Holy hoops

Father Kent O’Connor, pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Shawnee, takes the ball strong to the hoop against Father Joel Haug, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, Sabetha. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

On the same night that the University of Connecticut Huskies defeated the Purdue Boilermakers to win the men’s NCAA National Basketball Championship, a basketball game of more “biblical” proportions played out at St. James Academy in Lenexa.

Father Mitchel Zimmerman, chaplain/director of St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas, looks over the roster and discusses the game plan. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

OK, maybe that’s being a little overly dramatic, but the annual Runnin’ With the Revs on April 8 produced some thrills and spills of its own while promoting vocations in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and helping seminarians with the proceeds from a freewill offering.

Ja’Shaun Holliday of Bishop Ward High School in Kansas City, Kansas, looks for an open teammate at the top of the three-point line. LEAVEN PHOTO BY JAY SOLDNER

The game featured eighth-grade and high school students teaming up with priests and seminarians all for the good of vocational awareness. This matchup pitted Team Gray (as I’m going to call them), coached by archdiocesan vocations director Father Dan Morris, against Team Black, coached by Father Mitchel Zimmerman, chaplain/director of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, and himself a former archdiocesan vocations director.