Taylor Schroll
Episode 24
15 JUL 2019
A four-sport athlete in high school, he ran track in college, at a Catholic university — including competing against some Olympians — and today is a coach for the boys track team at a Catholic high school in Texas, where he has guided them to a many “firsts” in school history, such as district champs, regional champs, and medals at the State meet. A father of three, he also is a full-time missionary and hosts a Catholic podcast too!
Notable guest quotes:
“I fell in love with the basketball before I ever fell in love with anything, like God, my family, I loved basketball from a very young age.”
“I was a college freshman, I ran at Incarnate Word… My literally first race ever, it was an indoor meet, I ran the 60-meter dash and I got down on my blocks and I looked to the guy on the right. He looked very familiar and I quickly recalled that I watched him on TV the year before, winning the Big 12 Championship in the hundred.”
“(My college career) ended at Baylor with… three guys and one girl that were Baylor alumni that came back for the meet to, like, the four of them ran as their own team, they ran unaffiliated, with all these other colleges… All these guys had won medals at the Olympics! And I got into the blocks against Darold Williamson, who got a medal at the Olympics… I felt like he was done with his 200-meter race by the time I got out of the blocks.”
“I had come up in youth ministry, like, youth ministry in high school essentially saved me being Catholic.”
“What’s really cool about the coaching in particular is that a lot of times in youth ministry or in campus ministry where I worked… there was a huge group of people that I couldn’t connect with, which were the athletes. A lot of ’em didn’t care about their faith. And I was like, ‘Well I care about sports. Let me go start coaching ’em.’ And I started building real relationships with these young men… And then slowly because of my relationship with them that I built out on the track and field they started coming around on their faith and being, like, look, a lot of this stuff applies here too.”
“Here in the United States, this has become a mission territory. This used to be an extremely and overtly Christian nation. As things have shifted in our society, like, especially with young people… A lot of these kids don’t know anything or if they do know they don’t care.”
“I was the nerdy kid that loved Star Wars… I was the athlete. I was the church kid. I was the class clown. I was all these things, so I am able to connect with these young people.”
“The youth minister that actually impacted my life? He was a high school quarterback and that’s how we bonded. So, I didn’t really see it coming. There were some seeds there that started…”
“That’s why it’s been so cool here, recently, in these last, like, ten years or so. There are SO many athletes who are our heroes – our sports heroes – who are big-time Christians.”
“This is cool, I can do this. I can love sports and God and actually live a life of Christ while playing football, basketball, baseball, whatever.”
Related link:
