The Hill-Murray varsity football team had just finished an intense practice Aug. 26. In three days, the Pioneers would open the regular season.
Head Coach Rob Reeves let the players know they needed more preparation to be ready for the game. His words were loud and strong.
Then, a big mood shift took place. Reeves stepped aside after addressing the players at midfield on the practice field as 64-year-old Benedictine Sister Linda Soler — the chaplain of this team and all others at the school — approached.
Her demeanor was a little softer, but no less energetic. With all the players gathered around her, she instructed them to arrange their helmets in a special formation. It was part of a ritual she created in her role as football chaplain. She calls it the blessing of helmets, complete with a Benedictine prayer and a sprinkling of holy water. After completing this year’s blessing, she led the players in a raucous cheer.
Sister Linda has been team chaplain for the last eight years. She comes to every game and has formulated a pregame ritual in which players file out of the school building in Maplewood and onto the field, reaching out to touch a cross she holds up while standing at the gym’s exit door.
In this way, she provides what Reeves calls a “yin and yang” system for helping the boys develop both football skills and faith.
It worked so well with the football team that school leaders, including President Melissa Dan and Principal Susan Skinner, decided to broaden Sister Linda’s influence and appoint her as chaplain for all sports teams. That came out of a discussion between Skinner and Sister Linda several years ago when Skinner was then the vice president for mission.
“As we were chatting, we came up with this together, to say, ‘Why not take the secret sauce you have with the football team and provide that to all of our sports teams?’” Skinner recalled. “Right away, we just knew this was it. We just knew. There was no real long discussion, no in-depth study, no research papers on how this works in other schools. We just knew this would work.”
Stories abound describing the way Sister Linda reaches out to students to help them in whatever way they need, whether it be problems on the field or off. It can be as simple as giving them a shot of confidence or as deep as helping them with the loss of a loved one.
“She’s really everything that a Catholic school’s athletics should embody,” said Colton Ricker, a senior who has played both varsity basketball and baseball. “It’s a different experience that you don’t find anywhere else.”
Last spring, the Pioneers were in the section baseball playoffs. Sister Linda came to the game and walked up to the fence behind home plate when Ricker was in the on-deck circle. As he was getting ready to bat, he heard her tell him to “hit for Jesus.”
For some students, Sister Linda’s presence means far more. Abby Haldorson, who graduated in May, met Sister Linda in the classroom while in ninth grade. Haldorson’s friend had died by suicide and Haldorson was in the midst of managing her emotions, trying to find a meaningful way to bring good from her personal tragedy.
Haldorson approached Dan with a proposal to construct an outdoor classroom across the street from the school’s front entrance on land owned by the Benedictines. Dan wholeheartedly endorsed the idea and instructed her to reach out to Sister Linda. So, Haldorson sent Sister Linda an email.
Before getting a reply, she went to a ceramics class where Sister Linda was serving as a substitute teacher that day.
“I had never met Sister Linda at this point,” said Haldorson, who now attends the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and is studying industrial and systems engineering. “I ended up taking a break from my ceramics project and I walked over to her, and we had a conversation” that lasted “the entire class period,” Haldorson recalled.
“She really just listened to me and let me share my story and talk about the struggles of what I was feeling and what I was hoping to do with my project.”
With Sister Linda’s support, Haldorson set to work constructing the outdoor classroom, which contains a small, open space with limestone slabs arranged in a circle for students to sit on. Students in all grades began using it her sophomore year and Sister Linda led the prayer of blessing in the summer after the school year ended. Haldorson said it has been a hit with students and teachers, noting that a wide array of classes are held in the space.
Haldorson further connected with Sister Linda while competing in varsity soccer, swimming and track. Though her life as a college freshman is busy, Haldorson is by no means stepping away from her friendship with Sister Linda. She continues to come to the Benedictine Monastery for Mass, even though she is Lutheran. And there are many text exchanges between them.
“We are very much bonded,” Haldorson said. “She’s really special to me.”
Sister Linda feels the same way about Haldorson and all students at Hill-Murray. It’s why she has such passion for the role and doesn’t even think about retirement even as she approaches retirement age.
“The youth give me energy,” said Sister Linda, who also serves her community at the Benedictine Monastery near the school, including taking on leadership roles. “They are the future. I believe they nurture my vocation. They really do. They have so much life in them.”
Students bring that life into Sister Linda’s world. Haldorson noted that whenever Sister Linda walks into the school cafeteria, students flock to her. The running joke is that her office is in the cafeteria versus her official office just downstairs from the school’s front entrance. At many sporting events, especially football games, her presence on the sidelines evokes spontaneous chants from the crowd, with students yelling out “Sister Linda” followed by three quick claps.
She’s not hard to spot. She is in constant motion, wearing a green Hill-Murray jacket with her name on the back in large letters. Her high fives and motivating words are constant, from the opening kickoff to the final whistle. She also prays with the team before each game and even blesses the quarterback’s hands before kickoff.
“It’s her gifts that make it happen,” Skinner said. “Kids are hungry for this. She’s good at it. It’s a love match. And it really provides a witness to the faith that kids may not (otherwise) get in that particular way.”
What Sister Linda brings goes beyond school grounds. She started a ride-along program with the Maplewood Police Department. “We call it Operation Sister Linda,” she said about assisting police who pull over students if they speed or commit traffic violations after leaving the parking lot. “(An officer) will call me to the car and here I come out of the (squad) car into the front seat of (the student’s) car. And they’re like, ‘Hi Sister Linda.’ And then I let them know why we’re doing what we’re doing. And then I’ll say, ‘Well, let’s call Dad.’”
Sister Linda asks the student to dial his or her father, then she lets him know what has just happened.
“Then I’ll say, ‘But they’re not getting a ticket today,’” she said. She then tells the father that she wants to meet with the student within the next few days — “just to check in, with no shame, blame or guilt; just to make sure everything’s OK.”
“I love it,” Dan said. “It works. … I feel like it models Sister Linda, it models Hill-Murray working with the Maplewood police — like, ‘We care about you.’ That’s what I think it models: This is a community, and we care about you.”
Sister Linda hopes this part of her ministry mushrooms into a future role as a police chaplain. She is in dialogue about it now with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office and hopes to put something in place in the coming months. For now, she will keep doing what she has been doing. “I’m 64 years old and I have years ahead of me,” she said. “I don’t plan on going anywhere.”
What she does plan to do is continue to cherish each student she encounters and draw them closer to their faith and to a Hill-Murray community she is glad to be a part of.
“I would say they have a home in my heart,” she said. “And I just look at them with eyes of joy.”
