Jamon Copeland
Episode 315
10 FEB 2025
He is the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Ave Maria University. He is in his 15th season as a head coach, having previously held the position at Aledo High School, The University of Texas at Tyler, a previous stint at Ave Maria, Texas State University, Trinity Valley Community College, and Keller Central High School. He led Ave Maria to the conference tournament championship game in 2021 and his 2023-24 team earned an at-large bid to the NAIA Tournament and won the program’s first-ever national tournament game. He is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a CrossFit Level I Trainer.
Notable guest quotes:
“My mom was kind of the backbone of the family spiritually and we were in Mass every Sunday, got a religious education and she just did an incredible job. My dad ended up converting to the Catholic faith.”
“I finished at Franciscan University in Steubenville, it’s a Newman Guide School, and that was actually the first time I’d ever had a Catholic education that wasn’t run through the parish.”
“Being in a small town in Oklahoma, baseball was the most readily available. So, that was the first organized sport I played, but I played organized baseball, football, basketball, cross country, track, I was on the swim team.”
“There was a really generous donor that was able to give me a substantial scholarship to Franciscan to be able to attend. It was a private school. I couldn’t afford it. And so, I just kind of felt like that was God’s will at the time. It kind of came out of nowhere; just had a knee injury, just had knee surgery, and wasn’t sure how that was gonna go. (I) got the huge scholarship and it just kind of all fell in my lap. I kind of just thought it was divine providence and took a chance and loved my time there.”
“That entire retreat I just remember praying, ‘Lord, your will be done. Wherever you want to send me, I’ll do it. Your will be done’.”
“He’s like, ‘Hey, Jamon, I just got this job, and I want you to be my top assistant. Would you take it?’ And it was another God thing… I had just been praying and praying, and the Holy Spirit had just been tugging on my heart like, ‘Hey, just be open to God’s will,’ and (I) got that call … and I accepted it on the spot.”
(in Tyler, Texas) “We were around some incredible priests, some incredible families, with an incredible bishop. And the faith definitely grew.”
“We start every practice with … a thought for the day… typically it’ll be a quote or a thought for practice for the day. And then right after that every day we have the saint of the day and we talk about the saint of the day, whoever saint’s feast day it is… and then we’ll start with our prayer and then post-practice we’re gonna close with a prayer. We do a team retreat. We go to daily Mass together on the road. We say rosaries on road trips. It’s incredible. It’s just, it’s in every fiber of our program, the Catholic faith is.”
“I’ve done the consecration to Mary and the consecration to St. Joseph … I’ve actually done the consecration to Mary multiple times.”
Related link:
Jamon’s bio on Ave Maria website
