Episodes

Jude Liptak

He played hockey growing up and then played broom ball at Kent State, where he became the leading goal scorer. He was also a hockey referee for three seasons there as well. He is deeply involved in youth athletics, particularly ice hockey.  As a coach with the Hampton Roads Whalers, Tidewater Tritons, and previously with other youth hockey organizations, he has helped guide young athletes through competitive seasons and championship experiences. His coaching philosophy extends far beyond wins and losses, emphasizing discipline, accountability, perseverance, teamwork, and respect.

Notable guest quotes:

“I actually coached with Fellowship of Christian Athletes as well for hockey, which is great. And I’d love to see somebody like a Catholic version of that.”

“I’ve always been really interested in church history and geography.”

“It’s an organization that seeks to carry forward the Christian ideals of the Knights Templar, or particularly, the faith, service, charity and chivalry parts.”

“There’s a lot of Christian services that promote Christian values or religious devotion and service to God and the faith and your church. A lot of charitable work, supporting humanitarian causes … Red Cross type stuff, relief efforts, things like that.”

“I love doing youth ministry. I started when I was in college. It was like a part-time job. I started volunteering and I was like shocked and then gave me a paycheck.”

“We do like a little prayer service, chapel type thing, before games on weekends. We usually meet an hour and 20 minutes before a game. So, for 20 minutes, we just do a little fellowship together and we do a little Bible study.”

“Try to show your faith through actions. I heard from Shane Doan from the (NHL) Coyotes a long time ago, he said something that really stuck with me. We don’t allow swearing on our team at all because … what comes out of your heart comes out of your mouth.”

“The younger the kid is, every parent thinks their kids are going to the NHL. So, you get a lot of unrealistic expectations, unrealistic goals… and they get angry at their kids if they’re not performing well.”

“Sports, first, is supposed to be fun and then, if you can maybe get a college scholarship in the future, that would be fantastic. But, let’s not put the cart before the horse and let’s just see if (your kid is) willing to put the work in and go from there.”

“What we see, unfortunately, a lot of time in coaching… divorce is a big thing. We’ve had a lot of parents while we’re coaching, they’re going through a terrible part of their marriage and they get divorced or … something happens and the kid’s in the middle.”

“You realize what the number one goal is… this life’s temporary. Have fun in it. Sports is a great thing. I love sports more than just about anything… faith, family, sports pretty much for me… but it’s so important to have your heart in the right place.”

Related link:

Tidewater Tritons hockey

(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.)

Sr. M. Xavier Schulze

She starred in basketball at Anna High School AND won individual state titles in track (800-meter run) and cross country. She played basketball at Ohio State from 2007-2011, with her teams going 106-30 and winning three Big Ten titles over that time. She was a starter her final two seasons, leading the Buckeyes to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 as a senior co-captain. Just 18 months after her final game for Ohio State, she entered as a novice in the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George. Nine years later she made final vows and became a perpetually professed Catholic sister. Today she is Head of Campus Ministry at St. Cecilia Middle and High School in Hastings, Nebraska.

Notable guest quotes:

“My sophomore year in high school I was pretty much on top of the world athletically. I had already won state in track and even in cross country … And I was all state in basketball my freshman year and really my world just centered around me.”

“I tore my ACL and to me my world ended in that because I had to stop playing for a little bit. But really what God did was open my heart to receive the graces of my confirmation and it really was the start of a lifelong relationship with Jesus now, and really the start of my journey to becoming a sister.”

“The Holy Spirit had to be a little bit more loud, I guess, in college. You know, college can be a mixture of atmospheres, and I found myself in the sports world obviously.”

“I found myself really struggling with some moral issues and just struggling with sin and in that struggle while at the same time learning about Jesus and falling in love with Jesus and struggling, I started to see (that) not only is he real, not only is he becoming my best friend, but I started to encounter just his mercy and his patience and just how much he was giving me.”

“I loved playing basketball, like, loved it. And I still do; anytime I can shoot around, it just brings me so much joy.”

“I just knelt down to pray, and it was like this overwhelming, like, waterfall heart explosion grace… I just felt so joyful and so loved by the Lord, and I just knew at that moment he was inviting me to be his bride.”

“God gave it back. I ended up finishing the season without my ACL and through that process of surrendering to the Lord but then being able to continue to play, it was again just this very personal experience of his love for me.”

“Really, it is a time of spiritual battle and a lot of discernment between you and the community because it’s not just, ‘I want to be here,’ it’s the community also discerning, ‘Is this woman supposed to be part of our community forever’?”

“I have a heart that was made to be a mother to thousands not just a couple. And that has really been the most beautiful part of my religious life. It’s just the spiritual motherhood that we’re called to.”

“If I really focus on talking to God or to Mary or to whomever I’m praying to, one of the saints, if I really focus on talking as a person to them, it’s like prayer becomes super easy.”

“I think the sacraments in general have just, they’ve blown me away in my whole life. But confirmation was the initial conversion experience that I had in high school.”

“I need time with the Lord, and not just to fill me up but because I love him, so I want to be with him. And so, throughout the day I will make sure that I have time with him just like spouses would make sure they have time with their spouse. I want to be with him, so I make sure I have time with him.”

Related link:

St. Cecilia Middle and High School

Brandi Caswell

She is currently training for a 5K that will take place on November 29th. She grew up an athlete, playing sports nonstop through childhood. She dabbled in soccer, volleyball, and track & field, but competed at a high school varsity level for basketball, cross country, and softball, with the dream of potentially playing college softball. That dream was taken away due to a condition that tempted her to believe that she would never be an athlete again. She came back into sport in the form of coaching varsity-level CYO boys basketball, which then led her to becoming an assistant coach for an AAU boys basketball team. Thankfully, she has a remarkable comeback story that includes she and her husband’s present-day business, Hope Not Nope, which leads athletes towards elite performance in mind, body, and spirit.

Notable guest quotes:

“The trail went down and it was on very uneven gravel, and it went down a hill and then straight back up the hill and in the midst of that I felt completely out of control chaos as I was running. And I felt this shooting pain in my foot, but I had the adrenaline to keep going and to finish the race, but when it happened, I thought to myself, ‘I think I just stress fractured my foot’.”

“The condition is called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and it’s known as the most painful condition in science. There’s a scale called the McGill Scale and if you look at it, things like an amputation or fibromyalgia or unmedicated childbirth list lower than this painful condition. And so, at 16 years old I was diagnosed with this thing and was told that I would have it for the rest of my life.”

“After the diagnosis I couldn’t walk for nine months. And it was pretty unbearable going through, almost … the entire rest of my junior year I was on crutches.”

“The Lord blessed me with a priest simply inviting me to be a coach and there was something inside me that was so excited that I would have this opportunity to be in sport again, because I had missed it for so long.”

“I later found out that the owner never answered the phone. He was just not a phone answerer. He would let it go to voicemail and then usually have an assistant or someone call or email the person. But for whatever reason the Lord had him answer the phone that day for me and he treated me so well on the phone. And so, finding that out later is just hilarious to me because clearly God wanted me at that gym.”

“For me with chronic pain, there was so long where I did not have hope. But then hope became the word that I clinged to, that if I could just hold on to hope that there would be some sort of purpose in all this.”

“Meeting this person, they told me I didn’t have to manage my pain that I could actually overcome the pain, which was something that I was told wasn’t even possible.”

“After my injury, all of those things … the eating disorder, the anxiety, the depression, and just the depths of that darkness, it heightened all the more because now I lost my purpose of being an athlete. I lost my dream of being a collegiate athlete.”

“God very quickly showed me that that was not my purpose and my purpose was to glorify Him.”

“There’s days where God will just clearly speak, ‘Hey, this is what you’re supposed to post today, so even though you have something planned, switch it because this is what I want you to do’.”

“The internal or external beliefs and lies of you’re not enough, you’re not worthy, and all of those things can be summed up as nope. And so, my personal experience is the Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, but the reality is every person has faced some sort of nope in their life, whether it’s misinformation or rejection or lies and things like that.”

Related link:

Hope Not Nope

Jim Brennan

He took over the JV soccer team at St Ignatius High School in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1995, stepped away three years ago, but came back this year. More than a decade ago he was asked to help pilot what became the Sports and Arts Chaplaincy Program at the school, having started out ministering to the Junior Varsities and eventually becoming the chaplain for the hockey program. As a student-athlete he had swam in high school as well as having played for a CYO basketball team AND served as a student trainer and manager for the football and basketball teams. He attended the University of Notre Dame, where he played intramural soccer.

Notable guest quotes:

“The first thing I do when I meet with guys in the chapel to have these kinds of talks about their faith is to ask a very simple question. And that is, does God really care about hockey?”

“The glory of God is man fully alive and … when our guys play hockey, when they play it to the best of their ability, when they get better, when they’re there for their teammates, God smiles, right? This is so important, that He gives us those gifts, and for these guys, it’s their athleticism. And when we build that to the best of our ability, we give glory to Him.”

“Let’s pray through this. And so, brought the team into the chapel, sat down, told them, I don’t have answers, but we can talk through this.”

“They were near to the Lord in that moment and near to the boy who passed away and his family. And it was just … I’ve coached for over 30 years. It’s maybe the proudest moment of my career.”

“When we boil it down, it comes to our faith. This is the environment we grow up in. And this is just again, how we do. Being a man is to give of ourselves.”

“I think it’s in many ways helping to keep the guys focused on what really matters here instead of in the game… Just play the game. But play for your brothers.”

“We would bring our (students) over to Northern Ireland… And we used it as a way to … talk about the difficulties in being peacemakers, of following that call Jesus has for us to do that.”

“One of the people that we meet with is a guy by the name of Reverend Bill Shaw. He’s a Presbyterian minister whose church is in a Catholic neighborhood… one of the things among the many that he did is to have young people who are Protestant, who belong to his congregation, along with Catholic kids, form a soccer team.”

“We pray before every practice. Certainly, before every game, but that’s not unusual. But also, after games.”

“Gonna be men longer than they’re gonna be soccer players and sons of God forever.”

“I think that if we’re going to talk about what is the purpose of our lives, it is to love and to be loved by God and other people. And I think everything else serves that. And if it doesn’t serve it, it’s not worth doing.”

Related link

North American Sports & Arts Chaplaincy Conference

Katie Schumacher-Cawley

She is the head women’s volleyball coach at Penn State University, in her fifth season in that position. She is a national champion as a player (1999) and then two years ago became the first female head coach to lead a team to an NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball title. That same season she announced publicly a breast cancer diagnosis. A two-time All-American at Penn State, she took over the head coaching reigns after spending four seasons as an assistant. Before returning to Penn State as an assistant coach in 2018, she spent eight seasons as the head coach at UIC and one season at Penn. She has been inducted into multiple halls of fame.  And in high school she led her team to state and national titles in volleyball.

Notable guest quotes:

“On the South side of Chicago, I grew up in the St. Cajetan parish.”

“I felt the love and I felt the prayers from people all over the country, but especially from that area with Mass cards and holy water and just the constant letters and scriptures that I enjoyed reading every day. I felt the love and growing up in the church and the Catholic community, the power of prayer is really strong.”

“I have a couple boxes I kept of all the cards and letters and prayer cards and Mass cards and I often go back and look at that and I’m so grateful for the amount of love that came my way, but just a reminder that a little note, a little Mass card like that goes a long way.”

“I have a medal of Mary, my former teammate, Solena (Quick) Porras who lives in New Jersey, brought me this when I first announced I was sick and she came up to a match. And… it’s a beautiful gold Mary medal and I never take it off and I love it.”

“I definitely say extra prayers for myself on (NIL) to be able to continue to have patience … but also… it is a big business and being a part of women’s athletics and having these women have these experiences to not only get paid, but to have a platform to represent certain things that they really care about. I’m really happy to be able to be a part of it, but I do find calm in prayer and calm in attending Mass where I don’t have my cell phone… those are the moments for me that I can really reflect and know that I can be at peace and enjoy where I’m at and be really present.”

“I’m here to coach them, but, for me, I’m so proud of them for the degrees that they’re getting and what they’re doing. There is pro volleyball now, but very few will do it. And, I want them to have the careers that they’re going to school for, help them find a path.”

“We live in a great community here and one that’s, it’s a college town. It’s pretty special, but people do a lot of help for the sick and the homeless and the hungry. And so, I am proud to live in this town and the community that is constantly giving.”

“Father Tom Hurley … was just pivotal in my faith … he just spoke in a way that made it easy and soft on your heart, and I really enjoy him and everything that he has done for me and my girls and my family.”

“My parents, between myself, my sister and my two brothers, they put us through Catholic schools since kindergarten and through 12th grade. And we were very fortunate to have that experience and I have 12 nieces and nephews that are in Catholic school now all throughout the South Side in high school and elementary school.”

“The players here, I think see that there’s bigger things in life and that they want to be able to help those in need and to also know that life moves so fast.”

“I want players that want to be part of something super special and be able to give back to the community.”

Related link:

Katie’s bio on Penn State website

[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]

Brigid Tebaldi

This guest comes to us from the horse world. She started riding when she was five years old and went on to be a professional horse trainer and 3 Day Event rider. Along the way she trained and taught lessons for about 15 years. She stepped away from the professional circuit when she started having kids but does still have horses.  Meanwhile, she is a board-certified health coach specializing in Spiritual Somatic Rewiring – a signature framework that combines nervous system repair, subconscious belief work, and the truth of scripture to create permanent transformation at the root level.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was born and raised cradle Catholic, but it was very much just the like, go to CCD… go to Sunday Mass, say a prayer before dinner and Our Father before bed and that was about it.”

“There wasn’t much in terms of a relationship with God or relationship with Jesus … so I started looking for that relationship elsewhere and, live in a very Protestant town, started going to a Presbyterian youth group with a lot of my friends, and realized, ‘These people love Jesus,’ and so, started leaning more towards that sort of thinking.”

“I never fully stepped away from the faith; thanks be to God. I think there was always the Holy Spirit, like kind of my guardian angel keeping me there.”

“I was a girl who really fell victim to the culture of ‘you have to look a certain way; you have to dress a certain way… your body has to be a certain way’.”

“I remember being so obsessed with sticking under it was around like 1500 calories or so as a teenager playing varsity soccer and riding horses multiple times a week, 1500 calories a day, and I was tracking every single activity, literally. I remember painting my dad’s shed and I tracked that as like a caloric burning activity.”

“I had my Bible and I just flipped randomly to a page, and I forget what the exact verse was but it was… so convincing that it was like… I can’t live like this; like, this is ridiculous. My life from the outside looks great but I’m miserable.”

“I was getting to the point… in my horse career where … I was getting to the upper levels and in order to be there I needed to be strong, and not just physically strong but mentally strong. And I knew if I was out on a cross-country course and I’m thinking about how hungry I am that’s not a good place to be because you need to be super focused.”

“God did so much work on my heart where He was basically like this isn’t how I want you to live… I didn’t create you to be miserable all the time and to be hungry and to be tired and to just feel so blah all the time.”

“It really led me to a deeper relationship with God because I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I like having my control, but this is me having to release that control and trust that You actually do know what you’re doing’.”

“I played varsity soccer, which took up a lot of time. But … either before school or after school and practice I would always go to the barn, and I would always want to ride my horse.”

“God gave me the perfect horse for what I needed and so we made it to states a few times. I ended up getting into Pony Club while I was still playing soccer.”

“In eventing you have to wear certain safety things, one of which is an arm band… and in my arm band my mom actually put a rosary in it and I rode with that rosary in there… for ten years or so.”

“I need to bring scripture into everything and our faith into everything because that is everything… what is the point of all this if it’s not to get to heaven?”

Related link:

Brigid’s wellness website

Tommy Auger

He has been playing football for most of his life, including, as an adult, as a pro. He is an award-winning and record setting tight end who has been playing the last four years in Mexico, although last year he also played in Japan. In November 2022 he was drafted by the Orlando Guardians of the XFL. At the start of that calendar year he had played in the Fan Controlled Football League, with his team going to the championship game. In 2021 he had played American football professionally in Austria. Before all that, he played four years of college football at St. John’s University in Minnesota, where he also played baseball. He capped off his high school career by leading the state in receptions.

Notable guest quotes:

“Just going into the Vatican and the Vatican Museum. It’s mind-blowing that humans were able to create that… it is really a thing that you look at… and kind of motivates you to strive for more and to become a better version of yourself.”

“It’s kind of a great juxtaposition to see what the former ruins of the Roman Empire look like and then the fact that the Catholic Church is just still standing strong in such a perfect manner there.”

“I obviously stick out a little bit when I’m in a foreign country at a different Mass… In Japan, it’s a little bit harder to find a Catholic church.”

“When you drive from the airport to where we’re at, you see a lot of the parts that are not so good… So definitely, definitely some areas to be able to do charity in Monterey for sure.”

“Our team in Monterey… our main owners are Ryan Kalil and Blake Griffin. And then we also have owners that are a little bit less involved, but still part of the organization structure, like Christian McCaffrey and George Kittle.”

“In Mexico, we pray before the game, the Our Father. And there’s a lot more people before the game that’ll go down to the end zone, get on a knee and say a prayer.”

“My parents… sent me to a grade school … St. Peter, Paul, and Michael… we had theology class, even in grade school, or we called it religion class at the time, then in high school, I went to St. Cloud Cathedral, which is a Catholic school… And then by my own accord, choosing to go to St. Johns (University) also a Catholic school.”

“When you really believe what you believe, it’s the most important part. It’s more important than your job or your passion in sports. So, it’s always been something that you can’t put to the back burner just because you’re doing something that you love or you’re really busy.”

Related link:

Tommy Auger on Wikipedia

(This episode contains a prayer by Fort Worth Christian Football League parent Linda Fleshman, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)