Living Greatness Through Virtue
Marauders Athletics’ new mission integration leader is deeply committed to faith, virtue, and sport.
When the University of Mary launched its Greatness Through Virtue strategic plan over seven years ago, it represented a radical commitment to viewing athletics as a path for scholar-athletes and staff to become the people God created them to be. Bismarck native Jared Spooner, MOL ’25, has experienced the pressures of intercollegiate athletics — and the freedom of fully living his Catholic faith — firsthand. Today, he’s ready to lead the next chapter of Greatness through Virtue at Mary.
In 2017, his freshman season as a member of the nationally ranked Minnesota State University, Mankato hockey team, Spooner remembers feeling deep confusion. He was playing NCAA Division I hockey at one of the premier programs in the country. “I knew all of my high school friends would have given anything to be in my position,” he says. “I’d achieved the dream.”
There was just one problem: He was miserable.
"I was lonely, I was isolated, and I was becoming a person I swore I’d never be,” Spooner says. “In order to reach the highest levels of hockey, I compromised my morals along the way.”
Providentially, he met Michael Mortenson, now director of alumni relations at the University of Mary, who was serving as a missionary for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). Soon he joined Mortenson’s Bible study, where he wrestled with life’s crucial questions: “‘Who am I? What am I made for?’ I began to realize that my worth was not tied up with my results on the ice.”
The experience was the catalyst for giving his heart to Christ — and the impact was transformative. He even played better hockey, earning a trip to an NHL development camp in the off season.
“When I realized that I was loved for who I was and not what I did — and that I wasn’t just a hockey player — it allowed me to play the game freely, to the best of my ability,” Spooner says.
Now, in his new role as the coordinator of mission integration and scholar-athlete formation at the University of Mary, he aims for every coach, scholar-athlete, and administrator to embrace that same conviction: Who they are (and who they become) is more important than what they do.
“Our scholar-athletes, administrators, and coaches will only find their lives when they give themselves away in love,” Spooner says.
He begins this new role after spending several years with FOCUS, first as a missionary at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and most recently as a Varsity Catholic manager, coaching a network of on-campus missionaries to serve the athletes on their campuses with greater effectiveness and generosity. This experience was instrumental for preparing him to step into his new position, where he works closely with Marauders coaches and scholar-athletes.
“When coaching Varsity Catholic missionaries, I asked them questions that allowed them to grow in self-awareness and ownership so, when a given situation came up again, they knew what to do,” he says.
Encouraging growth question by question and conversation by conversation — it’s the same process that helps every person involved in Marauders Athletics live out Greatness Through Virtue.
Spooner now leads that charge and is quick to acknowledge the transformative impact of Father Jarad Wolf, former chaplain of Marauders Athletics: “Father Wolf did a fantastic job building the Greatness Through Virtue curriculum and leaving our scholar-athletes in a great spot.”
What excites Spooner most is the opportunity to invest deeply in the coaches of Marauders Athletics.
“Coaches have to continue to grow in virtue themselves to be able to pass on virtue to scholar-athletes,” he says. “When someone invests in you very deeply, you grow in your capacity to love and serve other people.”
Our scholar-athletes receive the fruits of that growth a hundredfold, and so do coaches’ spouses, families and friends — and that fruitfulness lasts even beyond their time at Mary.
“I want our coaches to be able to walk into a room and be authentically themselves, whether that’s for a team meeting, to watch film, or to be the parent of their children,” Spooner says. “My job is about laying my life down for the vision, so everyone can live Greatness Through Virtue.”
Former NCAA Division I hockey player and FOCUS missionary Jared Spooner is the new coordinator of mission integration and scholar-athlete formation. He earned his Master of Organizational Leadership (MOL) from Mary in 2025.
