Loving Your Teammates Through Hospitality

Ask a room full of athletes this question, “Have you ever felt excluded by your team?” and you won’t wait long for an answer. You’ll get story after story. The trip everyone else knew about. The group chat you weren’t added to. The table that filled up before you got there.

I sat with an athlete recently who had just transferred. He was at a new university with a new roster in a new city where none of his new teammates reached out. Not out of cruelty but out of busyness. He didn’t know where the grocery store was or where athletes hung out. He didn't know what his teammates were doing that weekend because nobody told him they were doing anything.

What he said next is the part I can't shake: “Should I even be here? Does this team actually want me around?”

That’s a heartbreaking sentence. It’s also a common one. And here’s what makes it worse—almost nobody on that team did anything wrong. They just didn’t take the time to notice him.

What if the most Christlike thing you do this season has nothing to do with how you compete, and everything to do with who you notice?

Hospitality Is Not a Dinner Party

When we hear the word hospitality, most of us picture something we’re not equipped for. I know I picture a clean house with a table set with amazing food. There is music playing in the background while everyone laughs and gets to know each other. In the end, in my mind, (and maybe in yours) hospitality is about throwing a great dinner party. 

That’s not how the Bible describes it. Paul writes it plainly in Romans 12:13: “Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Notice that it’s a practice. It’s a thing you rep, not a thing you own. The Bible is clear, hospitality is a spiritual gift that some people are gifted with (1 Corinthians 12:8-10, 1 Peter 4:9) but it’s also clear that it’s a universal command to all believers. It’s something some people are naturally good at and it’s also something all believers are to work on or practice. 

The Greek word underneath it is philoxenía (φιλοξενία). It’s a compound: phileo, love or affection, and xenos, stranger. Love of the stranger. It shows up again in Hebrews 13:2, where the writer tells us that people who welcomed strangers sometimes turned out to be entertaining angels without realizing it.

Sit with that word for a second, because it changes the assignment. Philoxenía isn’t aimed at your friends. It’s not about deepening the relationships you already enjoy. It’s aimed at the person who is not “in” yet. 

In our sports context it’s aimed at the transfer, the freshman, the walk-on, the equipment manager, the athletic trainer, the janitor, etc. It’s aimed at the teammate who came in at the semester and the teammate who is technically on your roster and functionally on the outside because of injury or circumstances. It’s also aimed at the person you disagree with or have nothing in common with.  

Philoxenía has an opposite, by the way, and it’s a word you probably already know: xenophobia. Fear of the stranger. Every locker room runs on one of these two instincts, and it usually happens without anyone voting on it.

Jesus Made Room for the Wrong People

If you want to know what philoxenía looks like in a body, watch Jesus.

In Luke 5:29-32, Levi throws a banquet and fills the room with tax collectors—people who had sold out their own neighbors for a paycheck. The religious professionals are appalled. Jesus is at the table. He tells them He didn't come for the people who have it together; He came for the ones who don't. 

In John 13, on the last night He had, He gets on the floor with a towel and washes twelve pairs of feet—including the feet of the guy who was about to sell Him out. Then He looks up and says, essentially, do this for each other.

That’s the pattern. Hospitality in the Kingdom of Jesus isn’t about impressing anyone. It’s about lowering yourself far enough to serve someone who can’t repay you and might not even thank you.

And it’s not optional decoration on the gospel. It is the gospel, lived out sideways. Romans 15:7 makes the connection direct: “welcome one another the way Christ welcomed you.” You were the stranger and somebody made room. You’re not being asked to invent hospitality; you’re being asked to pass it on.

Why This Is Hard in a Locker Room

Let’s be honest about the obstacle, because pretending it isn’t there won’t help anybody.

Sport is a sorting machine. Depth charts, different lines, starting lineups, weight classes. Every day you walk in, something ranks you against the people standing next to you. I wrestled at Wisconsin and I coach club wrestling now, and there is no sport that makes this more obvious. The guy you drill with every afternoon is often the guy standing between you and a spot. You are inches from each other for two hours, competing for the same thing.

That environment quietly trains you to evaluate people by what they contribute. Can he score? Can she help us win? Where does this person fit on the ladder? It’s efficient. It’s also how a teammate becomes invisible.

Add to that a schedule that’s genuinely full. Lift, class, practice, film, treatment, study table, sleep. Nobody has margin. And hospitality is the first thing that gets cut when there’s no margin, because it’s never urgent. No one’s going to text you asking why you didn’t notice them.

Philoxenía pushes against both of those. It says the person next to you has worth that has nothing to do with their contribution to your season. And it says you’re going to have to spend something you don’t feel like you have.

Four Ways to Practice Hospitality This Season

Start small. You’re training a reflex, not planning an event.

1. Scan the edges. Before you leave the locker room, take ten seconds and look for who’s alone. Who’s quiet on the bus. Who eats fast and leaves. Who has been dressing at the end of the row since August. You can’t welcome what you haven’t noticed, and noticing is a skill you can practice like any other. This week: notice one teammate on the edges. Just notice them.

2. Go first, before it’s comfortable. The person on the outside is not going to initiate. That’s what being on the outside means. Somebody has to move first, and the mature move is yours. This week: invite that teammate to the thing you were already doing: a meal, a ride, a walk to class, a coffee, or a film session. You don’t have to host anything. You just have to include.

3. Learn one thing about them that isn’t sports. Ask where they’re from. Ask about their family, their major, what they do on an off day. In a place where everyone is reduced to a stat line, being asked a real question is a small act of dignity. This week: ask one question that has nothing to do with performance, then actually listen to the answer.

4. Serve where nobody’s watching. Carry the gear. Save the seat. Send the text after a rough day. Hospitality usually shows up as something small and inconvenient rather than something impressive. This week: do one thing for a teammate that costs you a little and gains you nothing.

The Team That Met Her at the Airport

I heard a story recently that shows what hospitality could look like on a team.

The team was getting an international teammate from Europe. Nobody on the roster knew her yet. But they knew she was flying across an ocean and couldn’t possibly pack everything she'd need for a life here.

So they met her at the airport. They drove her to her apartment. And when she walked in, it was already stocked—pillows, blankets, groceries, the ordinary essentials that make a place livable. They’d rallied and covered it before she landed. Then they stayed and helped her settle in.

Not one of them had a home to invite her into. They were college athletes with roommates and dorm-sized budgets. What they had was attention and a little bit of effort, applied before she ever asked.

That’s philoxenía. Love of the stranger, expressed in pillows and a ride from the airport.

And think about what that team gained. Not a scheme, not a system, but a culture. The kind of place people actually want to belong to, which is not a small competitive advantage either.

Somewhere on your roster right now is an athlete asking the same question that transfer athlete asked me: Should I even be here? Does this team want me around?

You probably can’t fix his season. You can’t get her minutes or make her feel at home in a city she is new to.

But you can notice her. 

You can go first.

You can get to know the person.

Philoxenía. Love the stranger. Love like Jesus loved us.