Episodes

Zach Eckert

A former lacrosse player who is an avid surfer and serves as the Director of Campus & Sports Ministry at JSerra Catholic High School in Orange County, California.  He is also a 3rd degree Knight.  He attended Creighton University (a private, Jesuit university) and Franciscan University of Steubenville where he majored in Theology.  Be sure to stick around for his emotional story about the “Jersey Ceremony” as well as why May 18th is so significant.

Notable guest quotes:

“It wasn’t until the 1999, the Columbine shootings, that happened at a local high school just down the street from my elementary school, that totally shook my mom and led her just to kind of seek God in a new way and led her back to the Catholic church.  And it was there, through the priest there… who kind of counseled her through the teachings of the church and brought her and I back into the faith.”

“My faith and my awakening in the faith just changed my game so much.”

“My coach in high school… a man of faith himself, and just the way that he coached us and the way that he lived this philosophy of his own faith really empowered me.”

“A lot of students… they’ll go on a retreat or they’ll have an experience in their faith and they’re on fire in the moment and then a week or two weeks later they kind of forget it because the feelings have left them.”

“Our faith is something where we have to will it.  We have to will to go to Mass on Sundays.”

“He was really coaching us to grow in virtue, which ultimately helped me in my faith just to persevere through those difficult times.”

“Our coach… and even at our public high school would invite us into prayer.”

“There was this philosophy he was instilling in us in everything that we do, on and off the field, what could Christ do.”

“There’s the sports ministry aspect, which is just empowering our coaches, forming our coaches, and providing that spiritual formation for their athletes.”

“We do these Chapel Talks before their home games, for the football team.”

Related link:

JSerra Catholic High School

Kelly Larson

An Assistant Girls Track Coach at City High School in Iowa City, Iowa, where the team has won four state championships in her 18 years there.  She competed in track & field as well as in basketball at Loras College, a Catholic institution in Dubuque, Iowa. She is also the vice president and a board member of the National Catholic Coaches Association. And she is a religious education teacher.

Notable guest quotes:

“College is sort of a time where once you get out of your home – your parents and everything and the structure – you kind of get out and you start spreading your wings a little bit, and a lot of times people tend to stray maybe away from the things that they did when they were living under their parents roof – church and their faith being one of those.”

“What I was really grateful for is, being surrounded by the Catholic faith, even when maybe I wasn’t paying that much attention to it, it was always there, and it was always sort of a backbone of our education.”

“They were able to also incorporate attending Mass with our teams during basketball season and track season.”

“I really enjoyed learning more about my faith that I didn’t realize I just hadn’t learned in a public school and it just really solidified in me what my faith meant and how important it was to me and how important it was that I continue my faith journey.”

“I hope that something people can describe me by is knowing that I’m a Christian, knowing that I know God and that He’s a part of my life every day.”

“I took her aside and I said, ‘Let’s say some prayers.  Let’s take a few moments and make this night about God as well, because you are sacrificing what you wanted to probably do with your family for your team‘.”

“I’m also free to wear my cross necklace… and I let people know that I pray and I thank God for a lot of things in my life and I let the girls know that I’m grateful for them and that I do pray for them and I thank God for them.”

“I just remember being incredibly overwhelmed and not knowing what to do and talking to a lot of people and just so exhausted and it kind of hit me one day, ‘I gotta go talk to my priest’.”

“My first thought was, ‘Why God? Why?!  What is the deal?’  And then I went through a little bit of guilt thinking, okay, I shouldn’t be questioning.”

“God is with me.  He’s walking with me every step of the way.”

Related link:

National Catholic Coaches Association

(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)

Elliot Panicco

A goalkeeper for NashvilleSC of Major League Soccer, having been selected in the first round of the MLS SuperDraft in January. He had attended UNC Charlotte, where he earned All-Southeast Region honors three times, including his senior year when he was also Conference USA Goalkeeper of the Year, Golden Glove Award winner, and first team all-conference.

Notable guest quotes:

“Both of my parents are Catholic, and I grew up going to Mass on Sundays, also with my older brother, Eric, so we were raised to be good men and to practice the faith.”

“We spent a few years in Omaha, Nebraska, and I went to Catholic school there.”

“I was primarily going there to play soccer, but I had no idea what the Lord had in store for me.  He blessed me with some wonderful teammates who really cared about me and saw that I was going to church on Sundays but invited me to practice my faith every other day of the week and we started to read scripture together.”

“That was when I knew the Lord was calling me to give all of my life to Him and not just to be lukewarm and just give Him one day a week, but to trust Him with my entire life.”

“Everywhere I turned I just found such beauty and truth in the Catholic church and it was able to just lead me closer to Rome, if you will.”

“I started volunteering and spending time with the kids, giving talks and really just getting to know them and to pour into them and also to share about my faith and how important it is to me, living out my daily life and sharing the way that I lived it out.”

“It was definitely a calling from the Lord and something that I felt great peace about knowing that I went there to try (to) spread His Word and to fulfill what He’s asking of me.”

“It’s definitely by His grace that He keeps me humble and I know that being a professional athlete isn’t the greatest thing in this life.”

“After I fell into my faith and I fell in love with it, it became clear to me that my plans are not as great as God’s plans and my prayer was just to ask the Lord for whatever He wanted but also when I do play soccer that I might give my best and glorify Him through it all.”

Related link:

Elliot Panicco on Instagram

(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)

Steven Didik

A triathlete who also had a successful college soccer career.  He is a Zone 3 ambassador, which is the world’s highest rated triathlon brand.  He also has many triathlons lined up to qualify for a national championship spot.  He also mentors local youth athletes who are trying to go to the NCAA to play college sports.  He also talks about being involved with both a non-profit called Faces of Courage AND multiple efforts to raise money to combat cancer, due to a personal attachment.

Notable guest quotes:

“Things like sports, your career, it’s not about me.  It’s not about me anymore, it’s about other people, what I can do for other people.  Everything else is just a distraction.  And you’re doing it all for a God that’s bigger than all of us.”

“You can win as much as you want.  You can do everything, but those are just tiny moments.  And, everything is about the journey.”

“Sometimes you lose that identity, and you put your identity in things like your career, things like sports, but, if you put your identity in something bigger, like giving back, giving to other people, or in God, I believe that you can never really fail.”

“I truly believe that, as I keep saying, doing things for other people, that’s where your success lies, and, trying to maintain that identity all the time.”

“Before each race I do go to 2 Corinthians 4: 8-9 … Whatever happens during those races, as long as they are, as rigorous as they are, as long as you kinda keep faith in your family, and in God, you’re never really broken… and that really keeps me going.”

“A lot of the kids, they put their entire identity in soccer, and… One of the things I really reiterate is, put your identity in other things.  Put it in your family.  Put it in your academics.  Put it in your faith.  And when you start to do that, it takes a lot of the pressure off as an athlete and you actually start to see a really big jump in performance.”

“Medals, championships, maybe even Olympic qualifying, things like that, it’s all moments.  But, your happiness is found in every day, the gratitude in each day, the people you meet.”

Related link:

Steven Didik on Instagram

(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)

Bill Thierfelder

Currently in his 16th year as president of Belmont Abbey College, which is a Catholic, Benedictine liberal arts college, he has been involved in sports in a variety of roles. He was the president of the York Barbell Company, was principal and co-founder of the Joyner Sports Medicine Institute, has served as Executive Director of the Player Management Group – which was a sports representation company providing services to professional athletes – plus he is a former member of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry.  He was an Olympian himself and a national champion and two-time All-American in high jump. He also authored the book, Less Than a Minute to Go: The Secret to World-Class Performance in Sport, Business and Everyday Life.  He is a member of the Sport Faith International Hall of Fame.

Notable guest quotes:

“I had no intention of ever going into higher education.  This was an absolute call to come (to Belmont Abbey College)… I have ten children, so it was no small decision to come here.  But this was a real call to come here, and I only came here because this was a Benedictine monastery that actually had a college.  This was their apostolate.”

“It’s about prayer and work.”

“This is a story of divine providence.  We are located just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, and for those that maybe know North Carolina you’d know that the whole state of North Carolina today is only about four-and-a-half percent Catholic.”

“Jesus Christ put this place here 144 years ago for a reason.  And the reason we are here is to bring that to full flowering and fruition.”

“Too often people think the problem is sport; and it’s not sport, it’s how we approach sport.”

“There’s a quote from St. Augustine that begins, ‘As a boy I played ball games’.”

“Too often there’s this sense of either we’re going to be a world class athlete or we’re going to be a good person, as if somehow the two are mutually exclusive.”

“I’ve worked with hundreds of athletes.  I’ve worked with Olympic athletes.  I’ve worked with professional athletes.  I’ve worked with winners of Super Bowls, Olympic gold medalists, world record holders.”

“What doesn’t end is, in a sense, your journey to heaven, your journey to eternal life.”

“We should be approaching sport the way we coach it, the way we train it, the way we perform, literally as a whole person because it’s how we’re going to perform best and it’s also how we’re going to glorify God.”

“We’ve got to cooperate.  God’s not going to force us into anything.  But His grace is raining down like Niagara Falls, and I think often we stand under it with umbrellas up wondering why we’re not getting wet and we complain about it.”

Related link:

Bill’s book

[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]

Tim Triplett

The co-founder and president of the National Catholic Coaches Association, he has 14 years of coaching experience at the collegiate and high school levels.  He is currently the head football coach and assistant activities director at Holy Family Catholic in Victoria, Minnesota, and played college football.  He also has been a member of the Knights of Columbus for eleven years.

Notable guest quotes:

“(The NCCA) started with a simple mission to positively influence others through faith and coaching.”

“Our unofficial mission is Catholic leaders developing Catholic leaders.”

“We pray before every practice.  We pray before every game.  Pray before every team meal.”

“As the head coach, as the tip of the spear, I try to live it and show my players and student-athletes every day what my faith is about.”

“My parents grew up in large Catholic families.  My mom came from ten kids and my dad came from seven.”

“I really enjoy being around the Catholic world, the Catholic high school, and having it prevalent around me all the time.”

“The presence of the priests and the presence of our spirituality… just makes us stronger, I think.  I think it’s fantastic.”

“When I was a G.A. at Wayne State College we got together with some other coaches and just did some Bible study; prayed together, things of that nature.  University of South Dakota was the same way.  I’ve led a couple groups in my time at St. Thomas.”

Related link:

National Catholic Coaches Association

David Belisle

A lifelong coach, he was an assistant coach for high school hockey for 39 years and also gained national attention as the manager of the Cumberland Americans Little League team, including being seen on ESPN in a post-game, on-field speech – a video that went viral to the tune of more than a quarter million views.  He was nominated by Sports Illustrated for the 2014 Sportsman of the Year and has also been honored with the Musial Award and the Hope Award. He also talks here about having played college hockey. You’ll want to have a tissue handy for the second half of the interview.

Guest quotes:

“I’ve been blessed with three incredible institutions that’ve fortified me with the strength of Jesus Christ.”

“That’s the Belisle family tree.  Our foundation is Jesus Christ.”

“God gave him a second chance and from that day forward his spirituality grew and grew.  My mom and my dad from… after he recovered went to church every single day.”

“As co-coach I understood, ‘Wow, this is important.  We’re not only teaching kids the game of hockey, but we’re teaching them life lessons’.”

“As you move forward and you coach, it’s such a privilege and we’re honored to coach.  If you don’t see it as a privilege, then you’re going to become selfish and you’re going to create your own goals.  I never created my own goals.  My father never created his own goals. It was always team goals.”

“It was always about my mother, my father, married, marriage was sacred – 65 years they spent together – and four boys that grew up in the Catholic-enriched society.”

“What inevitably is gonna carry you for the rest of your life is family, your friends, working together for a common goal, making sacrifices.”

“That’s why I got the awards that I got, is because of the people who made me who I am and obviously Jesus Christ.”

“God will provide if you believe, but in order to believe you gotta spread His Word and let Him come into your heart.”

Related link:

Mount Saint Charles Academy High School hockey

CSR Listeners Facebook group (for two videos mentioned)

(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)