In 1980 a group at Los Gatos Christian Church formed a basketball team. They joined a San Jose recreation league initially just as a place to play. Within the first year they realized that the competition was just the beginning of what they were there to do. Basketball games became opportunities to interact with people, to invite them to church and to talk about God. They realized that competing hard with Christ-like attitudes and actions opened people up to hear what they had to say.
In 1981, encouraged by the work that they saw God doing, the group looked for other venues in which they could share their faith. They contacted several prisons offering to bring their faith and their athletes. Some weren’t interested in the Christian part, others said please come. And so, with a volleyball match at Soledad State Prison in mid-1981 the entity that would become Prison Sports Ministries was born.
Over the next decade the group visited Soledad, California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo and Folsom State Prison with basketball, softball, tennis, track and field, volleyball and football teams. New leaders and volunteers joined the program and LGCC planted South Valley Christian Church. But there was a feeling that to have a substantial impact the program would need to be more focused.
In 1996 players from South Valley invited Don Smith to join them for a basketball game at another venue that had been added: San Quentin- one of the most notorious prisons in the country. Don accepted and the first time he turned the corner and saw thousands of inmates spread over the yard God spoke to his heart and said “What a great place to do ministry.”
That day Don made contact with an administrator at San Quentin and said “I bet I could get this to happen more often.” Little did Don know how prophetic that would be. Over the course of the next few years he was back more and more frequently. The basketball program grew to the point that there were two events a week from March through November. A softball team was added in 1999. In 2003 a flag football program joined the mix, and in 2016 a soccer program was added. Hundreds of volunteers from many local churches poured into San Quentin on a regular basis, forming relationships and sharing the love of Christ.
When Don started going to San Quentin, he says it was a darker place as if the fog would hover over the prison every time he visited. After games inmates would frequently say “we don’t need to come to your prayer time. You can’t make us do it.” Now there is such a strong Christian influence on these teams that even when non-Christians come in to play the inmates will lead a devotional time after the game. There has been a revival at San Quentin.
In 2019, spurred in part by an invitation to start a prison softball program at the Sierra Conservation Center several members of the San Quentin softball team got an idea. But more than an idea it was God moving because on the exact same day they all realized that God had been putting a question on their hearts: If this program is so successful here, why can’t we take this other places as well?
And so in 2020 Prison Sports Ministries Inc. was officially formed. Its mission is to take the repetitive, relational, spiritual program from San Quentin to other prisons in California and beyond. But rather than stretch the same group of volunteers to different prisons, PSM’s vision is to take the example of San Quentin and get many local churches working together to minister to their local prison, to build relationships and to spread the gospel. We know that we are only at the beginning of what God has planned.