Basketball-playing reverends accentuate the positives of priesthood.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. _ By all accounts Dennis Schmitzy is one heck of a basketball player. He can run the floor and shoot the three. And at barely 6 feet tall and 41 years of age, he has even been known to rock the rim with a thundering, holy Moses monster dunk.

Not bad . . . for a priest.

Saints be praised? Lots of Kansas Catholics will give you an amen to that. The reason is that Schmitz _ or "Father D." as he is better-known _ is the founding father of the Runnin' Revs, a group of basketball-playing priests in Kansas who are quite literally jumping for Jesus.

They're easy to spot on a basketball court. They're the ones in the black T-shirts with the white clerical collars. And they play as well as they pray. But be assured, there is a method to their March Madness.

Three times a year they face off against a Catholic youth team in an exhibition game. The game, popular with families in the diocese, has raised tens of thousands of dollars to help area seminarians buy books.

And more important, while the priests are playing ball, they're also recruiting, trying to encourage more kids to consider a life of religious service.

Father Charles McGlinn, vicar-general of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, said the game has clearly made a difference. A year before the advent of the Runnin' Revs, the diocese had three seminarians. Today it has more than 20.