California basketball coach made players fill out Christian journals... or run extra laps
A public school coach tied Bible-based journaling to athletic discipline, raising serious church-state concerns
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A high school basketball coach in California told his team that they needed to regularly fill out a Christian journal with affirmations and prayers—and punished them with laps if they refused to do it.
The practice only stopped after a parent of one of the athletes contacted the Freedom From Religion Foundation about it.
All of this took place last year at Enterprise High School in Redding. The parent said Coach Abie Ramirez gave his team copies of the “Empowered Christian Athlete Journal” in order to track their development.
The book purportedly helps students “who want to perform at their best, in sports, school, and life by grounding their strength in Christ.” Students are asked to complete journal entries about things like a time they failed, what they learned from it, etc. While a secular version of that could be helpful, this book includes Bible verses to justify self-improvement because the ultimate goal is to make sure they convert. The book’s creator, Derek Ward, openly brags about how religion is necessary to be the best version of yourself, describing the journal as a “mindset and faith training system.”
The journal would have been bad enough, but a failure to complete an assignment came with punishments—double the running, in one case—which the parent preserved in the form of screenshots of the coach’s messages:
In a letter FFRF attorney Samantha F. Lawrence sent the Shasta Union High School District, she even quoted the parent talking about why this was such a problem:
The parent who contacted us further explained that they “are very angered and disappointed . . . that a Christian based journal would be pushed at a public school” and “our child would be disciplined for not participating” in the religious journal activities. They went on to say that they are not a religious family, and that the faith-based journal assignments crossed the constitutional line.
You have to appreciate the parent being so open and honest here. In so many cases where a public school coach is pushing religion on kids—even when it’s indirect, like Coach Joe Kennedy, who demanded the right to pray at midfield after football games—the assumption is that everyone is on board and that no student has a problem with it.
The church/state separation side tries to remind people that that’s almost never the case; students don’t want to jeopardize their spot on the team, create discord among teammates, or push back against their coach. The point is: It’s foolish to assume everyone’s Christian no matter where in America you are.
That’s why FFRF asked the district to “immediately investigate this situation and ensure that Coach Ramirez ceases pushing religion onto students in violation of the First Amendment.”
It worked. The district eventually wrote back to say the promotion of religion would stop immediately.
The District conducted an investigation into the matter and confirmed that the journal was used. Upon completion of the investigation, we informed the coach that the use of the journal in this context should not continue moving forward.
In addition, the District will provide training and guidance to staff to ensure a clear understanding of expectations and to help prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
It’s the right response and confirms that what the coach was doing was completely inappropriate.
“This is one of the more egregious misuses of authority we have recently seen by a public school coach,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Coaches wield enormous influence over young athletes, and that authority cannot be used to pressure students into participating in religious exercises. Public school athletics should build teamwork and character, not serve as a vehicle for religious indoctrination.”
We have not heard any statement from Ramirez himself apologizing or even acknowledging that he crossed a line. Nor have we heard why he thought this was a good idea to begin with. In any case, because of one parent and one watchdog group, he won’t be able to push his religion on kids in the future.
I hope he’s learned his lesson, though. When you’re an authority figure who controls students’ playing time, discipline, recommendation letters, and, in some cases, scholarship opportunities, you shouldn’t make any of that dependent on the kids sharing your religious beliefs. That’s just coercion and it helps no one improve.
It’s also why these cases deserve far more attention than they usually receive. If an atheist coach told students they needed to reject God because only they had all the power on the court, it’d be covered non-stop in right-wing media. But it’s hard to believe this will get much coverage even at a local level.
Keep in mind that the district didn’t really reprimand the coach at all. He was told to stop with the Christian journaling… but that’s it. There’s no indication this will affect him in any meaningful way. There’s no “strike” on his record. It feels like he suffered the bare minimum. Without meaningful consequences, though, the lesson to other coaches is that the worst thing that happens if you violate students’ constitutional rights is that you might be asked to stop, maybe, if anyone catches you. It’s not much of a deterrent.
The very people whose heads would explode at the mere suggestion Islam be forced on their children by a coach, seem to think it’s perfectly okay to force their particular brand of Christianity on a captive audience of teenagers. If there is an upside here it is that this fool of a coach has probably driven a fair number of his players away from Christianity by his behavior. Now . . . why does this man still have a job?
The scumbag is waiting to be fired so he can martyrbate and cash in.