Junior basketball guards Tyler Roth and Romen Martin created a blog in August 2019 in hopes of using their voices as collegiate athletes as a platform for good. Their blog “Playing with Purpose” has grown over the past year as they have shared their own testimonies and invited other athletes as guest writers to impact others through their stories and lessons.
Roth and Martin said they came up with the idea together when they realized they did not want to miss out on any opportunities to serve their community during their time as athletes.
“I feel like many student athletes part of divisions other than Division 1 take this opportunity for granted, and they don’t realize the platform they have to influence and inspire so many others,” Martin said. “So, we prayed and searched for different ways to impact people.”
Roth said their motivation is not only to share their own testimonies, stories and lessons learned for the next generation of athletes, but to also share the encouraging stories of other athletes from around the country.
“We believe that God can do some wonderful things through all of our voices to inspire the next generation to do even bigger things than we ever imagined we could do ourselves,” Roth said.
Each post is centered around the writer’s journey as an athlete, complete with failures, successes, lessons learned, advice, stories and testimonies. Roth and Martin said there is no set schedule to the posts, but they do try to publish a post every week.
Freshman guard Davis Morgan wrote as a guest writer in March about his time as a freshman and what the year taught him.
“I am very thankful for the opportunity that T-Roth and Rome have given me to write just a little something on their blog,” Davis said. “I have read most of their posts, and I can see so much wisdom in all of their posts.”
Roth said he and Martin see the blogs as conversation starters. They want each post to create new ideas for others to meditate on and run with through conversations within their own inner circle.
In the future, Roth and Martin hope to expand the blog to a video page where there will be interviews with athletes from all over, sharing their stories in a more personal and authentic way.
Martin said he hopes through the blog, athletes will start to use their voices more. He said when athletes tell their stories, it is the “most powerful thing we have.”
“God has a purpose for each of us on this planet, athlete or not, so we hope that ‘Playing with Purpose’ inspires you to keep putting one foot in front of the other towards your God-given destiny,” Roth said. “If you need anything at all — prayer, someone to talk to, community — hit Rome or I up; we’d love to get to know you and build a friendship.”
