Athlete’s injury broke his body and rebuilt his faith
Some breaks end a career. This one almost ended Mason Maners’ life.
At a football practice before ninth grade, Maners lay motionless on the field. He had just taken a hit and crumpled to the ground, losing sensation in his arms and legs. He later regained feeling and movement, but the difference between life and death was too close for comfort.
“It was a C1 and C2 break,” Maners said. “The doctor told me they call it a ‘hangman's break,’ because when people got hung, those are the bones that break to either kill the person or to paralyze them until they suffocate.”
The injury happened in the spring of 2016. Maners spent that summer and fall recovering and rebuilding his strength. Against the odds, he returned to the field that spring for his freshman baseball season. Not only did he survive, but he went on to become an NCAA Division I athlete. Today he spends his days helping others move toward God as the baseball chaplain at Auburn University.
But before any of that could happen, something inside him had to break, too.
A Hard Look in the Mirror
Maners grew up as the “good Christian kid.” He knew the right answers and had the right reputation. Looking back, he says he was living like a Pharisee, someone who looked the part on the outside but had built his whole sense of self on the wrong foundation.
That foundation was sports.
“If you have your identity placed in anything that is changing, you’re going to be let down eventually,” Maners said.
The injury forced him to face that truth head-on. His ability on the field could vanish in a single hit. His stats could dry up. His playing days would end. So what would be left?
Maners found his answer in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Here was something that would never change. Something worth building a life on.
“The Lord taught me the two biggest life lessons at that moment,” he said. “The first is that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. And He does so in His perfect timing with His greater plan in mind.”
Chasing the Dream
Maners started his college baseball career at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. It turned out to be more than a stop on the way to bigger stages. It was where his faith became real.
Through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a local church, Maners saw the difference between knowing about Jesus and actually knowing Him. What he’d treated as religion became a real relationship.
Then he transferred to Auburn for his senior season in 2024.
“It was my dream school, and on one of the biggest stages in the nation,” Maners said.
He tasted the highs. Coming off an All-Atlantic Sun Conference campaign as a junior at Jacksonville State, he hit .296 with seven home runs in his lone season at Auburn. But he also got hurt that year, and he wasn’t the same player afterward. He was benched, and the team missed the SEC tournament. Just like that, his baseball career was over.
The same lesson from high school came back around. His playing days were ending, and his identity couldn’t rest on the game.
Finding the Calling
That December, Maners sat in a service wrestling with what came next. He had no clear plan for life after baseball. Then he heard a sermon that changed his direction. The pastor challenged the seniors in the room to take their “heart burden” and combine it with their talents and circumstances.
Maners knew his burden right away. It was for high school and college athletes who knew about Jesus but had never met Him personally. Kids who were exactly where he’d once been.
He had the talent. He had the circumstances. He had lived the exact story he now wanted to speak into.
Trading the Bat for the Dugout
The path forward opened one step at a time. Maners spent a year shadowing Auburn’s team chaplain, Scott Shepherd. When Shepard felt that it was time to give the ministry away, he handed the full-time baseball chaplain role to Maners, who became an FCA Area Representative at Auburn.
Ask him what the job looks like and his answer might surprise you.
“Being a chaplain is 90% ministry of presence,” Maners said.
That means traveling with the team and hanging out in the dugout. Shagging balls in the outfield during practice. Leading Bible studies and chapels. Mostly it means simply being there, day after day, so the guys know someone is in their corner.
His background changes everything about how players see him. He’s no longer a teammate fighting for a roster spot. He’s not competition.
“I’m just a neutral guy that can just be there for that athlete, love on him, serve him,” Maners said. “I’m no longer a player. And their respect for me comes less as a player, and more as the chaplain.”
That respect runs deeper because he’s walked in their cleats. He knows the pressure, the injuries, the benchings and the strange new world these athletes live in.
“I know all the different struggles of the new world and the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) age,” he said. “I’ve been in the world. I’ve lived it. I feel like it gives me credibility with the guys.”
The Fruit of a Broken Career
The proof of Maners’ calling shows up in changed lives. He’s watched a teammate give his life to Christ — a young man who moved from simply knowing about Jesus to truly following Him. That single moment captures everything Maners hoped for when he traded his glove for a Bible study.
A break that nearly cost him his life turned into the start of a new one. And now the same God who caught Mason Maners on that football field is using him to catch others.
The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. And sometimes, He gives back something far greater than a career.
Article originally appeared on FCA.org, the official website of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes
