Tomas Cerdeiras
Episode 85
14 SEP 2020
An assistant coach for Belmont Abbey College’s men’s track and field. As a student-athlete there he became the school’s record-holder in the decathlon and earned All Region honors. He has also coached an NCAA DII All-American in heptathlon as well as a male and female freshman athlete of the year for their respective conferences. Growing up he had competed in football, baseball, and basketball.
Notable guest quotes:
“When they had to leave (Cuba) because of the whole (Fidel) Castro thing, the one thing that they were able to take — you know, they lost everything, their farm, their families, and all that — but the one thing they were able to take when they moved here was their religion… My dad made it a thing to pass that down to us and to kind of share the importance of our religion, Jesus Christ.”
“Growing up it was rosaries every night, daily Mass, Mass on Sundays.”
“Homeschool was really, for me, what I remember, is reading a bunch of saint books… It kind of really helped me… growing in my faith.”
“My dad basically said, like, ‘Son, I don’t care where you go. Just make sure it’s a good Catholic school, and we’ll worry about the money later’.”
“My dad, at the time, wasn’t sure how he was going to send… us to a private, liberal arts, Catholic school in North Carolina… He started to say a nine-day novena to St. Joseph… and on the last day of the novena we got a check for a large sum of money and all it said on the check was, ‘This is for Tomas’s education’.”
“I think I owe a lot of my spiritual life to a particular monk that I would go to for spiritual direction.”
“I was reading a lot into St. Padre Pio and all of his miracles and his relationship with God.”
“We go through valleys and mountains… But every time you get out of the valley, God gives you the gifts to kind of make you stronger and get you ready for heaven ultimately.”
“It was really just God saying, like, ‘This is the woman for you.’ And we would go to the chapel together and pray all the time. And it was really a blessing. And now we’re married. We just bought our first house and God’s really blessed me with Julia and our marriage.”
“I was working at a secular school for a year and really what I was missing when I was working there was the religious aspect, ya’ know, being part of a Catholic school where I can preach about Jesus Christ.”
“One of my student-athletes, after talking to her… eventually she decided to convert to Catholicism and I was her godfather.”
Related link:
Belmont Abbey College Men’s Track & Field
