Connecting Over Football…And Life Transitions
Mentor Tommy Doles Is Investing in the Next Generation
As a former offensive lineman at Northwestern University, playing in the Big Ten conference, Tommy Doles from Tabernacle Community Church was a great fit for serving as a mentor to 2025-26 Fellow Gabe Brown. Gabe also played college ball and was a Division II All-American.
Their shared interest in football provided much fodder for conversations. “I was an all-American football player at my school, too,” Tommy explains. “And when you first leave that environment, it can be tough figuring out who you are now [when] you’re no longer the one people are cheering for on game day.” At the outset of his new friendship with Gabe, Tommy “sensed some of that tension and struggle early on, because he was pursuing training for the NFL.”
That context provided an opportunity for Tommy to share some lessons he’d learned during his own career journey. Fresh out of school, Tommy pursued a career in pro football. He spent a little time on the rosters with the Chicago Bears and the Atlanta Falcons before getting cut and realizing it was time to look at other options. He could relate to Gabe’s dreams and hopes—and the emotional struggles involved when doors open only part way.
“We would talk about some of the practical side of things” Tommy says. “Like, he’d ask, ‘Hey, what was this like for you, or how did it feel when you got cut from a team, or how did you know when to do this or that?’” More importantly, Tommy was able to share wisdom from his own journey of growing rooted in his identity in Christ.
“I think a lot of what I shared came through the lens of my experience [and] some lessons that I learned, and trying to offer encouragement,” Tommy says.
I talked a little bit about how it felt to go from [being] in the fast lane of football success, where you’re exceeding every expectation, until you hit this wall of the point where you finally get told you’re not good enough for the NFL. Once you hit that wall, that is a time to remember who you are at your core. Are you a football player, or a child of God bought with the blood of Christ, invited into his redemptive mission to restore all things, with eternity in the New Creation to look forward to?
Tommy is quick to say, though, that knowing that truth intellectually doesn’t mean it immediately lands with power at an emotional level. “It still stung to get cut,” he says. “And I remember having those questions of, now everyone’s gonna be disappointed in me, and who am I now if I’m not a football player? I needed to be reminded of my identity in Christ, to be encouraged in it, to dwell on it, to rest in that, before I really felt a sense of peace and closure. So I think I was just trying to give Gabe encouragement that, it may take some time, but you have this North Star to look towards of who you still are, and what the future can look like.”
Ultimately, God’s path for Gabe ended up being a move to Canada. The Canadian professional football team Ottawa Redblacks signed him as a right guard in April. Tommy’s proud of Gabe and looking forward to hearing how training camp goes for him.
Asked what gave him satisfaction in the mentoring relationship, Tommy highlighted the opportunity to invest. “When I was in college, the campus ministry I was involved in talked a lot about discipleship,” he explains. “[They] said you should always have someone who is discipling you, peers that are at your level, and then people younger than you who you’re investing in. I’ve taken that to heart. I want to have relationships on all three of those planes. So I was looking for opportunities to invest into younger men in our church and [inVocation] Fellows was a really cool way to do that.”
He adds, mentoring “offers you the opportunity to play a valuable role in someone’s life during a time of transition. And it’s a role you might be uniquely capable of filling, where you have a voice that is, you know, different from a parent or a pastor or a professor, but it’s also different from one of their peers.”
“Mentoring offers you the opportunity to play a valuable role in someone’s life during a time of transition. And it’s a role you might be uniquely capable of filling, where you have a voice that is, you know, different from a parent or a pastor or a professor, but it’s also different from one of their peers.”
Given the transitions Tommy’s been through in recent years, he reports that getting to walk with a young adult during the transition from college helped him, too—and could be a boon for other mentors, too. “Listening to a young adult think through things and discern what the future looks like can also be clarifying for you,” Tommy says. “Because, as we all know, it’s not like you just figure out life transitions once, and then you’re good and set. No. It’s kind of an iterative process, and even if post-college is a unique time of doing that, it’s certainly not the only one. And for me personally, having just moved back to Grand Rapids recently, and made a career change, and becoming a father, it was helpful for me to process some of these things as well.”
