Among the sixteen teams battling for the championship victory in the women’s basketball NCAA Tournament is Oregon State, a No. 3-seed team. This is Oregon State’s first appearance in the NCAA Tournament in three years, and helping lead the team as it blew past Eastern Washington and Nebraska in its first and second games of the tournament is sophomore forward Raegan Beers, a startlingly good 6′ 4″ player and faithful Christian.
Beers has helped power her team to victory throughout the season, snagging a whopping 17.2 average per game while also managing 10.2 rebounds per game, leading the Beavers in many of the major statistics that are watched. For only her second season with the Oregon State Beavers, she’s been playing well and helping with pushing the team in the right direction. She’s even powered through a broken nose on Feb. 16 to help lead the team in the tournament.
But though Beers is an excellent basketball player, more important is that she is a faithful Christian. She went to shool at Valor Christian High School, a private, Christian school in the Denver, Colorado, area, and while there both honed her basketball skills and learned about the good news of the Gospel and how to live out her faith, including while playing the sport God has gifted her with immense skill at.
Speaking about that in a statement posted to Valor Christian High School’s web site, Beers said, “Valor has gifted me the opportunity to learn how to integrate my faith in my sport.” Continuing, she added, “I have learned many lessons, but one especially has had a huge impact on my life. My whole life I have been doing everything from basketball to school; every day I have done these things for God. Instead of doing things for God, we must do them with Him.”
Further, in the statement, Beers spoke about how she strives to be with God at all times in her life, saying, “God desires to be in our lives with us through the good and bad. I strive to be with God each practice, each test, every day of my life. I am so excited about where this new view of God will take me in the future and I can’t wait for others who discover this amazing truth through their time at Valor.”
She has stuck with that faith since leaving high school. For example, on her X profile, Beers features a photo that says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” which is in reference to the famous Psalm 139:14 Bible verse. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well,” wrote David in that Psalm.
Beers also says, “I am His,” and, in her Instagram bio, lists Isaiah 43:1. That powerful verse reads, “But now, this is what the Lord says — he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.’”
Featured image: Maryland GovPics, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons