Mike Riemersma said sports programs have lost their way, and his job is to steer them back in the right direction.

“I believe that our sports culture is deteriorating and that we have to change that,” he said. “We talk to our athletes, about them as athletes with respect to the five core values. If they truly call themselves an athlete, then what should that look like?”

His job as the Champions of Character director is to work with Cornerstone’s coaches and athletes, but also with parents and schools in the community, teaching them those values and how to help athletes to learn them.

In a small, but neatly organized cubicle in the front part of the athletics office, Riemersma sits among stacked boxes of pamphlets with the Golden Eagles logo and “Champions of Character” stamped across the front.

The basketball-splattered pamphlets title themselves as the “game plan for character development.”

Riemersma said that plan is built around five core values: respect, responsibility, integrity, servant leadership and sportsmanship.

Since its arrival at CU in 2004, the Champions of Character program has been incorporated into all sports the university offers. Riemersma explained how its teachings are put into practice for the students.

“One of the components is community service,” he said. “All of our teams are involved with community service of some type. Within the course of the year, they all will serve at some point at Mel Trotter Ministries.”

Last year, CU athletes went to The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Academy, a K-8 school on Logan Street SW, to spend time with the kids and serve them dinner.

One of the athletes, Nicole Daniels, told Riemersma that she thought she would be the one giving of herself to the students, but later realized she learned more from the students than she could have imagined.

“We had more fun than we could have anticipated,” said Daniels, a senior and captain of the women’s track team. “After we served dinner it was Play time! We got a chance to experience recess all over again. A group of girls taught me how to double-dutch, and later, we simulated a track meet with different events to score in.”

Daniels attended the event with the mindset that she would leave exhausted from serving, but was pleasantly surprised.

“I walked away from the experience not drained of energy but filled with joy and laughter,” she said.

“When it’s all said and done, you’re the one who feels blessed by the kids and how it impacts you,” Riemersma said. “It was fun to watch our athletes hang out with these young kids and really enjoy doing it.”

He said the whole idea of letting them serve others is to get “student athletes to think outside themselves about the type of impact that they can have with young people.”

Riemersma, who played basketball and soccer growing up, said his school did not have a formal character program.

“I was fortunate enough to have good coaches,” he said. “They were coaches of character. Whether they did that intentionally or not was one thing, but it came through. These days, our coaches are getting younger and younger, and they need help with teaching character to the athletes.”

He wants the program to help people learn to mentor kids through formal programs and tutoring, “and through that, our culture would change in a way that is very servant-oriented.”

After a long pause, Riemersma shared the No. 1 reason he believes in the character program.

“I think it really forces us to look at why we do what we do as individuals and as teams, and it helps us to think of other people and that it’s not ‘all about me,’” he said. “It’s about all of us contributing our part for something greater than ourselves.”