When Lucy Doolittle Wilkinson enrolled at Clemson University in 1998, her experience in organized sports consisted solely of having played church league basketball.
Lucy Wilkinson, holding a commemorative oar presented to her at the conclusion of her intercollegiate rowing career at Clemson University, will be inducted into the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame on Sept. 12.By the time she graduated from Clemson four years later, she was a two-time All-American in intercollegiate rowing. Soon, she will be a member of Clemson’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
For the Mauldin High School graduate, an award-laden collegiate athletic career was a journey she never imagined. Neither did she imagine being a youth minister (“I never felt I was the youth minister type”), but she recently observed her fifth anniversary on staff at Earle Street Baptist Church in Greenville, where she considers the congregation’s young people her extended family.
Wilkinson said she considered her place on the Clemson Varsity 8 rowing squad an opportunity for ministry, a platform that opened doors for her to share her faith at Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings and other gatherings.
Near the end of her college career, she briefly considered trying to make the U.S. women’s Olympics rowing team, but says she realized that, for her, rowing was always less about the sport and more about “my connections to people.”
That same impulse to connect with others marks her ministry today, and the lessons she learned as a rower — reaching deep for the strength to power an oar through water in honed synchronization with seven teammates, all to the rhythmic orders of a demanding coxswain, pushing a sleek boat fast (ever faster!) across the smooth surfaces of Lake Hartwell — have come to bear on her ministry with young people.
“In rowing, I learned that anything worth a big reward is worth putting in a big effort,” Wilkinson said. “Those were definitely four of the hardest years of my life, but also four of the most rewarding. It clarified a sense of purpose for me.
“We didn’t always win, but we had to train every day like we would. Youth ministry is also very challenging. There are ups and downs. But we have to really believe in our team and work to accomplish the same goal.”
Wilkinson was surprised at how quickly she became attached to the young people in her church, whom she describes as “like a mixture of your children and your friends. You celebrate with them, and you feel deeply disappointed when they do something bad.”
She and her husband, Tommy, are expecting their first child in early 2009. She is looking forward to bringing up their son or daughter among future “brothers and sisters” in the youth group at Earle Street, a place where she is open to staying “for as long as God wants me to be here.”
Wilkinson will be inducted into Clemson’s Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday, Sept. 12, and will be honored the following day alongside her fellow inductees (including three-time All-American football player Anthony Simmons, former Lady Tiger basketball coach Jim Davis, and five others) at halftime of the Clemson/N.C. State football game.
“I feel I’m among people way more deserving of the Hall of Fame than I am,” she said, “but I feel very honored to be the first from my sport.”
Ten years ago, Wilkinson never imagined where she would be today: expecting her first child, working in a ministry that confirms a sureness of God’s purpose in her life, and, just for good measure, being a member-in-waiting of the Clemson University Athletic Hall of Fame class of 2008.
She may not have imagined it, but another did, as her “life verse,” Ephesians 3:20, attests: “God is able to do immeasurably more than all we could ever ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us — to Him be the glory forever.”