Building Something That Would Last
Steve helped launch Minnesota FCA’s junior golf camp in 1988 or 1989 alongside Tiemann and FCA golf leader Dean Bouzeos. Steve was responsible for developing the morning teaching schedule, coordinating instructors, organizing afternoon team competitions and planning evening activities.
The response quickly exceeded expectations. The camp outgrew its original location at Quadna Resort after its first year, eventually moving to Green Lake, Wisconsin. As participation continued to grow, separate golf camps developed in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Minnesota’s camp later moved to Brainerd and eventually to Pebble Creek Golf Club in Becker. Through every transition, Steve remained.
For approximately 35 years, he coordinated teaching professionals and instructional stations and helped create golf activities for campers. Steve and his wife, Letta, also opened their home to Huddle Leaders and FCA staff for training and meals.
Steve developed a creative incentive program that allowed campers to earn FCA "bucks" for demonstrating sportsmanship and Christlike character. He also built an extensive skills assessment that evaluated campers in putting, chipping and full swing skills. Each year, he recruited and coordinated nearly 20 volunteers to conduct the assessment and provide each camper with written feedback about their strengths and areas for improvement.
The program proved valuable enough that Steve was invited to FCA golf headquarters in Ponte Vedra, Florida, to teach the model to FCA golf camp directors from around the country. He also helped establish FCA golf camp in Iowa.
What began with one request to help became decades of investing his gifts wherever FCA needed them.
FCA Shaped Steve, Too
Steve’s relationship with FCA was never simply about what he could contribute to the ministry. He is quick to recognize what God did in his own life through it.
"Volunteering for FCA and serving with Godly men and women has had a very significant impact on my life as a follower of Jesus, as a parent, and as an athlete," Steve said.
One of those relationships even changed the trajectory of his career and family.
After 10 years of coaching at Bethel, Steve began wrestling with whether he could continue coaching at the collegiate level while being the kind of father he wanted to be to his children, Matt and Aminta. During that season, Steve spoke at an FCA coaches conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Becker football coach and longtime FCA leader Dwight Lundeen heard him speak.
Dwight invited Steve to consider teaching and coaching in Becker. Steve took him up on it and spent the next 30 years teaching and coaching there.
FCA had become more than an organization where Steve volunteered. It was a community of believers who sharpened one another, opened doors and encouraged each other to follow Christ faithfully through coaching, athletics, work, and family.
Winning Redefined
Over the years, Steve also developed a simple framework for athletes and coaches called WIN.
The idea turns the traditional definition of winning on its head. Instead of allowing a scoreboard, statistic or finish to determine success, Steve points athletes back to Scripture.
W: Work hard. Whatever you do, use the abilities God has given you to serve Him.
I: Imitate Christ. Ask what it looks like to reflect Jesus in the way you practice and compete.
N: Numbers are secondary. Success is not ultimately determined by the number on the scoreboard, but by whether you faithfully gave what God entrusted to you.
Steve eventually developed the principles into a WIN Bible study series for coaches and athletes that has been used by Huddles, teams and churches.
He has lived those principles himself.
Working alongside FCA teaching professionals strengthened Steve as a golfer, eventually taking him from a three handicap to a plus two. He earned his PGA card for four years, won 10 Minnesota state championships, was named Minnesota Senior Amateur Player of the Year twice and qualified for four U.S. Senior Amateur Championships. Later in life, he earned a world ranking as the sixth ranked amateur competitor age 65 and older.
Yet Steve points away from himself when recounting those achievements. "All glory to God," he wrote, adding that none of it would have happened without FCA.
An Impact Beyond Golf
Steve's FCA involvement continued well beyond summer camp. He helped Dave Gibson and FCA staff launch the FCA National Scramble. He and Letta served as guest speakers at a national FCA coaches retreat at the Billy Graham Training Center in Asheville, North Carolina.
For the past seven years, Steve has also welcomed Becker coaches into his home at 6 a.m. each week for a coaches Bible study.
Relationships formed through FCA golf camp have given him opportunities to continue investing in college athletes as well. For approximately 15 years, he has worked with golf teams from Bethel University and the University of Northwestern, taking athletes through skills assessments and lessons.
But some of the most meaningful evidence of Steve's FCA legacy is much closer to home.
His son, Matt, attended six FCA junior golf camps and later returned to serve as a Huddle Leader at three of them. His daughter, Aminta Geisler, attended FCA Track and Field Camp, participated in the Becker High School FCA Huddle and later helped lead the FCA Huddle at Spring Lake Park and Cambridge-Isanti High Schools with her husband, Ben.
In 2022, Aminta returned to another familiar FCA setting, this time as a speaker at Leadership Camp.
Steve described watching God work through his daughter as "priceless."
"It's priceless to see when your kid allows God to really get a hold of their life," Steve said. "What would you trade for that? You can't put a price on it."
The FCA story has continued into another generation as Steve and Letta's grandchildren have experienced the ministry their grandfather helped shape decades earlier.
A Faithful Yes
It would be easy to tell Steve Whittaker's story through numbers: 35 years serving at golf camp, nearly 20 volunteers coordinated each year for skills assessments, 10 state golf championships, decades of coaching and teaching, and generations of athletes influenced.
But numbers alone miss the heart of his story.
Steve's FCA legacy was built through a long series of faithful decisions to use what God had given him for someone else.
He organized the camp. He recruited the volunteers. He taught the golfers. He opened his home. He studied Scripture. He discipled coaches. He developed resources. He raised his children around people who loved Jesus. And when opportunities came to serve, he kept saying yes.
Looking back on nearly 40 years with FCA, Steve once described the ministry this way:
"FCA has been a wonderful way to share my faith and how God has worked in my life. It has challenged me to grow. It has been a fun and important and growing experience for myself, our kids, and now our grandkids."
That may be the clearest picture of why Steve Whittaker belongs in the Minnesota FCA Hall of Faith. His legacy is not simply a golf camp he helped start decades ago. It is a life invested in coaches and athletes, a family shaped by faith, and generations of people who are now carrying the baton forward.
