Member Spotlight: Ben Peterson, Camp of Champs

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Ben Peterson uses glory from wrestling to glorify God.

The Wisconsin man and his older brother, John, both Olympic gold medal winners, have employed their wrestling prowess to spread the Gospel through their Camp of Champs programs in Wisconsin for the past 37 years.

The various camps, held in Juneau and Westboro, Wisconsin, are mainly to help high school wrestlers improve their mat skills, but there’s no doubt about the primacy of faith.

“We tell campers right from the beginning that we are going to have a Bible study,” Ben says. “Every day at camp, there’s a different lesson.”

Participants in full camps get a New Testament and Bible study book. Lessons are created “specifically to challenge them as wrestlers and as men.”

When the Peterson brothers created Camp of Champs with its emphasis on faith, they wondered if campers would return, because of the inclusion of Bible studies.

They did and continue to do so.

“We began to find a real desire and hunger in young wrestlers and their parents and coaches who wanted the athletes to be exposed to simple Bible study along with wrestling,” Ben says. “Instead of keeping people away, it’s brought them in.”

Camp of Champs’ biggest camps now draw as many as 60 young men. In a typical year of camps and retreats, 500 campers participate.

“When we were younger and in our prime, we had some camps where there were over 150,” Ben says. “We find the smaller camps much better, because we’re so much more personal with them. But,” he adds, “the bigger camps have a lot of energy, a lot of excitement. They’re a lot of fun. They also make it easier to pay the bills.”

Besides the attraction of a camp organized by two lifelong, committed Christians, the Peterson brothers also offer considerable experience in wrestling. Ben won the gold medal in the freestyle light heavyweight class (198 pounds) at the Munich Olympics in 1972 while John took the silver that year in the middleweight class (180½ pounds). Four years later, at the Montreal Olympics, their roles were reversed: John won gold, Ben silver. Both men also won a variety of college, national, and international championships in their careers. Ben made the 1980 Olympic team as well, but that year the U.S. boycotted the Games.

Their lives since their wrestling careers began have been dedicated to giving God glory through Camp of Champs, speaking engagements, and Bible studies for wrestling teams. Ben says he learned while attending Iowa State University to always show appreciation to God for his successes.

“My college pastor did something for me I’ve never forgotten,” he says. “When I’d win in some of the big meets, like the Big Eight Conference and the NCAAs, Pastor Brown would meet me at the door of the church the next week, congratulate me, and then say, ‘Ben, you won publicly; you need to thank God publicly.’ He started having me thank God in front of the church family.

“By the time I got to the Olympics, I knew when I got home I would need to give another testimony. That started something for me that has never ended. Since the Olympics, but even before that, wrestling has opened thousands of doors for me to give my testimony and the Gospel.”

In fact, John and Ben agreed after winning their first medals in 1972 that they would speak at public events “as long as they simply let us acknowledge our faith in Christ.” That has held true even when they speak at public schools, where they talk about wanting to say “thank you” to Christ for success and the role that their faith plays in motivating them.

“A couple of times people have told me that I couldn’t talk about Christ, but after I told them how I did it, they always say it’s fine,” Ben says.

Right after the 1976 Olympics, Ben headed to Maranatha Baptist Bible College (now Maranatha Baptist University) in Watertown, Wisconsin, where he taught and coached for 28 years. His teaching specialties were drafting, putting his architecture degree to work, and Bible classes. It was shortly after arriving at Maranatha that Ben mentioned to the college’s athletic director, Robert Rapson, that he and John had a dream of starting a wrestling camp that included Bible studies.

“He was the kind of guy that if you wanted things to happen, you got close to him,” Ben says. “He said, ‘I’ll start that for you.’ By the next summer (1977), he had 150 kids at camp for us to coach and teach. He organized it for two years and then he moved and went to another college down south. He told me to, ‘Just get a program director.’”

Camp of Champs has developed over the years. It now features Champion Camp for high school juniors and seniors with intense training and competition; Wrestling Technique Camp for boys in grades six through 12; and two father-son camps. Retreats and other training opportunities are provided throughout the year as well.

While Ben and John handled all the instruction in the first several years of Camp of Champs, they now hire experienced coaches to help instruct and college wrestlers as counselors.

The most intense week, Champion Camp, features hard physical training and wrestling sessions morning, afternoon, and evening as well as “crazy games” and “ironman competitions.” A Bible study topic is first introduced at breakfast, and then the actual study is held right before lights out. Clinicians and counselors share their testimonies at suppertime. And there are several camp recreation opportunities. The last day is “marathon day,” in which campers train for three solid hours, wrestle, and play relay games.
“We send them home tired,” Ben says.

They’re also sent home with the Gospel. The emphasis on indebtedness to God is an important message to give to athletes.

“They’re already driven, motivated, hard-working people when they come to camp,” Ben says. “There’s a certain amount of pride that we (athletes) can get, particularly when we start getting successful. I find a lot of wrestlers really struggle with the idea of trusting fully in Christ for salvation without trying to add to or prove their worthiness.

“That concept is almost foreign to them because everything they do as an athlete and a student is hard work. Yes, the teacher does something, the coach does something, the teammate does something, Mom and Dad help, but each wrestler must work hard himself. We teach them to work hard. Then we turn around and tell them that Jesus has fully provided forgiveness of sin for us. We urge them to accept God’s forgiveness and then say ‘thank you’ by obeying Him. None of us ever do good enough to deserve God’s forgiveness, but we can say ‘thank you’ with our words and our actions.”

Ben is able to share the Gospel with college-level athletes as well as through his part-time position as assistant coach for the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater wrestling team. The successful program allows him to hold Bible studies for team members before and after practices, one day a week.

And he plans to share his message with an even wider audience when his book, Our Road to Olympic Gold, is published soon, telling of John and Ben’s way to Munich.

“The Gospel will be given,” Ben says of the book. “Faith in Christ will very definitely be talked about. Plus all the wrestling and life challenges of growing and developing as young men.”

Now that’s a winning move.

Ben and John Peterson run Camp of Champs Wrestling Camps and are frequent guest speakers. Contact them at www.campofchamps.org, P.O. Box 222, Watertown, WI 53094; 800-505-5099; or [email protected].