December 15, 2025
Reborn in the Running Waters
It’s a tradition that is so ingrained into the Carson-Newman football program, its origins are tough to pin down. For more than a decade, the Eagles football team gathers at the banks of Mossy Creek to bear witness to lives forever changed and a public proclamation of faith as players are baptized in the running waters.
Reborn
By Adam Greene, for Carson-Newman Athletics
It's a tradition that is so ingrained into the Carson-Newman football program, its origins are tough to pin down. For more than a decade, the Eagles football team gathers at the banks of Mossy Creek to bear witness to lives forever changed and a public proclamation of faith as players are baptized in the running waters. This past August, 18 C-N football players joined in this annual rite of passage, surrounded by their teammates, Eagles head coach Ashley Ingram, and members of his coaching staff.
The baptisms are such a part of the Carson-Newman experience, no one is entirely clear when they started. Former head coach Ken Sparks, in association with Manley Baptist Church would do them at different bodies of water in the area, but it was the reclamation of Mossy Creek, led by former C-N Vice President of Athletics Allen Morgan and his wife Phyllis, that made Mossy Creek the natural setting for the end of camp celebration.
Marty Blakely, Fellowship of Christian Athletics Area Director, remembers what Mossy Creek looked like when he was on campus in the 1980s.
"When I was in school, you knew Mossy Creek was there, but you couldn't even see it," Blakely said. "It was so grown up down there, and so yeah, for what it's happened, and Allen Morgan played such a vital role in doing that, but now the way we are, how cleaned up it's gotten. I mean, the first time I got in there, there was a bicycle in the water. That shows you how much it's changed."
Not only has Mossy Creek changed, but it's helping change others and has become a picturesque backdrop to the moment to the end of camp celebration.
"It's just something that Coach Sparks started, and it's been carried on," Eagles kicking coach and FCA Lakeway Ambassador Alan Duncan said. "He started that back in the 80s. I can remember helping him speak at the first ones that he did. … So, at some point in time in the last, I think, 15, 20 years is when they started doing baptisms at the end of camp. But I think that's really the key thing is just these guys want to (get baptized) ...And I think there's that camaraderie and that brotherhood that we talk about."
It's that brotherhood and camaraderie that helped Carson-Newman wide receiver Cade Meeks wade his way into the water that morning back in August. It was conversations with teammates, as well as with Blakely and Mossy Creek Fellowship congregation pastor Drew Eudy, himself a former Carson-Newman player.
"I asked Drew and Marty to be the ones to baptize me because they had played a major role in kind of discipling me," Meeks said. "And, you know, I mean obviously baptism's not being saved, it's a symbol of your faith. But going under the water and coming back up and seeing all the brothers around me, the people that have been there for me, like my family. That's the main reason I came back, was I left Carson Newman not knowing God, and then I started to find God and I realized, you know, this is a community that I should have been in, I should have never left."
That message, that baptism isn't what saves you but it's a public profession of faith and obedience is one that Blakely emphasizes when he counsels C-N students about their baptismal decision.
"We talk a lot in the Baptist world about public profession of faith," Blakely said. "Well, I believe that baptism is the most public profession of an inward decision there could be. So, to do that in front of your teammates, in front of that brotherhood, or in front of that sisterhood with the soccer and the volleyball and cheer and everything, that makes it even more meaningful."
Eudy, now paster of his own church, recalls his choice to wade into that cold water back in 2018, not knowing at all the path it would put him on. The year before, Eudy had decided to commit his life to Christ, wherever it would take him.
"I thought I was recommitting my life," Eudy said "And then, in that moment, I actually realized that's when my relationship with Jesus became real. I was learning so much. I ended up getting called to ministry in that year. When I came to Carson-Newman, looking back, I don't even know what the heck I wanted to do. I always say, I think I wanted to be an engineer, and Carson-Newman doesn't even have an engineering program. So, I'm not sure what my thought process was on that. I wanted to do forensic psychology, all this other stuff, and I got called to ministry."
Eudy can't help but think of his own Baptism when helping C-N players make their own public profession. Eudy presided over his first set of baptisms last year, as the event is now associated with his Mossy Creek Fellowship church.
"I think about it all the time," Eudy said. "In 2018, I had no idea what my future held. Whether I was going to be in Jefferson City, or Knoxville, or I was planning on moving back home (to Hendersonville, N.C.) for some of the years, and then what the Lord's done of moving Ariel (his wife) and I back up in Jefferson City, and being a part of everything up there. I'm just just blown away with how grateful I am that I get to be a part of something like this. And then just thinking of that little 19-year-old kid that I was, who didn't know what his future was, and just how faithful the Lord is to provide for his people that I didn't know what the future looked like, but God knew what the future looked like. I feel so honored to be in there with two men (Blakely and Duncan) that have looked out for me for so many years."
That age for young people, late teens and early 20s is a key turning point in so many lives. And helping those young people make decisions, lasting and life affirming choices, is a responsibility that Eudy, Duncan and Blakely do not take lightly.
"I have some hard conversations with them about it," Blakely said "'OK, let's talk about this. When do you think you actually got saved? When did you actually accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Because that's the deciding factor.' I feel like, and that's the question I ask. When do you feel like you actually got saved? And if they can truthfully answer that question for me, and then I'm like, OK, then we'll do it. Those conversations aren't always easy. But we need to be theologically correct in what we're doing."
Because it's not just for show. Baptism is meaningful and should be taken on with the respect and reverence of what it symbolizes. The Carson-Newman brotherhood goes back through time, through decades of faithful servitude, of men and women making choices when they were Eagles, or maybe long after they've left as the seeds planted in Jefferson City found root.
That seed taking root is something Duncan has seen happen over and over again, both at Carson-Newman, and with his former teammates at the University of Tennessee.
"I'll tell you some of the moments that mean as much are the guys that acted like it was all a bunch of foolishness (when they were in college)," Duncan said. "I've had so many of my teammates from the University of Tennessee that I see now, years later, that used to just look at me and say, you know, man, you're just a Jesus freak, or you know what's wrong with you. And they look at me, they come and apologize to me. I say, man, I don't want you to apologize to me. I just want you to know that I'm thrilled to hear that you're following the Lord now. God's done great things in your life. Thank you for saying you're sorry, but I'm just happier than I can express. I'm just thrilled to see you anyway."
It's that lasting impact and legacy that Meeks thinks about now as his own playing career at C-N wraps up.
"There was a player back in the day here named Avery Blue, and he's been here to speak at FCA," Meeks said. "He comes every fall camp and speaks to us. His message was like another message during fall camp that really moved me. It was over a sermon on the mount, talking about being recognized that you're poor in faith and poor in spirit, which is how I was. I felt often how I always was. I would say I'm a Christian, but was I a believer? You know, like I'd follow the religious standards and stuff, but I never truly believed in God and followed him the way that I'm called to.
"So then he talks about once you recognize you're poor in spirit, and then you really start to seek God, and you start to feel His Holy Presence, and you dedicate your life to the Lord, you become meek, which is to be tamed, but be strong with faith, but controlled, not weak. That's kind of how my testimony has been playing out in my life. But that guy played a tremendous role in my walk of faith, and I'm not sure when he played here, but it was years ago.
"Now I look back, and being here for four years now, these people have played a big impact in my life that came to talk to us. I've always thought about 10 years down the road and hopefully I can come in here and speak, if the coaches allow me to, and share my testimony with them. Hopefully that I've grown a lot more in faith, and matured even more, and be able to help people like me, where I'm at today, later on in life, at Carson-Newman."
