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CV NEWS FEED // A former Michigan basketball star says she never imagined that religious life was her calling, but one homily and her formation at the University of Detroit Mercy changed the course of her life toward a vocation of faith and service to God.
Sister Rita Clare Yoches, TOR, went to the University of Detroit Mercy in the late 1990s on a full-ride scholarship for basketball, Detroit Catholic reported. She started as a forward, but ended her basketball career as a point guard her senior year.
“[S]he was just outstanding,” her college coach, Anne Rexford, told Detroit Catholic. “She knew all the plays, knew where everyone was supposed to be, was able to get the ball into the post, and was a great leader, obviously.”
Yoches said that during her college years, she never expected that she would become a nun. After graduation, the sports medicine major worked as a strength and conditioning coach at Notre Dame and played on the Detroit Demolition women’s football team.
“I always thought I would be in the world, maybe getting married, but definitely working in the world,” Yoches told Detroit Catholic. “God really broke in and did something I wasn’t expecting.”
She shared that when she was 23, a homily completely changed her life.
“The homily was 1 Corinthians, 11:27: ‘Anyone who eats and drinks the body and blood of Christ without first discerning himself eats and drinks condemnation on himself. That’s why many among you are sick and dying,’” she recalled. “I was like, ‘That’s me.’ I’ve got a great party life, a great job, I was playing women’s professional football in Detroit for the Detroit Demolition, and I had awesome family and friends, but I was dying on the inside because I wasn’t taking care of my soul.”
She said she was convinced to return to the Sacrament of Confession, slowly transform her life, and “let God back in.”
Yoches made her temporary vows in 2012 and professed her final vows in 2018. She then became a campus minister at Florida State University and eventually moved to a convent in Steubenville, Ohio, in early 2024.
Now, years after her athletic career, Yoches still uses the lessons she learned as an athlete and makes time for sports.
“I want to be all or nothing for God — just like I was in sports — so it doesn’t matter what trial or temptation that I’m up against,” she said. “Whatever suffering is coming at the world or me, I’m going to give everything for other people — for love, or for conversion, for prayer — just for others.”
In November, her alma mater bestowed on her one of its most prestigious awards, the Fr. Norbert Huetter Award. The award was created in 2000 in honor of the priest, who was a Jesuit philosopher and teacher at the university and worked with student-athletes. The award “is presented by the school to live and serve in the mission of St. Ignatius Loyola as ‘men and women for others,’” according to Detroit Catholic.
“I’m grateful to be back, and I’m grateful for my experience here,” Yoches said. “I definitely feel like the 10 lepers in the Scripture: one returned to say thank you to God for healing him, and I feel like this is my opportunity to return and say thank you.”
