Chase Crouse
Episode 312
20 JAN 2025
He played tennis and beach volleyball in high school and the latter when he was a student-athlete at Texas State University. Present day he participates in mixed martial arts, lifting weights, hiking, and doing Spartan races. He is co-founder of and fitness director for Hypuro Fit, whose mission is to bring a technically excellent and authentically Catholic approach to personal training. He also has a story about his own reversion to the Catholic faith, which he shares during this interview.
Notable guest quotes:
“My dad loosely non-denominational agnostic and my mom growing up was more of like a cultural Mexican Catholic, but she had her reversion later in life, so growing up we were nominally Catholic but not practicing by any means.”
“My dad actually was a semi-professional beach volleyball player. So, I was kind of playing with that a little bit when I was in middle school but nothing too seriously and then by the time I got to high school I settled on tennis so that was kind of my main sport in high school and then eventually beach volleyball.”
“I got confirmed when I was in high school. My mom made me go through the confirmation process. It was kind of just like a check box kind of thing. And I kind of got a little bit more into my faith going into junior and senior year. I’d met some friends at the local church. By that point I was already getting into partying and drinking and at first, I didn’t realize that those are two contradictory things.”
“Tennis was everything for me for a number of years. I was playing on average, like, two to four hours a day. Me and my doubles partner were ranked number four in the state of Texas at one point in doubles and colleges started emailing me and my parents probably my sophomore year going into my junior year.”
“I thought I was going to go to college. I thought I was going to do it as a, maybe I don’t know if as a career, but something very serious and God had other plans.”
“Basically, my whole first year at Texas State I was never an atheist, right? I was never agnostic. I was always ‘Catholic,’ it was not part of my life at all. I didn’t give it much thought.”
“The next thought struck me, and this was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, which was, if I died right now where would I be. And for 19-year-old Chase that was a terrifying question.”
“I knew, like really knew, and experienced, that Jesus was real and that he loved me and that I should be striving more and more to do everything I can to honor, love, and serve him.”
“God just put this fire in my heart to serve him and so I wanted to tell others about his mercy and so I became a missionary and while I was a missionary that’s when I really fell in love with theology and knowledge for the first time and that’s when I knew I wanted to go back to school and study it more formally.”
“I eventually went to a school called John Paul the Great Catholic University to finish my undergrad, so I got an undergrad degree in what was called the new evangelization (which) was the name of the degree, which was essentially a theology and a philosophy degree.”
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