Episodes

Richard Rossi

He excelled in three different sports. As a boxer he competed in the Catholic intramural boxing league’s lightweight division and won 80% of his fights by knockout, the rest by points. He was nearly undefeated, losing only one fight. In basketball, he was the only white player, starting guard, on an all-black basketball team in Pittsburgh intramural League. His team won the championship and had an undefeated season. And, in the men’s softball championship in Pittsburgh, he hit the winning walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, resulting in his team taking the championship and carrying him on their shoulders in celebration. He is an Academy Award-considered filmmaker, best-selling novelist, and a guitarist who has composed over one thousand songs. His latest family faith-based film has won 15 awards at film festivals and can be seen for free on Amazon.

Notable guest quotes:

“My mother came up every night with my brothers and I.  We were in an attic, and we had a little bed in each of those four corners for me and my three brothers.  And she would say the rosary with us.  We had prayer in the evening.  In fact, to this day, I fall asleep every night holding a rosary in my hand and praying.”

“I was in a public school at 15 and I was kicked out for fighting even though I was defending the kids against the bullies.  I got sent to a strict Catholic school because of the fights.  And some priest said, ‘Man, you’re really good.  Why don’t we do this in an organized way?’  And they put me in a boxing league.”

“I’ve had multiple sports screenplays I’ve written.  One that I haven’t made yet is called The Immaculate Reception and it references in my hometown, Pittsburgh Steelers, the real turning point was when Franco Harris had this great play called the immaculate reception.  And that turned the fortunes of the Steelers towards winning four Super Bowls in the 70s, but it also is going to get into the Catholic faith aspect of the immaculate conception.”

“I felt the Holy Spirit had put in my heart that God is the master artist, creator of all things and artists support other artists.  So, I’d done some acting.  I kind of stumbled into getting some acting roles and some major TV things.  And it just seemed so shallow.  You know, here I was, making some money at it, but I thought, ‘I want to make something more substantive.’  And I realized I’m going to probably have to write and do this myself and make my own films because I wanted to make films about faith and about hope.”

“I was close with a nun, as a boy, named Sister Antonita and (Roberto) Clemente was my favorite.  I loved playing baseball as a boy, and he was my idol.  And she was close with him, and she told me about some private conversations … where he discussed his faith with her, and she led him into a stronger commitment to his Catholic faith.”

“I felt the Holy Spirit made it real clear; this is the whole point of the film.  The theme verse of the film is greater love hath no man than this that he laid down his life for his friends, John chapter 15 verse 13.”

“My dad had just died and it’s very emotional and when I went in the Duomo in Milan… I saw this old Italian priest and I had an experience with the Holy Spirit that was so powerful.  I felt led of the spirit to go to confession.”

“I really felt called to Saint Francis.  I love the peace prayer, and I love that he gave up a lot of his worldly goods to follow Christ … and I was just drawn to his life the way of the cross.”

Related link:

Watch “Lucy & the Lake Monster” for free on Amazon

[This episode contains a prayer (poem) by Central Catholic High School (Pittsburgh, PA) Principal Ed Bernot, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport]

Matthew Plese

He is an amateur marathoner and active member of the Chicago Catholic Run Club, saying that running has become a key part of his spiritual and personal life. He has completed five of the six World Marathon Majors and is just one race away from earning the coveted Six Star Medal. On the faith side, he is the president of CatechismClass.com, an online-based organization whose mission is to make the best in Catholic religious education and Sacramental preparation available for those who need it. In addition, he has authored several Catholic books and has written for different Catholic publications.

Notable guest quotes:

“Thanks be to God it was really after 9/11 my family started looking at, ‘We got to get back to some sort of a faith life and I guess it was natural that my father coming from a Catholic background looked at that and thankfully that God really led us there.”

“I was just so happy that really it was God himself who led us to the truth and ever since then I’ve had no hesitation that – going deeper and deeper and deeper into the faith – that it was truly the real faith established by God himself.”

“That’s something that I tell people pretty often that anybody can get into sports because in high school I wasn’t involved in sports at all.”

“I’ve also gotten into hiking.  At the same time, that can very much be a great physical activity for you.  It can be a great time for prayer and reflection, at the same time great physical activity.”

“I went to the University of St. Thomas, a great school, and they’re also known for a number of different programs there and one of which was their philosophy program, they have the Catholic studies program.  So, I did very much enter that university with the intention of furthering the faith and getting a philosophy degree.”

“Ever since I became Catholic, I felt like this was truly what our Lord said was the pearl of great price in the field.”

“Really by the grace and thanks be to God that since then I’ve written for a number of great publications, I’ve authored over five books, I present at different conferences around the United States, I’ve become a bit of a subject matter expert in some areas, especially fasting and absence … I even teach this to priests at seminaries.”

“If this is the truth and this is real and this is the only thing that remains for all eternity and everything else is gonna pass away one day, why am I gonna put such an exorbitant amount of time in things that really don’t matter.  If I just look at it from that perspective, and the faith obviously is number one and I try to tie really anything about the faith into my life.  And I’ve done that with my work, getting into marathon running and a number of things, even the accounting work that I do.  I try to go out of my way to help priests do their tax returns for cheaper, or religious orders too.”

“Whatever you can do, you should be trying to do something charitable every single day to a family member or a friend, online, in-person, just one charitable act a day and you’ll find that over time at the end of the year you’ve done so much work building up the faith.”

“I found personally that all this training… it’s very liberating because I can offer all this up for penance… So, I have found running to be very enriching and spiritually edifying.”

“The thing that I devote most of my time to is how can I continue to get more people to learn the fullness of the Catholic faith their entire life from cradle to grave.”

Related link:

CatechismClass.com

(This episode contains a prayer by Gregg Easterbrook from the NFL.com and ESPN.com column “Monday Morning Quarterback,” as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Johnny Kuplack

He last month concluded 100 ultra marathons in 100 days, running 3,500 miles across America, having started in California and ultimately ended at the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in New York. He is an endurance athlete who has competed in running events worldwide. His ultra-running career has included ten races, from 50K to one hundred-plus miles, of which he has won six and placed second in four, securing leads of multiple hours as well as a course record. He is the co-founder of Sebaste, a non-profit named for 40 Roman soldiers in the third century who chose to meet death on a frozen lake rather than renounce Christ. His organization runs formative programs and adventures for men across the country.

Notable guest quotes:

“We grew up Catholic, and as I reflected on this as an adult, it was always very strong: rosary, Mass, always into Catholic schools, always praying before and after meals, and it was always emphasized that this is the most important thing in our lives.”

“Going into high school, I was introduced to the game of rugby.  I went to a boy’s boarding school in northeastern Pennsylvania called St. Gregory’s Academy.  Absolutely phenomenal school.  And everyone at the school, we played soccer in the fall, and then we played rugby the other seven months of the year.”

“Going into high school, money was my main objective and coming out of high school that had completely flipped.  And the new questions were, what does it mean to live a good life?  What does it mean to be a saint?  How do I do this?  A life full of joy and adventure and beauty.”

“As a teacher, of course, you always you want to bring the best out of your students and you want to see them grow into the men and women that God made them to be and to discover that greatness.”

“I was just riding in silence and just thinking about my own shortcomings and the kind of man I wanted to be and how I feel like I just plateaued.  And so, I decided there, I need to start pushing myself into serious unknown territories if I want to make this breakthrough.  So, I decided then on that drive that I was going to run the race.”

“When we have been given so many things, you only really possess the gift if you’re giving it away.  It’s like the divine currency; you only have it when it’s in gift form, as soon as you stop giving it you almost cease to possess it.”

“Running has been a very, very transformative thing for me.”

“God’s always working multiple fronts at the same time.  He’s not a one-dimensional war fighter.  He’s always got different elements; you’re meeting different people, different conversations, and different experiences, all collaborating together to bring you back closer to Him.”

“Over the course of the races I was running started to open up a bigger picture for me interiorly combined with some of the books I was reading and the scriptures that I’m made for something different.  I’m made for a real relationship with God the Father, and I am a beloved son of God and I’m not engaging in the relationship that I’m made for.  I’ll never become the man I’m made to be until I’m actually living out of my true identity.”

Related link:

Official Sebaste website

(This episode contains a prayer originally excerpted and adapted from Day By Day: The Notre Dame Prayerbook for Students by Thomas McNally, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Diane Nienas

She participated as a young student-athlete in cheerleading, volleyball, softball, and basketball. She was captain of the volleyball team, two years after the team went undefeated in the conference, won sectionals, and advanced to state for the first time in program history. In her adult years she continued her athletic involvement in leagues for both sand volleyball and softball. She is a #1 best-selling author of five books and is a speaker and certified grief coach, as inspired by having lost two of her four sons in the last few years, with one of the boys having been very active in ice hockey and powerlifting.

Notable guest quotes:

“Amongst this land that we owned, we also had our own baseball diamond.  And it set up for just a really beautiful space for us, during holidays and family gatherings, to have our own little competitive game of baseball with each other.”

“At age two, his health drastically changed.  He was diagnosed with leukodystrophy.  And it basically stripped him of all of his motor functions to the point where he was kind of trapped in a still body and unable to move or speak or eat.”

“We were actually told that Leo most likely would not see his third birthday.  And the way his health was progressing that first year of diagnosis it truly looked like that was going to be the route that was going to be taken.  But God definitely had a different plan.”

“He put the hard work in that never went unnoticed, but the gift of just that physical ability was definitely something that God gave him.”

“I’m thinking it’s a concussion and we arrived, and we find out that he’s being diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, which is brain cancer.”

“His only options were going to be radiation and chemotherapy, which, both of them were not going to have a positive long-term effect.  It was going to prolong his diagnosis from what they thought would maybe be about 6-8 months untreated, but then less than two years is what they were giving him at that point.”

“This faith perspective is honestly the piece of my story that I just, I just want to encourage people to step through their grief and to truly find hope.  It is something that is so clearly a gift from God.”

“In a seven-year time period, we lost eight family members, including my mom and dad and my brother and aunt and uncle.”

“There was so many moments of situations like this over the course of Leo’s lifetime that just built my faith in this time of tremendous sorrow to be able to see that God’s hand was on all of it even when we felt like we were in the darkest of valley.”

“When you witness what I was able to see, I cannot shout from the mountaintop any louder about the hope that God surrounded us with.”

Related link:

Diane’s official 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)

Bud Macfarlane

He was captain of his varsity football, basketball, and baseball teams and received multiple scholar-athlete awards, being mildly recruited by small private colleges and Ivy League schools in various sports. More specifically, he was a standout defensive catcher on a championship team and an all-conference defensive end. In basketball, he was one of the best defensive players in the state. In addition, he was a high school track and field coach and coached baseball in town leagues for many years. He is a best-selling novelist and the founder of The Mary Foundation, which he created more than 33 years ago. Their apostolate has influenced tens of millions of people through their website, novels, and other Catholic resources. In 2020 he and a priest “pinned” the Mantle of Mary on the extreme four corners of the U.S., and later, over an eight-month period, he led a spiritual warfare initiative requiring extraordinary physical challenges, which he talks about during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“I myself from the beginning of when I can remember have always had a deep interior belief in everything the Catholic church teaches as it teaches it.  And even the things I did know when I discovered them, it felt like I already believed them or knew them.”

“I had this sort of, one of those moments in your life where everything changes, where I thought I’m not here to play sports.  I’m here to study.  God brought me here for a different reason.”

“As I often do, as the saints teach, it was kind of a little dialogue with God, just a conversation with Him on the way there.  But I felt his force, let’s say, stopping me.”

“I wanted to get a rifle and go somewhere and start shooting bad guys.  But I also had this inkling, maybe God wants me to be a priest.”

“I received a couple of spiritual cures while I was in the seminary… I’m very grateful for my time in the seminary.  I learned a lot there.”

“It’s like a change in your state of being.  And by making this total consecration, everything in your life, whether you sleep, whether you sin, whether you repent, whatever you do, it’s done in the service of her guiding you to Jesus’s perfect will.”

“You have to reject the heresy that you can’t become a saint.”

“Father Boughton had called me up and said the bishops are going to do a Eucharist pilgrimage across the United States.  And between the two of us we lobbied the bishop in charge to do it in the form of the crucifix, which they did and completed in July of 2024 with the Eucharistic Congress.  That’s never been done in any country.”

“(the Blessed Mother) asked people to become saints, to pray the rosary with a sacramental life; in short, to love God and to love with all your heart and love everyone else and love yourself even.”

“There have been more Christian martyrs in the last 20 years than in the whole history of the world that’s happening in places we can’t see… right now.”

Related link:

Mary Foundation website

Kevin Doyle

He played no fewer than five sports in his youth and then went on to not only compete in pole vault in high school but played for two different soccer teams. In addition to being captain of the VHSCAA State All-Star Team, he at one point held the school record for most shutouts in a season and his team had the school record for the longest undefeated streak. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he tried out for the soccer team.  Present day, he is president of The Catholic Initiative, a key “Legacy of Hope” project, which is a first of its kind in the world. It is a Vatican-approved effort to invest in the restoration and sustainability of vibrant Catholic churches, schools, and parishes where a lack of financial resources is currently holding back their potential.

Notable guest quotes:

“(parents) were both cradle Catholics.  They were both graduates of Notre Dame as well as were their parents and their fathers.  So, we were very strong in our faith, and it was an important part of our life, and we stayed convicted that way.”

“Tennis was my best sport.  And I loved playing tennis, but it just didn’t have the same camaraderie and feel when you’re playing a solo sport that joining the soccer team did and joining the soccer club and traveling around with my buddies and teammates.”

“This world is going to be what we make of it and this world is going to be what you call God to ask you to help lead you in the right way.  You can’t just sit there and wait.”

“We oversee a portfolio of hotels where we give all the profits to charity and where we also try to live out the seven corporal works of mercy through the programs and actions that we take at the hotel.”

“At Notre Dame… I went to Mass every week.  I went and prayed at the grotto when I was really having a tough time with something.  But I was not nearly as intentional and close to God then as I am now.”

“My whole college and early career, I wanted to be the athletics director of Notre Dame.”

“I just kept hearing from God, ‘You got to go visit Notre Dame.  You got to go visit Notre Dame’.”

“Bill wanted to serve the poor.  He was someone who built a business without ever going to college and became very successful, but he always knew that the blessings he had were nothing other than gifts from God and it wasn’t, they weren’t his, and he needed to share them with people who may not have had the same sort of fortunes that he did… he was also a devout Catholic, a daily communicant.”

“Pope Francis says that the pastor should smell like the sheep.  That’s not the case for so many pastors and school principals and things because they’re distracted.”

“Everything about sports from the way that it brings people together to the way that you can learn lessons to the way that even just talking to teammates who may not have God in their life, and you can use that as a way to introduce them to God.  I think there is so much overlap.”

Related link:

The Catholic Initiative website

(This episode contains a prayer attributed to legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Tom Equels

He has an amazing story of surviving a life-threatening accident a few years ago. He was on the track team in high school and surfed regularly too. For decades he has been an avid motorcyclist, both dirt and touring. He has also been active in martial arts and was a regular participant in sailboat racing. Although he also swims and plays tennis and pickle ball, he perhaps excelled the most as an equestrian competitor as a rider for decades, having won numerous local, regional, state, national, and international championships. He authored a book that came out last year, called, “The Horseman’s Tale.” His service to our country is seen in him being a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran and the recipient of two Distinguished Flying Crosses for heroism in aerial combat, along with the Purple Heart. On the faith side, he was knighted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 for his humanitarian service.

Notable guest quotes:

“My father was – and (to) some extent still is, and the people who can still remember – a pretty famous athlete in Western Pennsylvania, track and field and football.”

“I took to track as a sport in junior high and high school, ran the high hurdles, low hurdles. There’s a 120 and high hurdles, 120 yards, it’s slightly same distance basically, but in meters now.  And was on a number of different sprint related relay teams.”

“It was more than just that I wanted to fly. I always had a very strong belief that was instilled by my mother and the idea that as citizens, we have a duty to our country, to our constitution, to the preservation of liberty and freedom in our country and in the world generally.  And she taught me about the generations before me who had served out of our family.  And so, it seemed like the right thing to do as well.”

“The incident where I got my purple heart was related to bullets coming in through the canopy of the cobra gunship I was flying.  And some of those bullet fragments were in my arm and my hand… I did have more serious injuries.  And as a result of some accidents over there in the aircraft, where I crushed and had a lot of scarring in my sinus areas from an impact to my face.”

“I decided to go to law school and also make social justice related legal work a part of my life.  And it was through that social justice work that I began a number of projects helping Haitian refugees in the Miami area and met a priest who is in charge of the Haitian Catholic Center, and we’ve become lifelong friends.”

“This is a church that rolls its sleeves up and goes out and does what Jesus taught us to do, which is not just love each other, but care for each other.”

“Jesus is alive today because we are his eyes.  We are his hands.  And that’s how we keep the world changing by his word.”

“I had a very serious, what’s called an open book, pelvic fracture and some arteries were cut so I was bleeding out.  And my face got pretty badly smashed.  My nose was broken in three places.  All my upper front teeth were fractured.  I had a concussion, was knocked out for a period of time.”

“We don’t come to the table perfect, we come and we strive just like in sports, spiritually, day by day to get better.”

“I took my parents to France and Normandy, and we went to Lisieux, which is where the Basilica for St. Thérèse is.”

Related link:

Tom’s book on Amazon

(This episode contains a prayer adapted from one by an unknown Confederate Soldier, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)