Blue Team victorious over Gold Team with 4-1 win May 28 at CBC High School
Father Charlie Archer’s sound offensive strategy on the soccer field boiled down to one split-second decision:
“There’s the ball. I should kick it,” he said.
His second-half strike in the Souls and Goals soccer game on May 28 at CBC High School helped propel the Blue Team to a 4-1 triumph over the Gold Team.
As he reflected on his contribution to his team’s victory, Father Archer surveyed the field and, beyond it, several hundred cheering fans lining the stands, and explained that what he really saw that night were signs of hope and joy for the Church and vocations.
“It brings a lot of hope for the future of the Church to be having such a good time and community together,” said the associate pastor of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis.
After a six-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the annual soccer match organized by the archdiocesan Office of Vocations has since been reimagined as a springtime event held immediately after ordinations.
Souls and Goals debuted in 2013, featuring the seminary’s soccer team competing against a team of priests and their friends. It was originally held around November to coincide with National Vocation Awareness Week. The event highlighted priestly and religious vocations by putting seminarians and priests in a fun and visible setting.
The revived format now brings together priests, deacons, seminarians and high school students divided into two teams: the Gold Team, whose roster includes players from parishes north of the Missouri River; and the Blue Team, representing parishes south of the Missouri River.
With a scoreless first half, Jack Carlton of Sacred Heart in Florissant opened the second half with a goal, with Father Archer and Carlos Gonzalez Del Castillo of Holy Infant in Ballwin adding further goals to put the Blue Team on top. Deacon Ben Wolf, recently ordained a transitional deacon and assigned to Sacred Heart in Florissant, rounded out the tally with a fourth goal with less than 24 seconds on the clock.
Father Josh Deters, associate pastor of St. Joseph in Cottleville who is moving in July to Immaculate Conception in Dardenne Prairie, scored for the Gold Team, but it wasn’t enough to bring the team within reach.
“I’m glad I could finally put one in the back of the net,” said Father Deters, who formerly coached Kenrick-Glennon Seminary’s soccer team. “We were playing really well, and we had a lot of St. Joe’s Cottleville people and my new parish ICD, so I wanted to show them I could score. But it’s been a good way to promote vocations. We have a lot of fun … and I just see the joy of it all.”
While the game had an air of friendly competition, the broader goal was to celebrate recent ordinations, foster fraternity and give the Church in the archdiocese a fun way to encounter and support vocations, vocations director Father Tony Ritter said.
“It’s really good and healthy for us as a diocese to have some way of gathering for fun, for fraternity, but also celebrate what just happened” with ordinations, he said. (Five men were ordained transitional deacons May 9, and Father Michael Laugeman was ordained a priest on May 23.) “It seemed like a fitting way to bring the Souls and Goals game back, and just in a casual way, have an opportunity to meet the guys who just got ordained.”
Religious sisters added another vocational element to the match, with the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus coaching the Blue Team and the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation of Nashville guiding the Gold Team.
Calling the Blue Team the “true team,” Sisters Patricia Young and Veronica Marinari brought no soccer coaching experience but all of their positive energy, plus a few rules for their players: stay safe, stay hydrated and don’t cheat.
“Whether you win or lose, you do your best,” said Sister Veronica, who along with Sister Patricia serve at Cor Jesu Academy.
“I think it’s great for us to do vocational events that are like this — something that’s engaging in the community and a sport they know,” said Sister Patricia, who is heading to Rome to continue her formation with the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
“It’s good to have the visibility of religious sisters, priests, brothers, because we’re just like everybody else — we’re just dressed a little differently,” Sister Veronica said.
For the Gold Team, head coach Sister Kateri Rose of the Nashville Dominicans said her strategy was to come out strong on the offense, net some goals early on and then play it by ear to get a sense of what the field looked like before deciding whether to pull back on defense or go strong on the forward.
While that strategy ultimately didn’t prove successful, she and her fellow coaches — Sisters Maura Sheen, Agnes Clare and Anna Maria, all of whom serve at St. Joseph School in Cottleville — said that Souls and Goals was a beautiful witness to vocations.
“It’s just to see that all of these vocations are here, present in the archdiocese, and are part of the universal call to holiness, and are all vocations in the Church,” Sister Kateri Rose said. “Along with that are the families that they grow up in, their parents as witnesses of married life. So, I think it’s beautiful to give a witness of all the vocations in the Church, and the love and support that we all have for one another and the rallying around our priests and their vocation.”
