Hayden Dalton
Episode 227
5 JUNE 2023
He is a pro basketball player competing in Israel in the Basketball Champions League for a team called Hapoel Holon B.C. He has also played for teams in Denmark, the Czech Republic, France, and Spain, after having played at both the University of Wyoming and Central Wyoming College. In his final season with the University of Wyoming he earned a number of honors and was profiled in the USA Today. After college he played for the Denver Nuggets’ NBA Summer League team. He had enjoyed a successful career as high school basketball player, culminating with being named First Team All-Continental League as a senior.
Notable guest quotes:
“For my childhood… I’m the third of seven… cradle Catholic… all of us are practicing Catholics right now… I would just attribute that to our parents just always teaching us right and wrong and not only right and wrong but the whys of right and wrong and the whys of the church.”
“Basketball has definitely been something I had never planned and definitely what God planned for me for sure.”
“I was a very good volleyball player… A lot of people ask me why I changed over to basketball. I don’t have a reason, it just kind of, that’s how it happened. Like… a God thing.”
“In high school (I did) a lot of youth group, a lot of religious camps… Different things like that, formation through, I went to, my senior year in high school, all throughout I went to kind of a deep theology study, Bible study… class.”
“I know that it’s a God thing that He allowed me, this freewill of God allowed me to do that because my first year at the junior college I was with FOCUS… the Fellowship of Catholic University Students.”
“It was just by divine grace that I was able to join this trip. At first, they said, ‘Oh, no way, there’s no way you can join a mission trip one week before,’ but after they checked everything they said, ‘Hey, there’s a spot on this Ecuador trip. Someone canceled’ … and I was in Ecuador one week after my world fell apart… surrounded by faithful Catholic people, just holy people.”
“So, God just took me out of my world where, in my mind, I had everything … and He just humbled the heck out of me… That’s the first time I truly encountered Jesus in the Eucharist.”
“Honestly, I wasn’t at the spiritual maturity level, I don’t think, to really prayerfully discern.”
“I could say by far this has been the most spiritual growth that I’ve had in any season or year of my life by far.”
“Even when you’re not faithful, God is faithful. Even when we’re lazy and unfaithful and forgetful, He’s faithful.”
“Probably one of my best friends now is one of the priests there… He’s from Mexico City, but he’s been here in Jerusalem with Opus Dei for 14 years… He’s kind of led me in… spiritual direction… just through friendship.”
“They were the two closest people to Jesus on earth… The more and more you contemplate in prayer and meditate with Mary and Joseph about Jesus, they just open you up and they lead you by the hand to Jesus.”
Related links:
Hayden’s Wikipedia page
Book being given away as mentioned on this episode
