Episodes

Ed Valaitis

He is what you might call a late bloomer with an amazing story of being far more active in sports now than he was at traditional youth, student, and post graduate ages, due to his upbringing. An adventure traveler, present day he participates in running, biking, hiking, and skiing. His devotion to his Catholic faith can be seen in that two months ago he put out a book that is designed to help business owners determine both when to sell and how to sell their companies, YET, by sharing his *personal* story, he achieved #1 Amazon New Release status in the Catholic Self Help category. (NOTE: This episode contains sensitive and emotional subject matter.)

Notable guest quotes:

“We actually went to Catholic elementary school the first eight years.”

“When I was writing the book – I began 18 months ago – and I had been pushed by God.”

“At times I would say in my mind, I’d say, kinda, ‘Could ya’ keep it down, I’m trying to worship you here’.”

“As my faith grew stronger, when I got married… my wife and I agreed we were going to raise our kids in the Catholic faith… and we were going to go to Mass every week, we were going to live a stronger faith life.”

“My 40^th birthday I read the Bible cover to cover that year.”

“I knew God had forgiven me, but I still hadn’t forgiven myself completely.”

“My best thinking would happen during Mass and (I) came up with Cause For Courage, and the name came from the fact that if there’s any reason to have courage, it’s a child.”

“I have a deep love of nature, so, being outdoors and in the wilderness is certainly a high priority, and I think God’s presence is there and an opportunity to pray and meditate and enjoy His presence.”

“God’s gift to us certainly is Earth and the nature and the beauty of it all.  And, when I run or participate in other activities, I’ll often say a prayer and thank God for the ability to run.”

“It’s about living each day full out and serving God’s Will and helping us all get closer to Christ.”

Related links:

Ed’s book “Exit Like a Winner” on Amazon

CauseForCourage.com

Fr Craig Vasek

He is the Chaplain for athletics at the University of Mary, a Catholic institution in Bismarck, North Dakota, where he works full-time with 19 athletic teams and around 450 scholar-athletes.  Ordained as a priest in 2010 in Minnesota, he is a graduate of the Pontifical North American College in Vatican City. Raised around sports, he began to letter in ninth grade as a multi-sport athlete in football, basketball and track & field, including having been a two-way starter for his high school football team which advanced to a state championship, AND earning a trip to the state track & field championships his senior year.  He also hosts various radio shows and has even done a podcast of his own.

Notable guest quotes:

“This didn’t convert my life to the Lord at all, but it was like this sort of athletic redemption thing.”

“By the end of it I had opened my entire life before God through the priest.”

“The only thing that I knew at the end of that retreat and from that moment forward was that Jesus died for me, and He just saved my life and now I’m going to live for Him ‘cause I love Him.”

“Jesus just whispered right through me pretty, I mean, it was kind of a loud whisper, ‘This is what I want you to do’ as I’m looking at the priest.”

“To have a priest walking around in the athletic department, when I first arrived, it was kind of funny.  I mean, I almost felt awkward.  I’m usually fine walking around in clerics, but I almost started feeling awkward ‘cause, like, I’d come around a corner and there’d be students walking and they would immediately, like, clam up, these football players or whoever they were, they’d clam up… because they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, God just walked around the corner’.”

“The world of athletics needs conversion because these are the people that, for better or for worse, are the ministers, are the pastors, of a generation of youth… We need a conversion so that, like, we can proclaim the gospel through sport rather than trying to convert people away from sport so that we can get the gospel to ‘em.”

“The purpose of sport is not to win.  The purpose of sport finds itself within the greater purpose of all human endeavors, which is that I become who God has created me to be so that I might inherit eternal life.”

“A lot of our mental health struggles, that I find, is that people don’t have any virtue, and that’s why they’re struggling.  And because they’re clamoring for their identity in their sport or they’re clamoring for their identity in their friends rather than in the Lord.”

“First Corinthians chapter nine in the heart of it, ‘Run so as to win, for a crown that is imperishable rather than one that is perishable.’  It’s magnificent work by Saint Paul, he who is in Greece, understanding the Olympics, understanding that Gentile way, and then leaning in with this kind of drawing together two principles: the one of the pursuit of eternity… and then also this objective that you run instead of win.”

Related link:

Fr. Vasek’s bio on U. of Mary website

Mike McQuaid

He has been involved in various sports-related capacities. Most recently is his foray into the sport of triathlon, which has seen him compete in over 20 long-course, Olympic, and Sprint triathlons, including reaching the podium six times in the past two seasons. On April 2nd he will compete in the Ironman Oceanside 70.3 in San Diego, and in preparation for that he will complete a training ride next week in which he will tackle the 10,068-foot, 35-mile climb to the summit of Maui’s Haleakala Volcano dubbed as the “World’s longest paved climb.” He had been an All-Pac 10 and national champion rower in his 20s. As a competitive sailor, he was a member of the winning crew at the 1998 Swiftsure International Yacht Race. Plus, he has held administrative roles in sports with the Seattle Goodwill Games, the Washington State Olympic Committee, the Seattle Sports Commission, USA Canoe/Kayak, and even US Lacrosse, among many others.

Notable guest quotes:

“In growing up, mom surrounded us with Catholic families, and we attended Mass… and throughout my early life, being Catholic was always a part of my identity.”

“As we were preparing for that game a local priest came in and we held hands and had a prayer, a blessing prior to the game.  And that was something that was very, very monumental for me, to understand and explore the power of faith and the power of God as you approach competition.”

“I was working on a program that helped athletes acclimatize prior to competition, it’s very common prior to games.  And I wanted to connect Philip Boit with Kenyans in the local community.  So, there’s a priest that I was very close to, Fr. Stephen Okumu, who was quite a successful soccer coach and athlete himself.”

“We see this in 1 Corinthians 9:24, which essentially says, ‘Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?  Run in such a way as to get the prize.’  And if we look a little deeper into that verse, we really understand that it’s at the heart of the Olympic creed and it’s more about effort and dedication and the journey, and the reward is beyond the hardware that you can put around your neck.”

“It’s very much about competing with integrity.  It’s not about winning at all costs or abandoning your values, and really, it’s about, yes, we will lose sometimes.  We’ll get beat sometimes, absolutely.  But by performing with honor, we can always be victorious in the eyes of God.  And I think about that before every competition.”

“I can recall just the comfort that praying quietly… It brought me a sense of understanding, a sense of absolute calm, a sense of reconciliation… and a connection with God and understand that God was indeed there.”

“Prayer has helped tremendously.  I know God loves me and I know God is guiding me.”

“Prayer and… patience is important to Catholics and anyone, that the signs are there, and the path of peace is there.  We just have to be patient and be willing to work through some of the challenges along the way.”

“I think that if it wasn’t for the Catholic Jack Kelly and his quiet demeanor and patience, that experience might not have played out that way.  And I think that’s a tremendous metaphor for life in a lot of ways, that if we have that kind of patience and if we have that kind of trust, we can have wonderful opportunities.  We see this in Proverbs 3, 5 and 6.”

“He implored on me, as a very last piece of advice he gave me, he says, ‘Trust in your training and have patience and trust in God’.”

Related link:

Mike’s bio from his company’s website

[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]

Tom Fox

He will be inducted this year into the St. Ignatius Athletics Hall of Fame. For 20 years he has run a basketball camp in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and has coached both basketball and track at two different high schools, plus he also coached AAU basketball. As a student-athlete he had played basketball on a full athletic scholarship at St. Francis College of Pennsylvania, which followed a high school career during which he was a four-year letterman in track and three-year letterman in basketball. Prior to his senior season of basketball, he was selected as one of the top players in Ohio by USA Today. Last year he published a book called, “A Penny’s Thoughts: Sometimes All You Need is a Change of Perspective.”

Notable guest quotes:

“I grew up in a large Irish Catholic family… we lived actually right up the street from St. Luke’s grade school… Big part of the parish. Parish life was everything to our family.”

“(I attended) St. Luke grade school in Lakewood, Ohio, St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, and St. Francis College… in Loretto, Pennsylvania.”

“My dad started an initiative called Varsity Coats for Needy Folks… he noticed our three varsity coats — my younger brother, mine, and my older brother, for Ignatius — were just hanging in the closet and he thought, there’s a lot of homeless individuals, folks that can’t afford coats, and why not refurbish these coats and get them out to the poor.”

“He’s just a very holy man and a great basketball coach at the same time. So, I’m very blessed to have played for someone like him.”

“In my college career I actually tore my ACL… Basketball was everything (to me), but had my folks not really instilled a deep faith, I don’t know if I would’ve gotten through that very tough time in my life.”

“Faith has been my constant and without my parents establishing that early on and having great godparents… I don’t think I could’ve weathered those storms.”

“The Holy Spirit, really, I was very blessed to come up with the concept and the words really came (for the book).”

“Every morning I get up, the first thing I say when I put my feet on the ground is ‘Thank you, Lord, for another day.’ I know that every day is a gift.”

“The prayer that I wanted to tell you about, the prayer of abandonment, is a prayer by Charles de Foucauld, is his name.  I’m pretty sure he’s just become a saint.”

“The rosary I say every morning… I have a rosary in my pocket and I will say a decade for something different every day.”

Related links:

Tom’s book on Amazon

Tom’s blog “The Empathetic Fox”

(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.)

Joey Crawford

He is a current candidate for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2022. He is the Referee Development Performance Director for NBA Referee Operations, following a career as an NBA official from 1977 to 2016, officiating more than 2,500 regular season games and a record 344 playoff games. Fifty of those playoff games were in the Finals. In the all-time NBA referee rankings, he is first in playoff games, Finals Game 7s, and total games, plus he is tied for first in total seasons officiated. Along the way he also officiated three All-Star Games and even worked the McDonald’s Championship in Germany in 1993. He is also in three Halls of Fame.

Notable guest quotes:

“At one time… it was the largest Catholic school in America.  It was called Most Blessed Sacrament in Philly.  It was huge.  And we lived… right across the street from it.”

“I went to St. Pius X… (and then) in high school… I went to Cardinal O’Hara.  We were that Catholic family.  It was a tremendous upbringing.”

“When I was pursuing the (NBA), I would pray… I would go to Mass on Sundays… Where we were raised, my father always went to Mass on Sundays and, I’m assuming because I saw that, I did also.”

“I figured it out, that there was importance in other things, and I was going through some trials and tribulations… in my personal life and in my work life and I think that’s when I actually got serious… about my faith.”

“Referees have to learn to serve the game.  And, I think sometimes as referees, you get caught up with serving yourself.”

“As you evolve it starts to become you’re taking (the approach), ‘It’s about the game, it’s about the crew, and then it’s about you.’ And if you can take it in that order, you can see that your career is getting better and better because you’re putting yourself on the back burner. And to me it’s actually life too, where you’re trying to be that better person and you’re looking out for someone else instead of yourself.”

“I’ve been to Serbia. I’ve been to Japan. I’ve been to China… We get the opportunity to go in there and try to teach their referees in their country what we do in the NBA… My most favorite thing to do in a year is go on one of those trips.”

“When you run these camps, a lot of time they’re money makers.  And that always got in my gut about the money aspect of making money off of refereeing… So, what we decided to do as a group, is, each referee… the money that we collected, we all had our own individual charities.”

Related link:

ESPN video for story Joey told of Villanova player-of-the-year-turned-cloistered-nun

Lauren Sajewich

She has been playing soccer professionally, including with last year’s Danish League Champions as well as with the Chicago Red Stars Reserves, who reached the 2019 national quarterfinals and the 2016 national semifinals after having been 2015 WPSL national champions. This all followed a collegiate career that saw her at Texas Christian University where she was a four-year starter, senior captain, two-time Team MVP, and her team reaching one Big 12 Championship Final.

Notable guest quotes:

“I did receive a scholarship to go play soccer at (Texas Christian University), which was great.  And then the association with Christianity was definitely attractive to me… I liked that TCU had a small religious requirement as far as taking a religious class.”

“(Fellowship of Christian Athletes) was a huge part of my time at TCU… It was just great to be amongst a community of athletes and players who have played at a high level and are very competitive but also who know that sport doesn’t define their identity and that there’s something much bigger than sport and that’s a relationship with the Lord.”

“I think learning about God the Father more and His love compelled me to see (that) my dad may not be able to do these physical things or do what other dads can do, but he still loves me.”

“In 2019 at the Catholic Sports Camp, it was the first time that I experienced, really, the coming together of Catholic faith and soccer and it was real beautiful just being able to coach and play with the kids on the field and … in the morning we’d have Mass and then maybe Adoration or Confession throughout the day.”

“I love sports so much and I love soccer so much and I love my faith and I just see how God moves through sport, and soccer specifically.”

“It was a blossoming of my desire to seek more Catholic community.”

“I didn’t really get a taste of youth ministry growing up and I felt like it was something I kind of missed out on.  So, being able to serve the high school students at St. Andrew’s was something that I was definitely interested in… I just felt totally blessed by the kids and by the other leaders.”

“It occurred to me when I went over (to Europe) that… it was going to be honestly even maybe even more important to continue growing and learning and being molded in the Catholic faith.”

“One of my big prayers going over to Denmark was, one, that there would be a Catholic church that was close, and then two, just to have a community outside of my team.  And I think the Lord has been so gracious in providing that.”

“I’m pursuing a Master’s in Theology at the Augustine Institute… I’m hoping… to go on and teach at a Catholic high school or some Catholic school at some level.”

Linda Cimino

She is in her fourth season as the head women’s basketball coach at NCAA Division I St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, New York, a Franciscan and Catholic college. She had previously spent four seasons as head coach at Binghamton University. Prior to that she’d spent eight years as the head coach at a Catholic-Dominican school, Caldwell University, where she was also the Associate Director of Athletics and Senior Woman Administrator. She has also held roles as assistant coach at Adelphi University, head girls’ varsity basketball coach at Calhoun High School, and head coach at Queensborough Community College. From 2016 to 2020 she served a four-year term on the NCAA Women’s Basketball Rules Committee. In 2019, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Interscholastic League Hall of Fame. As a student-athlete her name continues to appear in the record books in numerous categories for the Adelphi University women’s basketball program.  In high school she had been All-State in both basketball and softball.

Notable guest quotes:

“The best thing my mom ever did for me was baptize me in the Catholic Church and provide me with a strong sense of faith.”

“As a person who is a giver (what St. Francis did) really hit home with me, that less is more, and you don’t need a lot of worldly possessions — you can get through and survive with less.”

“All the people that I’ve worked for have been very high-quality people.  Almost all of my bosses have been Catholic, even when I worked at a state university, I worked for a Catholic athletic director who I was able to talk about faith with and connect with that way.”

“I was able to really… get in touch with my religious side and it is interesting because I do remember at one point my sister and a couple of friends said, ‘When did you get so religious,’ almost like it was a bad thing.”

“We all get distracted, but God is forgiving and that’s what we have to remember.”

“I think sometimes people are nervous to talk about their faith or their religion.  They think that somebody might judge them or look at them differently.  And so, it’s like a stigma they’re trying to get around.  And I think that being somebody with my platform I’m able to share that that’s okay.  It’s okay to communicate and talk about this stuff.”

“In the summer of 2017 I had had a pretty tough year.  I had some adversity happen and I was talking to somebody about a pilgrimage, and I was in my office and booked a flight for the next day and just flew to Italy, on my own… I flew out to Rome and landed and remember taking the bus down into Vatican City.  I stayed at an old rectory right outside St. Peter’s Basilica.”

“I was sitting at Mass in some gorgeous cathedral in Savannah, Georgia, and I remember saying to my friend, ‘I want to go to Mass in every state.’ … Then, of course, because I’m competitive and I’m a coach… I had to challenge myself to do it in one year.”

“Obviously we have an obligation to attend Mass on Sundays or Saturday nights.  But I find that people who attend daily Mass are really deep in their faith and are really looking and receptive to receiving the message.  And I definitely found that I like daily Mass a lot and I got a lot out of daily Mass.  It was more thought provoking for me.”

“I actually had my mom and then one of my girlfriends and her mom and we went out to Fatima in Portugal, and we were able to go there and pray and essentially be pilgrims… We definitely had a life-changing experience and moment there.”

“We were fortunate enough to get tickets to a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica where Pope Francis was and then listen to him and his address.  It was just an unbelievable opportunity and experience.”

Related link:

Linda’s bio on St. Francis College 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.)