Episodes

Fr. Edwin Leahy

He has been the headmaster at Saint Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey, for more than 50 years.  He is a graduate of that school and has been featured on “60 Minutes” and on FOX News. On the sports side, he wrestled, played football, and captained the tennis team, and went on to coach wrestling for Saint Benedict’s Prep. Over six years ago a video went viral of him on the basketball court, hitting a hook shot from three-point range, wearing his clerics. Meanwhile, he received the first Robert F. Kennedy Award for Urban School Leadership from the national Schools That Can organization in 2014 and was named a New Jersey Icon by NJBIZ in 2020.

Notable guest quotes:

“Especially my grandmothers, were pray-ers.  So, from the time I was – I can remember – I remember them praying.  And my dad was that way too.  I used to, saw my father every morning and every night before he went to work, and it might be before he went to bed, kneeling at the side of his bed praying.  So, I grew up around pray-ers.”

“My grandmother actually had a unique – and I studied a lot of theology, and I used to say, nah, this can’t be, this is not true – but she had a unique relationship with the Blessed Mother.  She could change the weather, she could get all kinds of favors done.  It was unbelievable to have the experience with her.”

“The locker rooms, any really, really good team, the locker room is critical, right?  So, I learned a lot from the conversations and the encouragement that came from coaches before games, before practices.  And this coach… had a huge influence on me and the way I looked at building a team, working as part of a team, giving up what I want for what we need.”

“I really don’t remember wanting to do or be anything else… I grew up with priests around me all the time… So, I admired them, and I said, ‘Well, maybe I can do that’!  I can remember as a little kid celebrating Mass in the house, making my sister attend.  And my sister would be in the assembly, and I would celebrate the Mass.”

“I had no idea about being a monk or a Benedictine, until I came here to St. Benedict’s.  And then I combined my experience with the priests in the parish with my experience here.”

“How God works in our history is really, really important to realize.”

“We were blessed here in the monastery with one of the monks, priests, who was a Notre Dame graduate, was doing a PhD in Physics at Columbia University.  And he knew he wanted to enter the monastery.  So, he never did the final research project.  He entered the monastery.  He had been a former Boy Scout leader… And he developed– well, we did it actually together – the leadership structure in the school.  And the mantra was, don’t do for kids what kids can do for themselves.  So, that’s kind of what we’ve operated on.”

“One of the signs you see around the place all over is, whatever hurts my brother or sister hurts me.  So, to try to get the understanding of the responsibility for the other; that God loves us as we are, and He said love one another as I have loved you, which means to accept the other the way the other is, not the way that we’d like them to be.”

“Don’t make decisions in anger that affect not only you, but everybody else around you.”

“It’s real important that kids be invested in something, and that causes them to give up themselves for the sake of a common goal.”

“I could not be a Christian on my own because I’m just not strong enough to do that.  I have the blessing of living in community with 13 other monks.”

Related link:

St. Benedict’s Prep website

Eibhlis Moriarty

She competed in a long list of sports from elementary school to high school to university and adult life. Notably, she competed regionally in running and at the world level in dance. Regarding the latter, she is a World Championship-winning professional Irish dancer, and she now dances for coaching. Meanwhile, she ran her first 10K in 2017 and has remained very involved in running. She is the Graduate Lab Coordinator at the University of Nevada Las Vegas for The Optimum Performance Program in Sport (TOPPS), which blends traditional mental health services with sport culture and customized performance coaching.

Notable guest quotes:

“My personal and my professional journey have always been deeply rooted in my Catholic faith.”

“I actually do have a relative, Tom Murphy was Archbishop of Seattle, and I had a very special relationship with my devoutly Catholic grandmother in Chicago and with her we’d gather on Sundays for an Irish breakfast with the Saint Patrick’s Fathers.”

“I played soccer, I was on swim team, I played T-ball … as a little kid, I was on track and field, badminton and tennis, and then as I got into high school, I kept up the running and badminton and dance.  And so with the running, I competed regionally and then with dance, I competed at the world level.”

“My family are very, we definitely show our faith before we do any kind of a big endeavor, anything like that, we’ll always have candles lighting or say a prayer, all these different kind of ways of acknowledging our kind of peace in a moment.”

“I found that … of these elite athletes who were all in troops touring the world for River Dance and Lord of the Dance and all have World Championship stages, over 50% of them engaged in spiritual routine, which I classified as either prayer or having a holy medal or something along those lines.”

“I was living in Omaha, Nebraska.  A lot of my friends were out golfing … And so, kind of got into it myself and I wish I got into it sooner.  I love it.  It’s great.”

“I like to start my day being grateful for my health overall and those times in the morning are just kind of where it’s quiet for me and I can reflect.”

“The Pioneer Total Abstinence Association… is a Catholic, an Irish Catholic, organization that is dedicated to just instilling the value of temperance through abstaining from alcohol and so that definitely played an important role for me.”

“I didn’t realize that there is so, how deep – I knew it was always, Irish culture and tradition is deeply intertwined with Catholicism – but I mean even when you go back to how we say hello in the Irish language is ‘Dia Dhuit,’ which means God is with you and then the response is ‘Dia is Mhuire Dhuit,’ which means God and Mary with you.”

“In Ireland there is holy wells scattered across the country, and you typically find one in most towns or villages, and they’re associated with a saint or significant event in Irish Catholic history.  And so, people typically will go to these, they’ll visit these wells, when they’re praying for healings or blessings.”

Related link:

Website about TOPPS

Paul Ferrante

He went from playing Little League baseball to 25-plus years of men’s league softball to playing into his 50s with two years of vintage baseball. Meanwhile, he had also played Pop Warner football and then continued in the sport in high school and college, including being the placekicker on the undefeated 1977 team that is enshrined in the Iona College Sports Hall of Fame.  He also spent a combined total of 15 seasons coaching high school and college football.  He has been a columnist for Sports Collectors Digest magazine since 1993, specializing in Baseball Ballpark History.  He is currently co-authoring his first nonfiction book, about the 1970s Oakland A’s baseball team, to be published in 2025.  And, having written other books, he says that his adult baseball novel “The Rovers: A Tale of Fenway” has the most overtly religious themes.

Notable guest quotes:

“We were really a very seriously Catholic household.  We were all baptized, partook of all the sacraments and I went to Immaculate Conception elementary school for grades K and one in the Bronx and then we moved to Pelham in New York, and I attended St. Catherine’s elementary from grades two through eight.”

“My uncle … was actually a really good pitcher and he pitched for NYU back in the late 40s and ended up actually being a practice pitcher for the Yankees.”

“My parents met through sports and between my uncle and my dad they kind of got me interested in baseball and then football came along later on.”

“I always played intramural basketball … church league basketball while I was in high school.  I played for Huguenot Church in Pelham Manor in New York.”

“We would have a pre-game Mass where we would come together and – especially if we were going up against a superior opponent on that given occasion – it was always a comforting thing for us to all be there together sharing our apprehension, if you will, or our fear, if you will.  But it made us stronger, and I think the bonds that we forged … really was something special.”

“At Iona College and growing up – lessons imparted by my parents – I came to understand the value of just certain tenets of life that I lived by that I wanted to adopt as my own: the power of love and faith, the need for understanding and empathy, the acceptance of people of all races and creeds, the value of being true to oneself, and looking for the best in others.”

“The (life) lessons that you impart to your players, I think, are just as important as any x’s and o’s you can teach them.  Whether I was at Cardinal Spellman or Iona College or Iona Prep or Mount Vernon High School, which is where I finished my coaching career, you realize that you become a part of their lives and these kids look to you for guidance.”

“A pair of seats from Sportsman Park in St. Louis ended up in a church in downtown St. Louis for many years.”

Related link:

Paul’s author website

(This episode contains a prayer from the National Catholic Coaches Association’s “The Leadership Papers,” although originally credited in there to The Coach’s Bible.)

Miguel Menendez

He has been the head baseball coach at Jesuit High School in Tampa since 2014.  He had spent many years coaching at Key West High School who, as a player, he had led to a state title back in 1995.  As a student-athlete at the collegiate level, he played for the University of Tampa, won an NCAA Division II national title in 1998, and was twice named All-Conference.  At Jesuit he has led the baseball team to such highlights as state champions, District titles, and even being ranked No. 1 nationally by several national baseball media outlets.  His faith story includes having grown apart from the church as a young adult and later finding his way back, which he talks about during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“We grew up going to church either Saturday night or Sunday mornings… I was an altar server growing up, for a time, in the Catholic church.”

“St Mary’s, the Academy of Holy Names here in Tampa, which my daughter graduated from, they started from the nuns in Key West in St Mary’s and came up here, so my dad and my daughter have that little connection of graduating from high school with the same kind of nuns and everything, so I think that’s a pretty unique connection as well.”

“I played a little bit of soccer when I was younger.  I played a couple years of football, but it was mostly baseball.  I was always a baseball guy, baseball junkie.”

“It’s easy to … lose sight of what your focus needs to be and should be.  And for me, it was like baseball, baseball, baseball.  And even more so than class and my faith, and just kind of lost my way during that time… and… it’s one of the things that I regret in my life.”

“I tell my kids all the time… I want you to appreciate your faith life for yourself and want to go do it for yourself because there’s going to come a point in time when I’m not there to make you go to church every Sunday.”

“You realize, there’s a greater purpose here and it can’t just be about baseball.”

“I love the game of baseball.  It’s great.  But I love the game of baseball for what it allows me to do now and the way that I’m able to help lead young men, to be proud of their faith life, to be good husbands, good community members, good fathers, that’s what I want.”

“Once you go back to God and you realize that all of a sudden that hole in your heart is gone, you’re like, ‘Man, why did I stray away’?”

“More importantly, just to be able to spend time and talk about their faith and we work a vacation Bible school in the morning… and then we can go around and they kind of send us out to different places to help elder people in the community to fix up their homes, do some yard work.  We’ve done things in the cemetery to help clean up the cemetery for them.  Whatever it is.”

“We don’t have to hide from our faith.  We get to use our faith for the strength that it should give us.”

“If we come here and all we’re worried about is winning a baseball game then we’re failing these young men.”

Related link:

Jesuit baseball program webpage

[This episode contains a prayer by Oldenburg Academy of the Immaculate Conception (Oldenburg, IN) Athletic Director Tim Boyle, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport]

Fabio Marino

He started playing tennis when he was eight years old and started teaching the sport at age 19.  Two years into his college years he started a tennis academy that became one of the biggest such schools in his hometown.  In 1990 he started at an exclusive resort in California, teaching the sport there for what would be 32 years.  Along the way, one of the kids he taught there not only became a #1 player in college but went on to become a pro athlete in the sport.  On the faith side, he pursued a master’s degree in theology from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, even though he wasn’t baptized Catholic until age 27.  He emotionally shares his story of tragic loss in his family.

Notable guest quotes:

“I wasn’t a Catholic at all. My mother was what I call a baptized unbeliever, and my father was an agnostic, so we never went to church, we never prayed, we never read scripture, no, it was completely a pagan household.”

“I’m from Argentina, so … I played soccer until I was 15.  I was playing both tennis and soccer, and then just I had to decide, I couldn’t be playing both.  So, I chose tennis especially because in tennis, I win by myself, I lose by myself.  I take all the credit for losing or winning.  While in a sport like soccer, I might play the best game of my life, and we still can lose.  I might play the worst game of my life, and we still can win.  So, for me, it was more like, I’ll do it by myself.”

“I don’t know why I got the gift of faith, and my father never did.  And my mother got the gift of faith, but she didn’t do anything with it.  But somehow, I think God gave me the gift of faith.”

“That’s why I became Catholic.  It’s not me.  It’s just the grace of God.  I don’t know why I got it.”

“It was quite a shift in my life when I received the gift of grace and got baptized.”

“I have eight kids from (ages) 30 to 16, four boys and four girls.  And when Thomas, he’s my oldest, was born. I decided that I was going to have to have enough knowledge to answer the questions when he turned a teenager… And… I started doing a master’s in theology, which I stopped when my fifth child was born.”

“I always say that Americans are defined by two characters, two kinds of people.  In my opinion, one is the Marines and the second is the cowboy and I couldn’t be a Marine, so I became a cowboy.”

“I teach Bible study… I teach confirmation… And also I’m an altar server… And now I’ve been trained to be a Eucharistic minister, but the ones that go to the hospital and pray with the sick.”

“If you cannot pray a rosary, pray a decade.  If you cannot pray for ten minutes, just pray for one.  If you cannot read the scripture for a chapter, read half.  And if you cannot stop sinning, stop making excuses.”

Related link:

Guest post Fabio mentions having written for Catholic Answers

(This episode contains a prayer from the South Bend Indiana Inner-City Catholic League, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Deanne Miller

She competed in hockey, figure skating, gymnastics, soccer, and dance team as a young girl and teenager, and in her adult years moved into sports pursuits such as tennis/pickleball, receiving Pilates and TRX certifications, and creating a physical certification program under the banner of SoulCore, a Catholic fitness apostolate that she is co-founder of, with a mission to amplify the experience of prayer through physical movement. On the faith side, she has a conversion story to the Catholic faith, which she talks about during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was brought up Greek Orthodox… A lot of joy… a lot of family, fun and really faith and unity and gratitude, acceptance.  Really all those were just the cornerstone of our upbringing, a really beautiful, beautiful experience.”

“With having four brothers, I was thrown into a lot of sports that maybe most sisters may not be, including hockey… But I was so happy to be a part of it.”

“It really does glorify God in His just incredible healing graces.  We don’t necessarily feel that as we’re going through something, but the reality is His hand is always with us and He’s always working in us.”

“Faith has always been the cornerstone of our family and our upbringing.”

“I like to say God reorders what we disorder.”

“I think about the scripture in John when Jesus asked the paralytic, do you want to be well.  I was starting to kind of bring my suffering more to the Lord in just very, very minor ways.  But I remember almost audibly hearing, ‘Do you want to be well?’  And I screamed inside, ‘Yes, I do’.”

“God knew exactly what I needed and the time it was going to take.  But really in that journey, I just started to reestablish really a healthy respect and appreciation for caring for our body; again, this gift, this miracle that we’ve been given is our gift from God and how we care for it is our gift back to Him.  We’re called to be stewards of our bodies.”

“Something that’s, instead of running, it’s rooted in the rosary, it’s focused on prayer and the life of Christ and virtue, but involves more functional movement, core strengthening, stretching, that sort of thing.”

Related link:

SoulCore website

(This episode contains a prayer originally from catholic.org, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Deacon Michael Hill

He ran track in high school, competed in intramural sports, later taught himself golf, and coached youth league basketball and baseball, winning a regular season and a post-season title. In 2011 he was ordained to the Diaconate in the first class in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.  He has been a 4th degree member of the Knights of Columbus, and this year was awarded a Licentiate in Canon Law from St. Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario.  He is a Board member of Deacons Of Hope, a pro-life, non-profit ministry.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was actually born to an unwed mother, and she was in the hospital, they immediately baptized me because they didn’t think I was going to make it through the evening.  And eventually I was adopted out to a loving father and mother.”

“My mother is actually someone who was raised Protestant and then joined the Catholic faith after the marriage that they had.  So, they made sure that I went to Mass every Sunday and on all the holy days of obligation, taught me how to pray, taught me how to say the rosary, then made sure I went to a Catholic elementary school and went there all the way to sixth grade and then because of transportation issues, I went to a public junior high and high school but remained in what was back then called CCD and then eventually went to Rockhurst College, which is a Catholic Jesuit education university.”

“What I would do when I was coaching them, I would try to find maybe an area where they hadn’t received any training, where God had given them a gift to do and maybe somebody hadn’t seen it, or somebody hadn’t explored that yet.  And so, I would take my time and teach them to say, ‘Hey, you can do this really well.  You can do that really well.  That seems to be a gift from God’.”

“I’d be forgiving of errors especially at that age because sometimes they tried too hard, but it was always about trying to find a way where I could incorporate God and the gifts that God had given these young children to play and then give them encouragement.”

“He said, ‘Remember when he hit that free throw? … It’s great… when he went back to school, he stopped being picked on, he stopped being teased, his grades went up a full letter grade in every subject in his school, and he was quote unquote one of the guys…  He then believed in himself too’.”

“I didn’t care about the score it was all about… making sure the kids had a positive experience and the kids learned how to be better people, made sure they shook hands and always wished well to the other team because I said, ‘If you’ve played hard and you’ve used God’s talents to the best of your ability, you can look that other person in the eye and shake their hand and congratulate them, knowing you did the best you could to win the game’.”

“I went into his office, and he took the form, signed it, reached into his top drawer and picked out an already created letter of recommendation for me and then personally delivered it to the chancery and then six years later I was ordained.”

“I had doubts; you know, Satan picked on me all the time and as my spiritual advisor said, ‘Obviously there’s something great God wants you to do and Satan’s trying to thwart Him’.”

“If you do see a sign and you do really feel God’s calling you this way and doors open and everything happens then, for sure, you’re going that way and just abide.”

“I think that people understanding that there’s something bigger than the football game or the baseball game or the basketball game, there’s appreciating the talent that God has given these people to do these things to keep us entertained and distracted for an hour or two or three is really important, especially in the society we’re in right now.”

Related link:

Deacons of Hope website