Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) is an international non-profit organization whose purpose is to empower coaches and athletes to inspire change in the world through the gospel. You might’ve heard of FCA before, and now it is a club here at Sahuaro.

The person to thank for this is none other than junior Marley Gandee. Marley first heard about FCA when she was at a church camp with her youth group and someone was talking about making peace in the world. The person was talking about ways you can bring God into your school, and they brought up FCA. “It was kind of like an ‘everything went quiet’ moment. And then I just followed that, like I felt a call from God,” Marley explained.

The first step in bringing FCA to Sahuaro was finding a sponsor for the club. Marley’s mom, a pastor, suggested to Marley that she ask Mr. Haynes about being the sponsor because he was also a pastor. Marley said, “I went in and I had a whole list of all of points to convince him. I sat down and started talking to him and he started typing on his computer, and he pulled up an email from Coach Fetsis from October. At this time, it was January, so it was from months ago. And Coach Haynes goes, ‘”I’ve been waiting.'”

Fetsis, who coaches football and tennis at Pusch Ridge, is the representative for FCA. He originally met with Coach Haynes out of interest in implementing FCA at Sahuaro, but Coach Haynes wanted to wait for a student to initiate chartering the organization at Sahuaro rather than recruit students to join. Once Marley talked to Coach Haynes about it, the wheels were in motion.

Coach Fetsis grew up as an athlete and played sports throughout high school; he was recruited to play college football but had an injury that kept him from continuing. So he got into coaching, and through coaching, he found his love and passion for guiding kids, and he is now a part of the FCA staff. “I just sold my business this past year because I have such a heart for young people,” Coach Fetsis explained. “I’ve just felt like there’s been this kind of prompting and calling in my life to go back and give away what somebody gave to me that changed the course of my life.”

FCA meetings are every Thursday at 8 A.M. in room 122. With the short amount of allotted time for their meetings, Coach Fetsis likes to go in with a plan, but ultimately the meetings are open. Everyone gets the chance to talk and share what is on their mind.

Marley felt that bringing FCA to Sahuaro was a good way to make the school better. Her goal with FCA is simple: “I hope that everyone who joins can get something out of it whether they’re Christian or not because the goal isn’t conversion, it’s just for people to become better people.”