Melanie Meza
Episode 370
9 MAR 2026
She had a long career as a student-athlete, playing basketball for Whittier College, El Camino College, and her high school, all in California. During her time at El Camino College she made the Academic All-State Basketball Team and in her sophomore year posted double-digit rebounds in seven games. She was the team captain there and was coming off a high school career that saw her earn San Pedro News Pilot Prep Girls Basketball Player of the Year and All Santa Fe League First Team honors. She is a Catholic women’s fitness coach and the founder of Rosary Girl Walk, which is a walking wellness community for Catholic women.
Notable guest quotes:
“I was born and raised Catholic, baptized in the Catholic Church… Went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 12th grade.”
“Going to Mass was something that we just did to check off the list… it was more of like, I’m going to Mass because my mom’s telling me to go to Mass and I went for like the wrong reason – the cute boy, I’m like, ‘Oh, I hope I can hold my crush’s hand during the Our Father’.”
“My very first sport actually was track. I was only a runner. I only used to run. I feel like that’s the foundation of everything. Why I was able to go so far. I’m just really athletic. And so, track was my first sport. I started running when I was seven years old. And I did cross-country, track. I did volleyball. I was a two-sport athlete in high school, but I was way better in basketball.”
“I got a lot of my validation from that. It was like the one thing that I felt like made me worthy or felt quote unquote worthy. If I performed really well, then I was lovable. And if I performed really bad I was like, ‘I’m nothing. I’m not lovable. I don’t want to be loved.’ So, a lot of my identity was based on my performance and my sport.”
“During that whole process it was just like finding my identity in Christ and the Lord stripping me of my idol, which was this sport, which was myself, my looks too. I didn’t have … training or the gym to fix myself.”
“I went to Puerto Rico with a Christian ministry called Athletes in Action. And it was in that retreat that I finally let go of basketball… it almost hit my reality that I had an idol of this. And that it was actually taking over my identity.”
“I had a coach who was Christian … And he started to help me understand how to integrate my faith, my love for God in my sport.”
“I had a conversion in the Catholic church. But then I just needed deeper reasons to believe why to be Catholic and why to stay Catholic.”
“I love my faith and I also love fitness, so I combine the two.”
“I asked our lady for three intentions, and she answered them. I prayed for the rosary for 75 days straight and she answered my three intentions.”
“I lived a double life. So, I would party on the weekend and next day I was in the front row pew and I was singing my heart out and I was a lector and I was doing all these things.”
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