Atamian leaving St. Edward to tackle a new mission

Baseball has been and always will be a passion for Rev. Tom Atamian, but the time has come for a different mission.

An Episcopal priest raised on the sport, Atamian has spent the last 16 years as an assistant baseball coach at St. Edward, a post he will step down from at the end of the season to devote more time to a budding cause.

After he retired two years ago as pastor at St. Hugh of Lincoln Church in Elgin, Atamian became involved with the Anglican mission for children in Fresnillo, Mexico, operated by an organization called Christ for Children International.

Fresnillo is located in Zacatecas, the second-poorest of Mexico's 31 states. The mission feeds 300 children weekly and helps raise money to send kids on to high school. Crime is rampant in the area and parts of the depressed town don't have running water or electricity, let alone public parks or organized youth sports. Kids rarely get the chance to play games and be kids.

"I was down there and I really felt God put it in my heart to bring some play and fun into the kids' lives," Atamian said.

In January of 2009, Atamian spoke to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Judson University in Elgin about his idea to launch "sports missions" to Fresnillo with the goal of instilling religious belief through the teaching of soccer and baseball.

"I just felt God was calling me to use my skills in sports and my love for Christ and combine that," Atamian said. "Using sports as a way into people's lives is neat because it's a common language around the world."

Four soccer players from Judson - Javier Rojo, Ryan Reopelle, Eber Bercerra and Stephen Drew - joined Atamian and three parishioners on the first sports mission to Fresnillo last August.

You could say the free clinics were a hit. The group held two sessions daily for four days, each brimming with 70 smiling children.

The Judson players taught the kids soccer, splitting them into four groups for instruction and demonstrations before they played games. Meanwhile, Atamian taught the finer points of baseball, a sport he learned from some of the best.

Atamian fell in love with baseball at Barrington High School, where his sophomore coach was future Illinois hall-of-famer Kirby Smith, now the hitting coach at Jacobs.

After graduating from Barrington in 1971, Atamian went on to play at the University of South Alabama for another knowledgeable baseball man: Eddie Stanky. The former White Sox manager had taken the head coaching position at USA, where his two sons were enrolled, the year after he was fired by Chicago in 1968. Stanky was Atamian's college coach through his graduation in 1975.

"I really learned baseball from two brilliant baseball people," said Atamian, who was ordained a priest in 1979.

Though he hadn't coached baseball other than Little League, in 1995 Atamian answered a newspaper ad placed by former St. Edward athletic director Jim Kafer. Now the athletic director at Geneva High School. Kafer hired Atamian on the spot to coach the St. Edward freshmen under varsity coach Dan Koessel, now the varsity assistant at Larkin.

Atamian went on to coach sophomores for two seasons and became a varsity assistant for Rich Sanders and current head coach Gene Belmonte. He has been in charge of the pitching staff ever since. He has also been a substitute teacher at St. Edward for 10 years.

Considered a gentleman of the game by those who know him, Atamian's calm pastor persona is often challenged when America's pastime gets the blood boiling.

"He has this priestly demeanor about him but in creeps his competitive nature. It's a wonderful thing to watch," said Belmonte, who has coached with Atamian for 15 years. "People just love him. He has this wonderful, cheerful manner. He's very dedicated and very passionate about baseball. After God and his family, baseball is a close third."

"When it was game time, it was go time for coach Atamian," said Doug Sanders, the 2003-04 Daily Herald Athlete of the Year. Sanders is now a graduate assistant baseball coach at Kent State and an active player for the River City Rascals of the Frontier Leauge. "He's a great person, but he was as into it as anybody else."

Atamian's knowledge of the sport is expansive, but his positive approach to life is what will be missed most at St. Edward.

"First and foremost, he's a great person beyond baseball or anything else," Sanders added. "He's always there for you. He has a strong passion for baseball and a strong respect for it. Baseball has taken me a lot of places, and Fr. Tom has meant the world to me when it comes to the game itself. He taught me to respect it. He's always going to be a great friend for life."

A group called The Refuge Fellowship was formed from Atamian's Saturday ministry to students from Judson and Elgin Community College. The group's goal is to recruit, prepare and support members for missions within the United States and abroad. The Refuge Fellowship will undertake its second sports mission to Mexico this summer.

Because the free clinics in Fresnillo currently take place on a concrete playground, Atamian hopes in the future to purchase a vacant field in the middle of the poor town and develop permanent soccer and baseball fields. Anyone interested in donating to that cause can contact him at tomatamian@gmail.com.

As his final season winds down, leaving organized coaching won't be easy for the lifelong baseball man. But Atamian said the time is right to devote more energy to what he sees as his broader mission.

"I'm really mixed on retiring because I've loved it at St. Edward and I love coaching with Gene, but I see something new happening," Atamian said. "I have a passion to teach young people not only baseball or sports, but using that as a way into their lives to help them know more about Christ.

"This is really unchartered for me. I've never done anything like this before in a missionary sense. Sports ministry is something new for me."

Good luck with your broader mission, coach. St. Edward's loss is Fresnillo's gain.