation can contribute to the spiritual health and well-being of the wider Lasallian community.
Volmer is also the author of two novels – “Crown of Dust” and “Reliance, Illinois.” In her private practice, she works with artists, especially writers, helping them to uncover the voice and the underlying emotional, spiritual and dramatic structures of their work. Her website is www.maryvolmer.com.
To learn more about Lasallian Research and Travel Grants, visit our Higher Education Support page.