Episodes

Toby Cook

He is in his 14th full season with Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals, serving as the team’s Vice President of Publicity after having previously been their Vice President of Community Affairs & Publicity. It is baseball that he credits with leading him to the Catholic church, which he officially became a part of twelve years ago. He shares that story – and more – during this conversation.

Notable guest quotes:

“I grew up in a loving household with my parents… and I’m the fourth of four (children).”

“I was a television anchor and reporter for 15 years.  I started off at a small radio station… I actually sat there in the control room and ran the board… at a radio station for Royals baseball games, which is really funny how that all came about.”

“In a small town in southeast Kansas, there was very little hostility with Roman Catholics.”

“I really do believe… all of this was a part of my eventual coming into the Catholic Church.  This was my seeking.  This was my searching.  This was my – to use a great phrase – discernment.  And I didn’t know it at the time.”

“I finally confirmed that call to fatherhood as a part of my Catholic conversion and a look at the vocation of marriage.”

“I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I finally got to go to work for the Royals after all these years because I was supposed to become Catholic.”

“Mike (Sweeney) arranged for the local bishop to come and say Mass at the stadium.”

“I’m very grateful that my Catholic faith has enlightened basically everything I do (at the Royals).”

“I think that there is a lesson to be learned when it comes to sports and how we can apply some of the disciplines and practices of sports to our faith.”

“What my Catholic faith has taught me is that it’s not about me and that I can let go and let God in so many ways.”

“It’s been miraculous to me that I’ve been able to see my Catholic faith and my work in baseball become more and more seamless as I’ve gone on.  Hopefully because I’m listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.”

Related link:

Toby’s mlb.com (Royals) bio page

(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)

Fr Michael Lightner

He is an administrator of three churches in northeast Wisconsin. In his college days he was an offensive lineman, playing football at the University of Eastern Michigan, where he had earned a scholarship after having played football in high school. He was invited to try out with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns and later would be inducted into the Sports Faith International Hall of Fame.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was the youngest of six living children, eleven all together, my mom had some miscarriages and so I have brothers and sisters in the Kingdom already.”

“Anybody ever asked me what I was going to do from… when I was eight years old and on up, they asked me and I’d say, ‘I’m going to play professional football’.”

“(Football) was the thing.  It was, ya’ know, it was a rivalry to God for sure.  And probably a false god in my life.”

“I work with high school kids, I do football camps and things like that to help kids understand (that) the power of being a team is very, very important.”

“My mom was a big proponent of Fatima and Lourdes.  She loved the Blessed Mother.  She loved to pray the rosary.”

“For the first time in my life God presented Himself in a way that I knew it could only be Him.”

“My godfather, who is a priest who… was there at my baptism, he wrote me three letters and he predicted the priesthood for me, and I didn’t receive these until I committed to it and it shocked me.”

“The miracles of the gospels, they’re right there for us.  God is real.  God is present.  And if we have the courage to ask Him to open our eyes, we’ll be able to see.”

“My favorite in all of scripture is John 4:20, and it’s the woman at the well.”

“God is looking out for his people.  But we have to go to Him.  We have to ask for what He wants us to receive.  We have to open our hearts, and if we know that, then we’re doing our job.”

Related link:

YouTube channel mentioned by Fr. Michael

John Jakubik

A strength and conditioning specialist who played four years of college football at Michigan State after having played football and baseball at Kalamazoo College. After Michigan State he went on to be a graduate assistant/wide receivers coach at Missouri Western State University and later was an Ohio State University Strength and Conditioning intern. In his teen years he attended Detroit Catholic Central High School, where he played football, baseball, and basketball. Currently he also hosts the Coach Kub podcast.

Notable guest quotes:

“(I) grew up in a Catholic household.  Both parents attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school… Myself and my two younger brothers… We attended Our Lady of Good Counsel (grade school).”

“I think I was very blessed with a lot of athletic ability, so a lot of these sports did come fairly easy to me and with that I think it helped me progress and learn to love the game, and not just one but a multitude of games, in different sports.”

“I’m forever grateful for the things that sports has done for me.”

“I’m very proud of myself for being consistent with going to Mass and going to Conf– and doing these different things and staying pretty involved in my faith.”

“I had some trials and tribulations at Kalamazoo (College) that first year, but my faith definitely kept me on the right path when things could’ve went in the wrong direction.”

“I think it’s really cool, again when you’re surrounded by people who are on these bigger stages – the basketball guys, the football guys, whatever – but at the end of the day none of that stuff matters without our faith and what we believe in and what we stand on.”

“I try to become the very best version of myself before I can help others on that same journey.  And the foundation of that process… has been my faith.  It always has been, it always will be.”

“God’s teaching us something.  There’s a lesson to be learned in all of this.”

Related link:

John’s website and podcast

[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]

Bill Bommarito

A longtime coach, having done so in football, baseball, soccer, and softball. He is the founder of Coaching Coaches and has had over 70 thousand volunteer coaches and parents participate in his coaching programs and parent programs. He currently has programs with several Archdioceses and several secular athletic programs. He is also the play-by-play announcer for women’s volleyball at two universities in the St. Louis area.

Notable guest quotes:   

“I’m a cradle Catholic… went to St. Peter Catholic Church… I then went to St. John Vianney High School… And that launched me into the University of Dayton, which is also a Marianist Catholic university.”

“The Catholic church was a huge center of our life, in my parents’ life.”

“From grade school all the way through my first teaching and coaching experience was all Catholic-related.”

“What I try to get our coaches to understand is, that within the Catholic community, within the CYO programs, what we need to be doing is to make sure that our faith is first and foremost.”

“The other thing that I tell coaches all the time, it’s how you behave at practices, not the kids, but how you behave at practices, and in particular at games, that really tells your story and tells the rest of your audience – your players and your families – how important is your Catholic faith to you.”

“You’re going to have opportunities in which you can demonstrate your Catholicism and what it means to you, as to how you present yourself away from the field, away from the court… That’s why I say coaching goes way beyond the court and field because we become this example for these families.”

“Our goal is to teach our faith.  Our goal is to teach the sport.  And if you do it effectively and you do it well, there’s a great likelihood you’re going to win.  And that becomes the bonus.”

“I think our sports programs, in some of these CYOs, they touch more families than unfortunately the number of families going to church on a Sunday.  And…  I’m not too far off.  I can assure you of that because people love their sports.  So if we’re not going to see them on Sundays, then I would love to be able to take our Catholic faith message to the field or the court where we know we’ll see them because sports are becoming more and more a huge part of a family’s experience.”

Related link:

Coaching Coaches 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.)

Frank Allocco

The Executive Sr. Associate Athletics Director for External Relations at the University of San Francisco (a Catholic school).  He won 17 league championships and two Division I state championships in 18 years at De La Salle High School in Concord, California, and has coached and/or been a speaker at basketball camps from China to Belgium to Canada. As a college athlete he played football and basketball at Notre Dame.  He is also an inductee to the Sports Faith International Hall of Fame.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was very blessed to be raised by two people of great faith, my mother and my father.  We were daily communicants from the time we were born, I think.  My dad was a factory worker and he would drop us off, and we always went to Mass before school.”

“I was so… grateful and I had such a great relationship with Christ… When I got the opportunity to be the starting quarterback at Notre Dame, I went to church every day to thank God for giving me the opportunity.”

“I had made friends with a guy at Mass.  I found this old man that I took under my wing.  He was 85 years old… And it was almost like God sent him to me.”

“It was a lesson in love that I actually felt was divine intervention that God sent him to me to teach me how to love.”

“My father always had priests in our home, which, I was blessed for that.  Always the parish priest was my dad’s best friend.”

“Anytime I’ve hit adversity in my life or disappointment, I think that I’m blessed to feel just a portion of what Christ felt when He sacrificed and what He went through.”

“I think that’s our duty in our ministries is not only to say the words – anybody can say words – but to live the words is most important.”

“The lesson I learned from that was, the success of any venture will be determined by the spirit in which it was entered.”

“I’ve recently become the president of the East Diablo (CYO) League, which serves ten parishes, and we are in the process of reevaluating our whole league in that we are really emphasizing prayer and sportsmanship and doing things the right way within our own parishes.”

“God wasn’t cheating me.  God was giving me all these different lessons and it took time for me to heal and to absorb those.”

Related link:

Frank’s 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.)

Anne Stricherz

The varsity girls golf coach at St. Francis High School in the San Jose, California, area, where she is also the Assistant Athletic Director for Mission and Engagement. She previously was the junior varsity girls golf coach at St. Ignatius Prep in San Francisco. In her college days she attended the University of Notre Dame, where she competed in rowing for four years. She is also the author of a book called, “Pray and Practice with Purpose: A Playbook for the Spiritual Development of Athletes,” and she has completed three marathons.

Notable guest quotes:

“We’re very intentional about sports as a way to form young people.”

“I teach a theology course called Sports and Spirituality… That is my favorite part of my day, even more than coaching, is the sharing of the Word – prayer and the lives of athletes and saints – with young people.”

“One of my uncles is a high school basketball referee.  So, I have great respect for those folks who serve sport in that way.”

“(my) grandfather competed against Eric Liddell, the subject of the movie Chariots of Fire.”

“Golf became, not only I would say maybe a necessity, but a reality, and I see that as a sign of God’s mercy to me.”

“There are real virtues to being an assistant coach.  Anybody… if they want to help out and work with young people through athletics, be an assistant coach.”

“As an assistant coach [cross country] I had my thing, and that was developing this, kind of, community of faith with the athletes.  So yes, I ran with them… and then I thought, ‘We can pray together, we can serve together, there are things that we can do.”

“In those conversations I would find out about these fantastic ways that coaches were including their faith with their sport.  And I just kind of started to collect them, collect the examples.”

“I think coaches need to pray for their athletes! … Maybe coaches, as a staff, want to pray together.”

“I think sometimes the Spirit calls us to another place where there might be more growth.”

“Two times a day during our walk we would walk in silence, for 45 minutes.  So, I would pray the rosary.”

Related link:

Anne’s book

(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.)

Kevin O’Brien

He played professional football in the mid-1990s, including the NFL (Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots), the CFL, and the World League (which became NFL Europe). He had played college football at Bowling Green State University.  He is the Co-Founder of Virtue Baseball and the Co-Founder of the Catholic Men’s Leadership Alliance.

Notable guest quotes:

“I call football the game of life ’cause you have those ups and downs and the struggles and it’s you play when it’s cold, you play when it’s hot, you’re bleeding, you’re hot, all of that.”

“I always had a connection to Christ.  I would kneel down and say prayers at night by myself… But… I grew up in the 70s where you didn’t really learn the faith, so I couldn’t love what I didn’t know… I wish I would’ve had that proper formation ’cause there’s so much strength and beauty in our wonderful Catholic faith.”

“Remember I always had this connection to Christ.  I always would pray.  I always had this sense in my heart… When you’re afraid and you need things, well let me tell you, at least for me personally, that’s where you go, you go to God.”

“My pro career really brought me closer to Christ because I entered a, I would call it a, crucible of suffering, mental suffering, because of the strain.”

“…the sacrament of confession… there’s tremendous power and strength that comes from that.”

“I was in sales… I was traveling a ton, by myself, so I had tons of time to study and I just sucked everything up.  Read the Catechism a number of times, which I loved… I came to learn it, so I came to love it.”

“I was in men’s ministry, very passionate about Pro Life, very passionate about Adoration, and then, of course, men’s ministry.  I have a heart for men.  I see a lot of men walking around in spiritual rags, that they just need to be lifted up.”

“I founded another apostolate called Men of Christ… and was blessed to interact with men, with leaders all across the country.”

“We start with prayer every practice, we end every practice with prayer, and every game, by the way, with prayer.”

Related links:

Men Of Christ
Catholic Men’s Leadership Alliance
Virtue Baseball

[This episode contains a prayer from the Play Like A Champion Today Coaches Manual (University of Notre Dame), as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport]