Case Tests Boundaries of Prayer in Sports

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas public schools may not begin football games with student-organized prayer read over the public-address system.

The East Brunswick High School team prays twice before every game, first as students lead grace at a pasta dinner in the cafeteria, then just before the game when every player kneels on one knee.

Borden, a churchgoing Catholic, refused to talk in detail about the case or his religious convictions.

"I've been through a tremendous amount of stress," he said. "I put my neck on the line here. Now, I'm just trying to keep my kids out of this."

Grant Teaff, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, estimates that about half of high school football coaches nationally pray with their teams or lead their teams in prayer. "It's very much like warriors going into battle, a platoon going into battle," he said.

He said the association has no guidelines for its members on prayer. "That's individual," he said. "It'd be like telling somebody, do you smile when you give an order, or do you frown."

"Not allowing it doesn't mean you're anti-religious or anti-faith; it means you're trying to be respectful of everyone," said Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. "Sometimes being respectful to everybody means that you have to refrain from things you would prefer to do as a team because you don't want to exclude or offend anyone."

"You have to understand what the team prayer is," said Brenda Fischer, the mother of Doug Fischer, 17, the quarterback for East Brunswick. "When you call it prayer, it doesn't have to necessarily have a religious connotation. You are wanting and hoping for safety."

Jeremy Bloom, who graduated last spring but used to play offensive guard for the team, said, "I was never really opposed to it. I'm Jewish. But I was never offended or anything."

Meanwhile, other New Jersey coaches say they continue to pray.

"Of course I pray with my team," said Warren Wolf, a coach at Brick Township High School.

"Football is a violent game, a game of contact, of excitement," Wolf said. "When you pray, you pray that nobody gets hurt on either team. You pray that God looks after all the boys playing in the game. If that's wrong, I don't understand why."

Staff researcher Rena Kirsch contributed to this report.