How Bethel’s athletics transform the student experience: Q&A with Director of Athletics Greg Peterson ’92

For nearly 625 Bethel student-athletes each year, athletics is about much more than competition. Teams can become some of the first places students find belonging on campus, build meaningful relationships, grow through challenge, and learn what it means to be known and supported as a whole person.

But the impact of athletics reaches beyond Bethel’s 18 NCAA Division III varsity teams. Students gather in the stands, compete through club and intramural sports, and find connection across the broader athletics community. Behind it all is an approach that prioritizes both excellence and formation—helping students grow in resilience, faith, relationships, and identity.

Greg Peterson ’92, Bethel’s director of athletics, has experienced that community from nearly every angle over the past 38 years: as a former student-athlete, longtime employee, parent, and now athletic director. We sat down with Peterson to talk about what makes the Bethel athletics experience distinctive, why students find belonging through sports, and how athletics can shape students far beyond competition.

How do athletics help students develop a sense of belonging and connection at Bethel?

When student-athletes arrive on campus, they are immediately part of something bigger than themselves. They’re not on an island; they are part of a team. So much of college is about developing individually, but athletics requires growing together. It is impossible to compete on the field on your own. Success only comes when you play as a team. 

It isn’t just about competition though. Some of the most impactful moments for athletes are those that happen off the field: sitting together on a bus ride to a game, living together with a teammate in a residence hall, time in the locker room after a tough practice, or eating dinner with the team in the Monson Dining Center. These are the experiences that create a deep sense of connection for our athletes. 

For students who aren’t varsity athletes, how can athletics still contribute to their Bethel experience and sense of campus community?

How have you seen students in the BUILD program become part of the athletics community at Bethel?

Our students in the BUILD program are very comfortable in our athletic department, and that is something that is really meaningful to me. They’ll pop into coaches’ offices just to say hello. Several of our student-athletes are BUILD mentors, too. In addition to our athletic options, BUILD students can also join Bethel’s unified sports club for bowling, basketball, and broomball. Some students have also served as managers for varsity athletic teams and competed as NCAA athletes on Bethel’s track and field team. Some have even helped lead the Special Olympics USA games.

In a college athletics landscape that can feel increasingly transactional, what tells students that Bethel offers something different?

College athletics today can become very transactional—what have you done for me lately? If you can help a coach win, then you’re valuable; if you can’t, you're expendable. We want the experience at Bethel to be transformational instead.

We have more than 26 coaches on staff, along with many volunteers and part-time coaches, investing in and mentoring our young men and women. Our coaches know their athletes and support them well beyond athletics. They ask how students are doing academically, what classes they might be struggling with, and point them to resources like the Academic Enrichment and Support Center (AESC) when they need help. 

Before our former head football coach Steve Johnson retired, he used to say high affection plus high expectations creates an opportunity for really high growth. I think that’s Bethel’s secret sauce. That relationship allows coaches to hold athletes accountable while reminding them that their identity is not wrapped in their performance or what their stat line says. Their identity is rooted firmly in Christ.

Because this is the culture of our program, our retention and graduation rates are extremely high. We also see many athletes transfer to Bethel because this place is distinct. Our athletes are cared for differently, and they’re embedded into Bethel’s student body differently, too.

What advice would you give parents as they support their students through the opportunities and challenges of college?

Encourage your student to really jump in to what Bethel has to offer. My oldest son just graduated from Bethel, but when he started as a freshman, he committed to saying yes. Sometimes that yes was easy—a McDonald’s run at midnight—and other times, that yes challenged him. But he was willing to be uncomfortable to build relationships, and that was foundational to his Bethel experience.

It’s also OK for your student to struggle. College is supposed to be hard, and sometimes that is harder for us parents than it is for our students! Challenges and disappointments can ground students in who God says they truly are. Who they surround themselves with matters significantly, too. When disappointment comes, they need people who will speak life into them, encourage them, and walk with them through it. As parents, we can listen and encourage without taking away every challenge, knowing that growth often comes through those hard experiences.

As a parent, what have you come to appreciate most about the kind of community your children have experienced at Bethel?

What I’ve seen with my two boys is that when they make mistakes—which they do—they’re in a community that allows them to grow through them. As a parent, that is something I am incredibly grateful for. We are a place that says you don’t have to be perfect because we’re on this journey of growth together. 

In athletics, we like to say Bethel is good soil. It’s a great place to grow, but it’s still dirty and muddy and can be messy. However, I love that we’re willing to engage in the hard stuff, where growth really happens.

How have your different perspectives—student, alumnus, employee, parent—shaped the way you understand the Bethel student experience?

I arrived at Bethel as a student athlete in 1988, and I’ve worked here for 29 years. I’ve been around for a while now, and one common thread I see is faith. When I came to Bethel, I had to make my faith my own. It couldn’t be my parents’ faith any longer. It was my opportunity to figure out what I believed. That’s really powerful. I’ve seen this lived out in my kids’ lives in really impactful ways as well. 

Last spring, I asked our head football coach, Mike McElroy, what he needed to keep his program at this level—an intentionally open-ended question for a team that’s currently ranked number two in the country. He said Bethel needs to remain true to its foundation because it’s really attractive to our students, parents, and society as a whole right now. 

That foundation doesn’t mean we shy away from excellence. We talk about this a lot in athletics: We want to compete well and pursue excellence in what we do. That doesn’t mean we win every game, but when you’re good at something, it gives you an opportunity for greater impact. We want students to pursue excellence while remaining grounded in who they are and why they’re doing it.

That combination—faithfulness and excellence—is part of what makes Bethel distinct. Our foundation of faith has remained constant.

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