Episodes

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)

Kylie Hein

She not only competed in both college and high school in volleyball and dance, but coached volleyball for multiple schools over a ten-plus year period and still hosts volleyball clinics, in addition to playing the sport both recreationally and for an annual fundraiser. In her younger years she played four other sports as well. On the faith side, she has a Master’s in Ministry and is a certified Catholic mindset coach. In June she will graduate with a spiritual direction certification. She also hosts a podcast, runs workshops, and does Catholic speaking events.

Notable guest quotes:

“I am a cradle Catholic.  My mom was a beautiful Catholic role model for us.  She took us kids to Mass every single week.  My dad… had a very deep knowledge of scripture and so I think that was where I connected to the Lord with my dad, was, he knew scripture stories that as a Catholic, I was not well-versed in.”

“A door opened for me and volleyball that I never anticipated, and that was to play college volleyball.  So that just gave me a new outlet that I didn’t even know that I needed or wanted.  And it really excited me.  I was going to go to a large four-year university and at the last minute decided, no, I’m going to take advantage of the scholarship opportunity at the small Iowa University to play volleyball and off I went.  And that has been impactful, ever since.”

“I had lost this love for the game that I once had, and I didn’t think I was going to do anything with it.  But again, the hand of God.  I had a professor who was the president of a very large Catholic school in the area and was able to get a teaching position at this wonderful Catholic high school and, part of the teaching position, along with it came a coaching position in volleyball.”

“My faith was not the center of my life at that time, leaving home and being at a university where I wasn’t surrounded by a lot of other Catholics and the ones I was surrounded by were not always practicing it.  They weren’t living it and neither was I.  And so, I really fell away from God in that time.”

“I was prioritizing other things, whether it be volleyball or school or chasing achievements, and we know we’re not going to operate at high capacity.  We’re not going to see the beautiful fruit of God when we aren’t walking in His will.”

“Looking back at all these hidden gems that the Lord gave me that I did not see at the time.”

“I started again after the season using Louis de Montfort’s full prayers, the whole works, and I made that consecration.  And the profound shifts that happened in my spiritual life were so great.”

“My last year as a head coach, we used to have, on gamedays, we’d either go into the chapel to pray, or if a priest was available, he’d do like a short homily and just kind of inspire the girls a little bit.  We’d pray before we got on the bus, or we’d go to our game.”

“I was in adoration one night.  Again, I never felt like I had this very deep connection with Mary, but that moment was so profound.  I knew Mary’s voice speaking to me.  It was very clear.”

Related link:

Kylie’s official 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.)

Ralph Linzmeier

He was a competitive swimmer as a youth and played water polo in high school. He received a Presidential Appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he continued with both swimming and water polo. Believing in the value of non-profit service as an important duty, he has focused on his passion for serving, church, the underprivileged, and supporting education and youth. With two other couples, he and his wife conceived, co-founded and led the effort to create Saint Junipero Serra Catholic which has grown to become the largest Catholic grade school in America. He is a Knight of Malta and served on the National Board of Governors of Legatus, a Catholic organization for business executives who strive to study, live and spread the Catholic faith in their business, professional, and personal lives. His focus these days is on the Fruitful Futures Project, a 501(c)(3) devoted to inspiring fruitfulness with the intention of helping others to help to build the Kingdom.

Notable guest quotes:

“A very Catholic family.  My parents were so faithful in the church, and we went to Mass weekly and confession very often weekly as a matter of fact.  I was an altar boy.  My dad saw that I was an altar boy.”

“I had something called Osgood-Schlatter’s which is maybe a malformation of a portion of your bone.  So, contact sports, like basketball or football, was a little ill-advised according to the doctor.  So, the swimming was a natural and it was something that I was drawn into and every member of my family, all the younger brothers, sisters, joined.  My little baby sister became an Olympian.”

“I was a pretty good swimmer.  And it turns out the Air Force kind of really wanted me there… they kept working and working, finally a presidential came through.  President Nixon appointed me to the Air Force Academy.”

“It was athletics, it was sports, that was so formative.  My coach in high school… was just a wonderful man.  He wasn’t so much a man of God, but he was a powerful motivator, and he was a man of gratitude, really impactful.”

“Back in the day, faith was a very active component of military service.  At the Academy, every cadet was required to go to church every Sunday.”

“My wife, along with two of her friends and many other of the moms, were really anxious about having a Catholic school in our area… And we found out that there were really 5,000 families in the area that had an interest… We kept working and working, working at it… And so, Bishop McFarland said, ‘Ralph, show me $150,000 and we’ll go ahead and give you an approval.’  So, we’ve since raised about $80 million to build this school.”

“As Legatus members, we’re charged to build and study our faith in the business community, and in our community, and in our family.  And so, it’s become a very important part of our faith experience, because it leads us to all kinds of other things.  It was Legatus that led me to the order of Malta, where we are, the charism, it’s the largest lay order in the Catholic Church, an order that’s over 900 years old, and the charism in the order of Malta is service to the poor and sick.”

“These associations, the order of Malta, are about service to the poor and sick in your part of the country.  And then internationally as well, every year we go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, traveling with sick people.”

“I believe that every soul is yearning to bear good fruit.  Jesus told us to bear good fruit.”

“I walk maybe four to six miles a day.  That’s where I spend my time in prayer.”

Related link:

Fruitful Futures Project