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This past week, I was introduced to
Steve Stipanovich through a mutual friend, and we at SportsFaith
were able to interview him for our radio program and this article.
It is one thing to read press clippings and online bios on a person,
and quite another to talk with him/her in person and learn the
things that are really important to him, the things that he/she
would want the world to know about them. This article and our
radio interview (click on the SportsFaith radio logo on the left to
listen) provide this opportunity to know Steve.
Steve's nickname is "Stipo,"
pronounced "Steepoh," and now retired he and his wife are
involved in various ministries in the St. Louis area.
Growing up in Missouri, Steve was
athletic and always involved in many sports, including basketball,
baseball, soccer and football, depending upon the season. But,
when he grew from 5' 8" tall in eighth grade to 6' 5" the next year
as a freshman in high school, he was encouraged to just focus on
basketball after his freshman year. Plus, he was given the
encouragement that he had the potential to be recruited to play
college basketball. Steve continued to play basketball and to
grow taller, reaching 6' 11' his senior year. His DeSmet
Catholic high school basketball team went on to consecutive state
championships, amassing sixty consecutive wins his junior and senior
year.
Steve credits his success to not only
what God gave him genetically, but also to great coaching, from the
high school level all the way up. He affirms that big men
especially need much basketball coaching in technique, and his
coaches taught him that as well as toughness and how to be a man,
something that he sees as mostly lacking in the coaching of kids
today. Steve values the fact that his college coach would
expect him to be tough and act like a man, and even get up in his
face and yell at him at times when he needed it.
At the University of Missouri, Steve led
the program to four winning seasons each with NCAA tournament
appearances. By his senior year it was apparent that he was
one of the top professional prospects at center for the NBA draft.
The only person taken ahead of him in that 1983 NBA draft was Ralph
Samson, the man who along with Hakeem Olajuwon became one of the two
twin tower centers for the Huston Rockets. In that draft, Steve was
picked second and ahead of such greats as Byron Scott, Antoine Carr,
Dale Ellis, Jeff Malone, Derek Harper, Clyde Drexler, and John
Paxson.
With the Indiana Pacers, for five years
Steve demonstrated great toughness and held his ground against the
other great centers in the game, including even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
He played against the likes of basketball icons Larry Bird, Magic
Johnson, Julius Erving, Kareem, Robert Parish, Isaiah Thomas, and
even Michael Jordan, and the great teams of that great era.
His play was mostly consistent and he put up pretty good numbers,
with career totals of 5,323 points and 3,131 rebounds.
When Steve was at the pinnacle of his
career, having just signed a big contract, and in his personal life
recently been married and his wife having had their first child,
basketball was taken away from him. A knee was injured and
wouldn't quit hurting, and when after three surgeries he was told
that his knee was not going to get better, he retired in 1988 and
went on with the rest of his life. What helped him to get
through the disappointment of a much shortened career was his faith
in Christ and knowing that he was in God's will and God still had a
plan for his life. He chose to trust God with his life rather
than try to hold onto his career and the uncertainty of his
circumstances. He had determined that God was first in his
life and he would go on and be faithful and fulfill whatever God had
for the rest of his life.
Steve told us that he came to know Jesus
Christ as his Lord and Savior during his junior year in college.
He had had a lot of success and accomplished a lot, but that year he
realized that on the inside he was miserable. He didn't really
know why he felt the way he did because he should have been happy
since he was living the dream of his childhood and doing well in all
he attempted. He needed a moral compass in his life.
Then, one day as he was sitting on campus a guy came up to him and
shared with him how that he could receive Christ as his Lord and
Savior. After just a short conversation Steve ended up
accepting the challenge to receive Christ as his Lord and Savior.
Right there on the spot he prayed the sinner's prayer. Steve
stated that the prayer he prayed that day was the beginning of a
long journey through the rest of his life, and he has been growing
in the Lord ever since. And, as I mentioned since his
retirement he and his wife have been involved in more and more
ministry, with his ministry involving coaching of boys.
Steve laments the fact that the
mentality of players and coaches is not what it was in the era in
which he played. No longer are players taught to be masculine,
tough and disciplined, nor to come under the authority of their
coaches. Today, he sees players as being "loosy-goosy"
and with a "gangster rap kind of mentality."
Steve coaches boys and in his coaching
and mentoring of them, he seeks to teach them what it means to be
masculine, how to treat women, how to be strong, how to be tough,
how to be disciplined, and how to be able to follow a coach's rules
and direction.
Steve and his wife have six kids, with
the first five of them being girls. His youngest, Luke, is the
only boy and just four years old today. Steve is having an
impact for Christ and using the platform God gave him to do so. |
