Get to know what FCA’s all about!
Athletes who pursue the Christian faith make up the campus club Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The FCA is a club on campus in which athletes with a common faith can come together to participate in bonding activities, listen to community guest speakers’ experiences, and eat pizza together.
FCA President Rebekah Premenko, a four-year member of the club and two-year president, wants all students to feel welcome into FCA club. “I liked the purpose behind it. Sharing the word of God to kids who had no idea who He even was. Plus there was pizza, that was always a bonus.”
Premenko makes sure to have a basic plan for every meeting before starting. “We try to follow the four W’s. Welcome, Warm up, Workout, and Wrap Up,” Premenko explained.
Recently, PRHS’ FCA has been meeting at Bethel Park, accompanied by Templeton High School’s FCA club as well.
At first, everyone is welcomed in, and club members have the opportunity to converse with one another. After socializing, Premenko calls the meeting to order, and begins the club meeting with a warm up activity for club members.
“FCA members will know exactly what I mean by Feet-Face or Concentration,” Premenko said. “Concentration” is a game in which someone states their number, and continues on to say someone else’s designated number, and the train continues until someone hesitates to say their number.
Once finished with the game, FCA’s “workout” consists of a student or guest speaker from the community coming in and speaking about his or her experiences with Christianity.
And finally, Premenko wraps the meeting up and dismisses club members to socialize once again, enjoying the complementary pizza to go along with it.
FCA Area Director Luke Llamas embraces his role to the best of his ability. After enduring a life-changing experience, Llamas has made it his goal to spread his faith and build a community around Christian Athletes. “My sophomore year of high school I got in a car accident coming home from a snowboarding trip, I was driving back with my brothers in the car and I started to fall asleep and I rolled a van or family van three times,” Llamas said. “After that accident I started to ask the question, like what’s the purpose of life is there a God, can I know him? What happens when we die?”
This experience made Llamas begin to shift his priorities from materialistic needs to more humanitarian efforts. “I started to learn more about worldviews and religion and the person of Jesus and so that kind of led me to want to use my athletic abilities and the different platforms that I had in life,” Llamas said. Like Llamas has done in his own life, he hopes that other athletes will pursue the same goals. “Through FCA we encourage athletes to incorporate sport and faith together and integrate sport and face, and then also to use your platform as an athlete to make a difference for good in the world, and to share, you know, the message of Christianity or the message of the gospel.”