Episodes

Krista Steinbeiser

She has coached for FC Dallas Juniors and for TOCA — which is an official soccer training partner of MLS — in addition to being a private trainer / entrepreneur for soccer skills, camps, and events.  She has six years of training in Krav Maga, Karate, Jiu-jitsu, and other forms of self-defense and now teaches private lessons to individuals, groups, churches, and monthly women’s seminars.  She received ISSA certification in fitness and nutrition and worked with dietitians for five years, plus 25 years of experience working with various coaches and instructors. She played division I college soccer at McNeese State University, where she was First Team All-Conference and earned the Golden Boot Award.  She had been varsity soccer MVP in high school and also competed in club and other soccer programs.

Notable guest quotes:

“I just have a really interesting experience in confirmation.  I just remember that I really fell in love with confirmation prep.  I fell in love with the retreat beforehand and something changed in me during confirmation.”

“I started going to Bible studies before school in high school.  I would go on retreats.  I was really digging into the faith, and I was really ignited with a hunger to understand the sacraments and the Eucharist – the Eucharistic beating living heart of Jesus.  I was (hungry) to understand the wholeness and the beauty of the Mass and everything about our amazing Catholic faith.”

“I started playing soccer when I was five (years old) and then I did a lot of other camps like basketball camp, soccer camp, track and field camp, even like lacrosse and volleyball.  Since a very young age, I think sports just came very natural for me.”

“There’s a healthy relationship you can have with sports, and then there is a point where it becomes unhealthy, and that is part of my journey, that is part of my testimony, and I’m here to speak into the truth over the mental health, and the relationship we can have with sports as Jesus in the center of it all.”

“The healthy part of it, which I can speak into, is – this is where I was starting to learn in college – the healthy part of sports, and that is putting Jesus in the center.”

“We would be in the middle of a fitness test, like, supernatural strength would take over. And we would be so exhausted, and our physical strength would not match just, like, the times that we could get on these fitness tests because we were tired.  And so, when we tried to just leave it all on the field, like with the abundance mindset, like God gave us the gift to play soccer and we’re just going to go all out; not in the toxic, perfecting performance mindset, but it’s like, we’re going to give it to God.  And I believe that is the healthy part of sports.”

“If you rest well, you rest with Jesus in the center, you will play well.  And God, once it’s about, you know, healthy leisure, like playing, like soccer should be fun.  It should be free.  It should be joy-filled with the Holy Spirit at the center of it all.”

“I got into running a lot of marathons and again the devil was lying to me because I thought I was praying whenever I was running.  But the enemy was like, ‘Oh, if you run more miles, you can pray more rosaries.’  But that was a lie… I was running from the reality that I needed healing.”

“Even in the Bible over and over again, like, St. Paul even talks about being an athlete.  And, you know, God gave us bodies.  In our bodies we live and move, and we have our being.  So, there is a healthy way to be active and to glorify God through our bodies.  We can all still be athletes… we are athletes by nature.  We are contending for a prize.  And the prize is heaven.  It’s eternal salvation with Jesus Christ.”

Related link:

Ignite Athlete Training website

Brett Milazzo

He is an outfielder with the Schaumburg Boomers of the Frontier League, which is a Professional Partner League of Major League Baseball. Last year in 78 games played he batted .300 and had a .995 fielding percentage.  After playing collegiately at the University of Minnesota-Duluth he went on to play double A ball with the Chicago Dogs of the American Association.  He had started his college career at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He also trains youth baseball players at a local facility. On the faith side he has a reversion story that he shares during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“Growing up, we were a Catholic family.  My mom is Catholic, dad’s Catholic, I’ve received all the sacraments as part of my formation… I did go to Catholic high school at Carmel Catholic in Mundelein.”

“I definitely had the best coach ever in my dad, growing up.  He was a part of all of my teams up until high school… I’m super grateful for my dad as a coach and how he’s always kind of just supported me in what I chose to do, but then held me accountable for the things that I said that I would do.”

“I was pretty much going into my sophomore year at that point or, my red shirt sophomore year, really without a home, not really knowing where I was gonna go, kind of at a low place with baseball, not knowing what the future had in store.”

“There was a guy who is Catholic and heavily involved with different ministries on campus and wanted to go deeper with our team… and he started a Bible study, and he must have seen a cross that I wear on my neck and was like, ‘Alright, he’s Christian,’ and just asked me if I wanted to come to the Bible study.”

“He was actually cut from the team… but he came up to me without saying much and just said, ‘Hey, like, I need you to lead this Bible study or keep it going,’ and I probably laughed, I don’t remember, but I felt like that was something that I wasn’t really qualified to do by any means… but, I said Yes… and that went on for about two years.”

“I was pretty astounded by the pastor of the Newman Center, which, I think a lot of people are familiar with, it’s Father Mike Schmitz… and I was just pretty blown away by his speaking and how much he seemed to love what he was doing.”

“I remember grabbing dinner one time with Father Mike and just being astounded that this guy is really, like, he is who he is, kind of thing, and he seemed happier than me when I seemed to have everything that I thought I wanted, which was the college baseball experience.”

“God was patient with me and just kept calling me to confession, which eventually led to me saying yes to going on a retreat during the fall break.”

“It was during a night of adoration that I just remember God really calling me to trust Him and to give myself over to Him and what He has in store for me.”

“I think God’s led me exactly where I’m supposed to be, and He’s used every ounce of it to try to draw as many people close to himself and draw me closer as well.”

(This episode contains a prayer originally from prayers-and-poetry.blogspot.com, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Colleen Scariano

She grew up playing a wide array of sports, from softball, basketball, volleyball, and track, to swimming and volleyball.  She has also played golf and in tennis leagues, plus she has run a half-marathon AND a triathlon.  Present day her focus, fitness-wise, is on stretching, strength, and restorative movement, adding that she loves a good hike. She has overcome personal tragedy more than once, and, she is the co-founder of SoulCore, a Catholic fitness apostolate whose mission is to amplify the experience of prayer through physical movement. Their signature SoulCore Rosary is a 60-minute strengthening workout that is set to the prayers of the rosary.

Notable guest quotes:

“I like to say it was a chaotic and fun, lively Irish Catholic family that I grew up in, and faith really was the cornerstone.”

“My parents made the sacrifice, you know, that was definitely a financial sacrifice for them to send us to Catholic schools.  And really that was one of my first experiences in sports, was, through CYO sports.”

(when tragedy first struck their family) “I saw our Catholic faith being lived out so beautifully in the response of my parents… my mom’s response in particular was that she really surrendered to God.”

“I saw so many of the virtues of the faith lived out.  My mom’s favorite scripture verse was Romans 8:28, which is, ‘God works all things together for the good of those who love Him,’ and she believed that, that God was at work even in these trials and challenges in our family.  And she lived always with this sense of hope even in times of difficulty.”

“It’s not always easy to share difficult things, especially tragic things, that we’ve been through in our life but there’s always healing when we’re able to share our story and obviously we touch other people through the stories that we share because we all share the experience of suffering and trial in some way in our lives.”

“I just surrendered to God in a deeper way than I ever had before, and I guess the best way to say it is that I went all in with my Catholic faith and with my devotion to God, and He is so faithful.”

“St. Teresa of Avila says that ‘all things suffered in love will be healed,’ and we know that God is love, so when we turn to God and truly entrust all of our suffering, all of our broken, all of our woundedness, He is so faithful.”

“The rosary – as I’ve learned through my own journey – is really a transformative and a healing instrument of peace.”

“Those became really the most powerful times of prayer for me when I was out running.  I wasn’t distracted by other things and truly that combination of prayer and movement became a healing instrument that would restore my grief back to a sense of peace and a sense of hope and even eventually leading me back to a return to joy.”

“I was invited on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje and when I was there a priest said to me, ‘When you go back, the Blessed Mother is going to have a mission for you’.”

“I love that on many of these pilgrimages we’ve been able to incorporate movement and exercise and things like that too, so, again, that combination of sports and athletics and movement in the faith.”

Related link:

SoulCore official website

Fr Steve Kim

He has been the Catholic chaplain for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers for the last eight years, which have included two trips to the Super Bowl. He was a competitive golfer, to the point of having considered going pro at one point, AND he did a 53-mile walk from East San Jose to East San Francisco as part of a fundraiser. He is the founder and president of several non-profits, was ordained to the priesthood at age 25 back in 2011, and just celebrated one year of serving as the principal at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda, California, near Oakland. He not only earned a BA in philosophy and religious studies from Santa Clara University (SCU), but, earned three degrees at Saint Patrick’s Seminary and University, PLUS, he went back to SCU for his master’s degree and then got his doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Notable guest quotes:

“In Korea there’s about ten percent Catholics and – there’s not too many, but, yeah – I was fortunate enough to grow up in a Catholic family… I remember, ya’ know, memories of going to church as a kid in Korea.”

“My mom… she said, ‘Well Steven, you know, your mom’s not an athlete, your dad’s not an athlete, our whole family, we don’t have a history of great athletes.  I mean not that you can’t be a great athlete,’ but so she said, ‘Well, the only sport you might have a chance for, like a scholarship, that might be golf’.”

“Golf is like a lifelong sport, you know, and you really get to meet people and, you know, it’s really taught me a lot of life lessons as well.”

“When I was a junior in high school, I was kind of really thinking, praying – there wasn’t like this one like light bulb kind of epiphany moment – but it was kind of like this idea, ‘Hey, like, maybe I want to do something that helps people, that serves people, going beyond just my own selfish desires’.”

“When I considered the priesthood, that’s really kind of being self-led, right, and to really lay down your life for God, and to serve others, and to be somebody that not just heals people physically, but, a doctor of souls, you know, just to help people, you know, in the end, bringing people closer to God and ultimately to heaven.”

“If you look at the history of the church, in the darkest times we have people that step up, whether it was during Jesus’s time or, I think the 20^th, 21st century – 20^th century – had the most number of martyrs who gave up their faith for Jesus, in the history of the Catholic Church.”

“There’s a difference between happiness and joy, right, a lot of things bring us happiness, right, where, you know, money gives you happiness, maybe being in a relationship gives you happiness, but being in a relationship with God, that’s true joy, sustained joy.”

“I would use the analogy of kind of like the body of Christ, right?  So, we have different parts of the body but they all function and work together as a team, as the body of Christ.  And in a sports team there’s so many moving parts, it’s not just the players.”

“Whether you’re the MVP, whether you’re the general manager, whether you’re the grounds crew, whether you’re the logistics, equipment manager, whatever you’re doing, it’s a great opportunity to evangelize in whatever capacity you’re serving, it’s an opportunity to glorify God.”

“First and foremost, I’m a priest because of my mission to serve God and to serve people… I don’t have to go around and tell people, hey it’s my mission, like, I wear a collar, you know, I think it’s pretty obvious, right?  It’s through my actions.”

“The busiest people have the highest need to pray even more, so… give God the first hour.”

Related link:

Fr. Kim’s bio on St. Joseph Notre Dame High School website

Ciaran Clarke

He is an undefeated professional MMA fighter, currently boasting a 9-0 won-lost record, with his most recent victory having come on March 22nd, winning by way of a third-round submission in a featherweight match, after which he said, “I feel really great in this weight class and please with the help of God we can keep this streak going.” He hails from Dublin, Ireland, and is signed to Bellator MMA. From March 2012 to November 2018, he had 24 fights as an amateur. He had begun his combat sports journey through boxing at age 12 before transitioning to MMA a few years later.

Notable guest quotes:

“It was very much a Catholic household … Every Sunday, obviously, go to Mass and every night we’d say our prayers and again as a young kid, a lot of people think of praying as it’s maybe asking for something or praying for better days.  Well, actually when we were young, we were just praying for world peace or maybe there was a trial in someone’s life that we knew, or praying for good health and being thankful, to be honest.  It was actually praying to God to be thankful for things and also that was a big thing growing up when we were young.”

“In Ireland… when I was going to school, all the schools were Catholic.  You know, we made our first communion, confirmation, that was just, like, it’s a part of our culture and Ireland’s had great faith and still has.”

“When I was growing up, me being the eldest, I kind of had a little bit of a, you know, a bit of responsibility in my own young mind of kind of, I don’t know, like I had this responsibility of like kind of being, I suppose, the man of the house type thing.”

“As I became, you know, definitely as a professional … I would say, you know, the sport that I’m doing, definitely made me grow stronger in my faith.”

“What I pray for is the courage and the strength to get through the training, to stay injury-free, leading up to the fight, go in there healthy, and then for the two of us, the two competitors, which is myself and the other guy I’m competing against, to fight safely and go home to our families, win, lose, or draw.”

“I never (pray), you know, to win, you know, because, of course, you have to submit to God’s Will.  And that’s another thing, you know, I’m learning to deal with, you know, but like, I think that has most definitely, you know, my faith has grown massively in that.”

“When you really do put 100% trust in God, you know, you don’t have a lot of anxieties and it definitely relieves it.”

“As we all know, with great faith comes miracles.  And I know, you know, what God has done for me, and He’s never let me down.”

“We… always try and, in the area, you know, of the fight, we… always get to Mass that day.  And that would be a big thing like, you know, it’s we’ve created that kind of, I suppose, if you want to call it a ritual, you know, pre-fight ritual, you know, we go to Mass that day.”

Related link:

Ciaran Clarke on Instagram

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

Anna Zschuppe

She grew up playing soccer from the age of 9 and played goalkeeper and striker for AC Premier, Croatia Cleveland, and Kirtland High School and was trained under some notable former U.S. national team players.  She also has received her youth futsal/indoor referee license from the U.S. Soccer Federation, and she served as the girls’ head soccer coach at Braves Soccer Academy for U9-U11 teams for two years.  She now partners with Ignite Athlete Training in Dallas, Texas, as a soccer trainer. Meanwhile, she quit her six-figure, Fortune 500 job in corporate America as an HR consultant at age 26 to start her own business helping faith-based believers who feel like they’ve hit a breaking point in their lives or careers to discover their unique purpose, boost their confidence, and become the most authentic versions of themselves while keeping Christ as the focal point through mind-body-spirit wellness and connection.

Notable guest quotes:

“I quickly fell into soccer… and soccer is something that is huge within my family.  My dad, he was almost on a professional league for soccer.  My grandfather also played division one in Germany.”

(in college) “Easter Sunday hit and there was just something in me that said, you know, I missed Mass, like, I actually missed going to Palm Sunday Mass, going to Easter Sunday, so that’s when I started going… I started realizing, oh wait, I actually want this to be a part of my life, to some capacity.”

“The things that I learned in that season and was still able to love and participate in soccer and just a different way than I expected, was such a gift, such a blessing.”

“I was hitting this roadblock… of … I’m trying to get all of my happiness by all of these things I’m involved in: Bible studies, community groups, hanging out with people, having a different relationship with a different person, but I was still feeling unhappy.”

“You need to rewrite those lies with God’s compassion and truth.”

“I was really building this authentic relationship with the Lord, and I was actually having two-way conversations with Him, like, things that I would see and envision and hear from Him and everything.”

“That gave me the courage.  I knew the mission that the Lord had on my heart.”

“It was definitely a surrender.  I had to trust in the Lord that this purpose that He has for me, that it’s going to ablaze.”

“The Lord doesn’t call us to do easy things.  He actually asks us to take up our cross and follow Him.  The yoke is easy, his burden is light.  So, taking on his yoke, and for me, when I realized that, I was like, it would be a disservice if I didn’t follow this.”

“One of the things I realized in soccer was how much of a high achiever I was – that I wanted to find my identity by looking good on the soccer field.”

“Why is it that we have these beliefs that we have to look good, that our identity is tied into our sports life?  That we have to be liked and approved by others when, really, the person is the Lord, and He already sees us as perfect, whole, and complete.”

Related links:

Anna’s official website
Anna’s Linktree
FREE 15-Minute Prayer Session with Anna
FREE Coach Over Coffee Session with Anna
“Sacred Wounds: Stories of Redemption, Healing and Growth” Book
“TAG Talks Transcribed” Book

(This episode contains a prayer by Fr. Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R., as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Claudio Reilsono

He has had a long career in baseball, including being the all-time leader in wins as coach of the Carnegie Mellon University baseball team, which he guided to consecutive conference championships in 2015 and 2016.  As a professional scout, he has assisted in professional player signings all over the world and in 2002 was named General Manager of the Global Scouting Bureau.  He is also a professional hitting instructor, conducting his own hitting camps in several states and serving as a hired instructor at many baseball camps. He was voted into the “Steel City Sports” Hall of Fame in 2014, and is the author of a book called, “Lead from the Heart Up, Not the Neck Up.”

Notable guest quotes:

“My mom is the one who taught me things, talked to me about God, about prayers, Italian prayers and the importance of having it in your life and faith.”

“I remember going by our church and I didn’t realize I did it so audibly, so loud, that I used to pray, ‘Please don’t let my daddy go blind.  Please don’t let my daddy go blind.’ … My dad never went blind… Three or four doctors told him that he had glaucoma, and he was going to go blind… He would tell you, ‘It was little Claud’s prayers that got me through’.”

“My uncle used to work over at Three Rivers Stadium, where the Pirates and Steelers used to play.”

“My dad had a landscape business.  I learned how to switch hit (by) hitting apples and rocks.  So, I was constantly hitting and swinging and throwing and my mom used to say if there was a baseball in the air you could be sure Claudio is underneath it.”

“I got a job at Quigley Catholic High School for a whopping 800 dollars a year, but I enjoyed those two years, and we were playing in a tournament one time, and I remember my dad told me, he said, “I’m very proud of you.’  He said, ‘You treated this Quigley Catholic baseball team as if it were the Yankees.  You bloomed where you were planted’.”

“I’ve had a lot of negatives, banana peels, I’ll call them, that I had to avoid.  I learned a lot.  I learned that through faith, that’ll help you get through.”

“That day, I always say, the good Lord presented me, said, ‘Here, Claudio, this is your gift,’ you know, ‘This is it, this is going to be your day’.”

“Without the good Lord’s presence and my parents, (I) guarantee you all those accolades or jobs or whatever opportunities I’ve had would not have occurred.”

“The good Lord would have said, ‘Hey, have faith, in a couple years you’re going to be at that ballpark.  You’re going to sign that guy on TV.  You’re going to sign that guy’s nephew.’  Things can happen in life.”

“How did they happen?  I always say, Very simply; through faith, through hard work, perseverance, or, I condense it into the word T-O-P-P – I had to be tough, I had to overcome, I had to be persistent, and I had to pray.”

“Everything I do is from a Christian foundation.  That’s how I was raised.”

Related link:

Claudio’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.)