Episodes

Jose Pulido

He competed for four years in track and field in high school and present day is a coach of an evangelical nature. He is the founder of Holy Family Evangelization, a Catholic coaching organization, AND he is the author of a brand-new book just being released, called, “How to Evangelize Anyone,” which is a complete reversal for someone who was an atheist. He has evangelized at universities, Fortune 500 companies, and various non-profits in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia. He has also advised numerous organizations and parishes on evangelization and catechesis.

Notable guest quotes:

“Track and field is just one of those sports where perseverance is very much rewarded, right?  It’s just basically you racing against your past time, and I’m someone that perseverance is sort of one of my values from an early age… I also did cross country.”

“I became an atheist because I couldn’t quite grapple with the problem of pain.  How does one deal with the fact that there’s a suffering world.  And I decided you know what, things don’t quite make sense.  So why would there be a God?”

“I like to joke that I came back to the church kicking and screaming.  The logic brought me back, but I wasn’t happy about it.  Though I was in the church logically, I wasn’t there emotionally.”

“Over the course of a year, 2011, I really drew closer to the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and then all three together in the form of the Holy Family.”

“Around freshman, sophomore year that’s when the logic brought me full force into the Catholic church, but emotionally I wasn’t quite there yet.  And then it was at the Newman Center with Father Greg Schaefer and the FOCUS missionary … where just my heart started to beat.”

“It’s really important to both have a logical context for the faith as well as a personal experience to the faith.  I think that’s what keeps people in over the long term.”

“It was December 24, 2011, where I had a really profound experience with the Holy Family of Nazareth… it was in the Gothic Cathedral of Barcelona.”

“I didn’t just need to be in the perfect family and to feel that love.  I also needed to know that I could give love, that I could be strong, that I could also win.  You know, like, nobody wants to be part of an all-star team and be the worst player.”

“All of us at Townsend Harris High School had to take something called the Ephebic oath.  And it basically details what a good citizen of the city is.  It’s from Athens.  And the last line profoundly impacted me… ‘I shall not leave my city any less but rather greater than I found it.’  And as a Catholic it’s this, like, I shall not leave my church any less but rather greater than I found it.”

“The idea is so much of successful evangelization is to see the other person as God might, as the members of the Holy Family might… So, the litany of gratitude is, just what do I see in this other person so that I can then start with love and end with love.”

Related link:

Jose’s evangelization website
Order Jose’s book

Jamon Copeland

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

(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.)

Antwyne DeLonde

He was Varsity Basketball Coach for seven years at The Boys’ Latin School of Maryland. On the business side, he joined forces with NBA legend Walt “The Wizard” Williams to assist former NFL player Wale Ogunleye with the UBS Sports and Entertainment Division. Together, they revolutionized wealth management for elite clients, including the National Basketball Players Association, and brokered historic deals such as connecting Players TV Media Group — a collective powered by icons like Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, and Kyrie Irving — with UBS. He is also a U.S. Army combat veteran, and he demonstrated a true Christian heart by quitting his seven-figure job to create a social impact company that focuses on financial education for the underprivileged.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was raised Baptist, and I decided to convert to Catholicism back in 2017 when it was time for my son to get baptized and we wanted to make sure that he was brought into one faith.”

“When I was in Iraq in 2003 … I had an opportunity to open my mind to religion on a deeper and spiritual level.  It was probably the first time that I saw people who were in doubt just based on the circumstances of being in war.  And with that, it made me open up my Bible more and get more in tune with my faith.”

“Leaving Iraq and coming back into the States, it made me think about what I wanted to do and who was really guiding me, who actually protected me, to make it out of the circumstances that I was in, who guided me on the path that I am today.”

“Growing up in San Antonio, I would … go to the San Antonio basketball camps, whether it was David Robinson, I was good friends with George Gervin’s son, George Gervin Jr., and so just growing up and seeing basketball played at a very high level within San Antonio made me really interested in playing basketball.”

“I just knew that I wanted to coach because I wanted to give back to the game from a mentorship standpoint.  And that’s kind of how I viewed coaching was being in a position to coach up young men.”

“I grew up in the church.  My grandmother was a deacon in the church and so we grew up in a small church and so we were the church, right?  So just about every day I spent time in the church.”

“The opportunity of potentially playing basketball for Norfolk State University was also really intriguing to me after having several conversations with the coach leading up to me arriving (there).”

“Every trip that we took, we were in imminent danger … it gets very dark in Iraq early and so … it tested my faith, right?  I had to believe in the divine power in order to get through every single mission and that’s what got me through is my faith, which is something that I carried through today and I’ve always said that God provides vision with provision.”

“I actually ran and currently still run a mentorship program with the varsity basketball team.”

“Faith teaches discipline.  And to me, that’s what the army also represented was discipline.  And it goes back to being disciples, right?  And so, I felt that my faith allowed me to be a disciple, whether it was in the boardroom, whether it was coaching, or whether it was being a father and a husband.”

“When I received that calling, I started to do a deeper dive into myself through my faith, with my wife and my son.  And I realized that while I got great at making wealthy people wealthier, there was a system built for individuals that felt forgotten.  And my purpose became led by that call.”

“I had done everything I wanted to do at a young age, and I still felt unfulfilled, and it was God telling me that I hadn’t done enough.”

Related link:

Antwyne’s bio on his company 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.)

Todd Botto

He is a Professor of Athletic Training & Sports Medicine at Quinnipiac University. Over the last 30+ years he has worked in higher education teaching the next generation of athletic training and physical therapy students. He has also practiced clinically in a variety of athletic settings providing medical and rehabilitative services, including having worked as an athletic trainer in professional baseball here in the U.S. and professional soccer in Costa Rica. He was also the Rehabilitation Coordinator, Head Basketball and Assistant Football Athletic Trainer at the University of Southern Mississippi. He worked as a private consultant in the industrial athletic training setting and has provided medical coverage for numerous high school and private athletic events. Over his three-plus decades of professional service he has provided medical coverage for an estimated 7500 athletic events.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was about six years old when I started competitive swimming, and I played baseball and basketball.  I did that all the way up through about 14 years old and then I eventually got a part-time job at 14 and I stopped playing sports at that area, but I always had interest in sports and later on I got involved in sports medicine.”

“At (age) 21 I had an accident in the summer … I fell 27 feet on the concrete and broke six bones, herniated two cervical disks, ended up in a wheelchair for a little while and it really changed my career path… During my rehab … the athletic trainers … did my rehabilitation and that’s why I first learned about the field of athletic training and became interested in that.”

“I wanted to go into communications because ESPN just kind of started up some years earlier and I was thinking about going to work at ESPN because I wanted to be around sports in some fashion.  I didn’t know sports medicine existed.”

“On my drive home, I decided I had to change career paths just because I thought I wasn’t leading the life that God wanted me to live.”

“My career became everything; it really became my God.  Where you spend your time is where your God is, where you spend your attention is.”

“God was really like Santa Claus to me in a way; I wanted to believe in them, but I never really felt Him in my life.”

“When we think of practicing like in a sports sense, you’re thinking about somebody giving their all to get better.  And as a practicing Catholic I wasn’t doing that.  I was basically kind of going through whatever motions I thought at the time would check the box.”

“I prayed asking the Blessed Mother – and I still do it to this day – to bring the people into my life that are gonna help me and redirect me towards God.”

“The big thing is – in Medjugorje – is that you could feel that God’s really there.  I really truly believe the Blessed Mother’s there.  It’s something that I cannot explain.  We saw the statue of the risen Christ weep at the top of Cross Mountain.”

Related link:

Todd’s bio on Quinnipiac website

Chase Crouse

He played tennis and beach volleyball in high school and the latter when he was a student-athlete at Texas State University. Present day he participates in mixed martial arts, lifting weights, hiking, and doing Spartan races. He is co-founder of and fitness director for Hypuro Fit, whose mission is to bring a technically excellent and authentically Catholic approach to personal training. He also has a story about his own reversion to the Catholic faith, which he shares during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“My dad loosely non-denominational agnostic and my mom growing up was more of like a cultural Mexican Catholic, but she had her reversion later in life, so growing up we were nominally Catholic but not practicing by any means.”

“My dad actually was a semi-professional beach volleyball player.  So, I was kind of playing with that a little bit when I was in middle school but nothing too seriously and then by the time I got to high school I settled on tennis so that was kind of my main sport in high school and then eventually beach volleyball.”

“I got confirmed when I was in high school.  My mom made me go through the confirmation process.  It was kind of just like a check box kind of thing.  And I kind of got a little bit more into my faith going into junior and senior year.  I’d met some friends at the local church.  By that point I was already getting into partying and drinking and at first, I didn’t realize that those are two contradictory things.”

“Tennis was everything for me for a number of years.  I was playing on average, like, two to four hours a day.  Me and my doubles partner were ranked number four in the state of Texas at one point in doubles and colleges started emailing me and my parents probably my sophomore year going into my junior year.”

“I thought I was going to go to college.  I thought I was going to do it as a, maybe I don’t know if as a career, but something very serious and God had other plans.”

“Basically, my whole first year at Texas State I was never an atheist, right?  I was never agnostic.  I was always ‘Catholic,’ it was not part of my life at all.  I didn’t give it much thought.”

“The next thought struck me, and this was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, which was, if I died right now where would I be.  And for 19-year-old Chase that was a terrifying question.”

“I knew, like really knew, and experienced, that Jesus was real and that he loved me and that I should be striving more and more to do everything I can to honor, love, and serve him.”

“God just put this fire in my heart to serve him and so I wanted to tell others about his mercy and so I became a missionary and while I was a missionary that’s when I really fell in love with theology and knowledge for the first time and that’s when I knew I wanted to go back to school and study it more formally.”

“I eventually went to a school called John Paul the Great Catholic University to finish my undergrad, so I got an undergrad degree in what was called the new evangelization (which) was the name of the degree, which was essentially a theology and a philosophy degree.”

Related link:

Hypuro Fit website

Ryan Evans

He is in his second season as an assistant coach for women’s swimming and diving at the University of Kansas.  Prior to joining the Jayhawks staff, he was the head coach at the University of Mary, and before that he had been an assistant coach at the University of New Mexico.  Prior to moving into the college coaching ranks, he was the head coach of Reno Aquatic Club from 2018-21.  As a student-athlete he graduated from and swam at the University of Iowa, where he was named the team captain for the 2008-09 season.  He also received the Big Ten Sportsmanship Award and the Iowa Swimming Leadership Award in 2009.  He has a compelling story about his reversion back to the Catholic faith.

Notable guest quotes:

“Parents were Catholic, went to Mass, still go to Mass every Sunday, and I attended a Catholic school first through high school, graduated from Bishop Manogue Catholic High School in Reno, Nevada.”

“I grew up playing all the sports.  Baseball was probably my first love and then I spent some years playing basketball, but swimming has always kind of been a theme in my family… my uncle was a long-time swim coach, and my oldest brother was an All-American swimmer in high school.”

“One of my good friends decided to open up a specialty running store in Reno and he offered me the manager position, he wanted me to help him open the store.  So, I was the manager of Reno Running Company.”

“I told her, ‘I’ve always wanted to marry someone who was Catholic.’  I didn’t know why at that point but that was super important to me.”

“Sitting there (watching) this documentary… and a light bulb went off in my head and looking back now, that’s the moment that kick started my faith and my faith journey.”

“That was God’s plan, was for us to move to Albuquerque, and the reasons for that, there’s kind of three things that happened to me with my faith journey in Albuquerque.”

“It’s so amazing and beautiful to see how God has worked in our lives.”

“I started to do some research after reading the job description and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a faithful Catholic university!  This is something that we’re looking for’!”

“I think our faith gets stronger and it deepens when we’re in a community that maybe isn’t as accepting or as open to the Catholic faith.”

Related link:

Ryan’s bio on UofK 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.)

Alex DiVerde

He played football in high school but also competed in track, which became his long-term sport. Having broken a school record in indoor 4x800m relay in high school, he went on to compete for four years at Bradley University where he also broke a school record. Post-college he has continued to run, including five marathons and one 50-mile ultra marathon. He even qualified for and ran in the Boston Marathon.  Plus, since 2018 he has backpacked approximately five thousand miles across a handful of trails, including the Appalachian Trail.

Notable guest quotes:

“Both my parents were cradle Catholics, and I was as well… and then both sets of grandparents were devout practicing Catholics as well.”

“Sports were always a big part of, I guess, our family’s life and my life.  (I) played the laundry list of common sports that Americans could play growing up.  It was mostly soccer, and then track when it came around growing up, and then there was some basketball mixed in there, some baseball mixed in there, and then football and track were the focus in high school.”

“When I was taking a look at schools, I was having a number of, like, D3 schools reach out to me, but I really wanted to go and walk on at some division one school that would take me.”

“I went from playing football and running mostly sprint type training to basically running cross country or distance training.  So, I went from running 15 miles a week to 50 or 60, by the time end of freshman year rolled around.  So, I was training a lot harder than I ever had and putting way more work into running.”

“I put this, like, being a division one runner on this pedestal and it didn’t exactly live up to what I expected or what I wanted it to be and started looking around a little bit and asking God a little bit, like, ‘Okay… there’s got to be more’.”

“They had a football player for Northwestern come and give a talk basically about his faith experience in college… pretty much as soon as that talk was done, I went up to one of the missionaries that was there and was like, ‘Hey, my name is Alex.  I’m going to join your Bible study’.”

“I went on a FOCUS mission trip to the Philippines, and that’s where there was a group of four staff missionaries and maybe 10 or 11 students that went, ministered to the folks in poor areas there, and helped to build some homes while we were there, and it was through that trip and experience that God, very loud and clear, was like, ‘Hey, I’ve given you these talents in other areas for what you’re studying, but I want you to spend a couple years serving with FOCUS after college’.”

“(God is) going to speak to us.  He puts these desires on our hearts, and He’s going to speak to us … in the highest of highs and the lowest of lows… I had this idol of being a division one athlete, being able to call that my own, and, to a certain extent, He kind of broke that idol down a little bit, or, helped me to realize that He was the one who gave me those talents, but even though I had good talents at running, there’s much bigger things in life than just running fast around a track.”

“We were in Trinidad and Tobago and the main sport was soccer.  So, we’d spend the first half of the day running a soccer camp for the kids in Trinidad and Tobago in the community we were serving at.  And then in the second half of the day, we would run – most of the kids were younger, so it probably felt a little bit more like vacation Bible school or religious ed that you might experience here in the States and like that – so we spent a week and a half over winter break doing that year.”

“I find that sports is a very natural way to connect with other people to connect with other men.  So, I feel like that is, like, some of the guys there have very much, like, we have come together because we have shared common sports activities and whether it’s running, basketball, I feel like snowboarding and skiing is another very common one being in the upper Midwest and that being something you can do in winter that we spend a lot of time connecting while we’re doing those activities and that definitely helps us to be able to connect together, both together and with God for sure.”

[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]