Episodes

Steven Lopez

A five-time Olympian, he won a gold medal in taekwondo at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Games and then a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics.  He is also a five-time world champion.  Born in New York to Nicaraguan parents, he has had a lifelong walk with Christ as a Catholic and uses this CSR appearance to witness to such, including having had to get through an unfortunate incident last year.

Notable guest quotes:

“The most important thing has been my faith, with all the struggles, the challenges, the obstacles that we all face.  There isn’t one of us that is not without struggle.  And as an athlete, specifically, of course, … we can always push harder, we can do one more rep, we can run a little faster… And the same thing goes with the spirit.  And I think that’s THE most important thing… Are you gonna feed the soul?  Are you gonna feed the spirit?”

“Without our Lord and savior Jesus Christ that has given us this opportunity, this beautiful thing called life, then none of us would be here.  And so for me, every time that I would go out there and compete, it was an opportunity for me to showcase the talents that God has instilled in me.  And that’s a small way that I can go out there, perform, and give all glory to Him.”

“The more times that you avoid temptations, I think that spiritual muscle grows.”

“(my brother) and I would read the Bible every night.  I still do.  And every morning as soon as you open your eyes you just thank God for another day.”

“You have to be really cognizant that when you’re in church, you really are in church.”

“Through it all, like, it was just laced through my whole life, through my sports life, that, faith, belief in God, no matter what — because a lot of people feel good, when things are going well, ‘Thank you God,’ or, it could go the opposite, they feel that you did it all on your own and so you forget what got you there.  For me it’s when the things go well, thank God, and when things don’t go well, you thank God just the same.”

“A lot of times when we grow, when we get stronger, and when our faith is strengthened, is during those times of struggle.”

“Each and every one of us is a unique individual and masterpiece of God’s creation and we just have to look deep inside and see what those talents are, what the Spirit calls us to do, and use those gifts.”

“I remember praying that if I ever reached a certain level of success that I could have a platform that people would be willing to listen to me or to hear me or to see me compete that I would always bring glory to Him.”

“2008 for me was, even though I – and I’ll put this humbly – ‘only’ won the bronze, for me it was the best Olympics because I got to experience that Olympic Games alongside my younger brother and my younger sister and my older brother.”

“I feel that the faith really comes into action and you have to place your faith into action when things are going badly or things are going tough or you’re in a dark time.  That’s when the faith really gets tested.”

Related link:

Steven Lopez on Facebook

(This episode contains a prayer by Gregg Easterbrook from the NFL.com and ESPN.com column “Monday Morning Quarterback,” as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Taylor Schroll

A four-sport athlete in high school, he ran track in college, at a Catholic university — including competing against some Olympians — and today is a coach for the boys track team at a Catholic high school in Texas, where he has guided them to a many “firsts” in school history, such as district champs, regional champs, and medals at the State meet.  A father of three, he also is a full-time missionary and hosts a Catholic podcast too!

Notable guest quotes:

“I fell in love with the basketball before I ever fell in love with anything, like God, my family, I loved basketball from a very young age.”

“I was a college freshman, I ran at Incarnate Word… My literally first race ever, it was an indoor meet, I ran the 60-meter dash and I got down on my blocks and I looked to the guy on the right.  He looked very familiar and I quickly recalled that I watched him on TV the year before, winning the Big 12 Championship in the hundred.”

“(My college career) ended at Baylor with… three guys and one girl that were Baylor alumni that came back for the meet to, like, the four of them ran as their own team, they ran unaffiliated, with all these other colleges… All these guys had won medals at the Olympics!  And I got into the blocks against Darold Williamson, who got a medal at the Olympics… I felt like he was done with his 200-meter race by the time I got out of the blocks.”

“I had come up in youth ministry, like, youth ministry in high school essentially saved me being Catholic.”

“What’s really cool about the coaching in particular is that a lot of times in youth ministry or in campus ministry where I worked… there was a huge group of people that I couldn’t connect with, which were the athletes.  A lot of ’em didn’t care about their faith.  And I was like, ‘Well I care about sports.  Let me go start coaching ’em.’  And I started building real relationships with these young men… And then slowly because of my relationship with them that I built out on the track and field they started coming around on their faith and being, like, look, a lot of this stuff applies here too.”

“Here in the United States, this has become a mission territory.  This used to be an extremely and overtly Christian nation.  As things have shifted in our society, like, especially with young people… A lot of these kids don’t know anything or if they do know they don’t care.”

“I was the nerdy kid that loved Star Wars… I was the athlete.  I was the church kid.  I was the class clown.  I was all these things, so I am able to connect with these young people.”

“The youth minister that actually impacted my life?  He was a high school quarterback and that’s how we bonded.  So, I didn’t really see it coming.  There were some seeds there that started…”

“That’s why it’s been so cool here, recently, in these last, like, ten years or so.  There are SO many athletes who are our heroes – our sports heroes – who are big-time Christians.”

“This is cool, I can do this.  I can love sports and God and actually live a life of Christ while playing football, basketball, baseball, whatever.”

Related link:

Ablaze Ministries

(This episode contains a prayer by Fort Worth Christian Football League parent Linda Fleshman, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Tom Lynn

An attorney who is now an agent certified by the National Hockey League Players Association and has a long career in hockey as a front office executive, including as the Assistant General Manager and Director of Hockey Administration and Legal Affairs of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild (2000 to 2009).  He wrote the book, “How to Build an NHL Franchise from Scratch: The First Era of the Minnesota Wild.”  He talks here about overcoming the stigma – the labels that people put – on being an agent, plus he gives insight on steering young athletes toward charitable considerations, and even how he has to practice what he preaches to his clients in similar decisions that he has to make with his own (six) children.

Notable guest quotes:

“Most of the outside world’s reaction to hearing my father was a lawyer was always negative.  And then kind of going out into the world myself and becoming an attorney initially it was a similar thing.  Then I joined an NHL team as an executive and it was the opposite.  It was almost like nothing I could do was wrong, living in a hockey state.  It would be like a football executive in Texas or a basketball executive in Indiana.  And so, all a sudden the script was flipped.  And then when I left the Minnesota Wild NHL team and became an agent, it immediately went back to the old story and I was unwelcomed many places, squinted at, if I was introduced as an agent, many people would say, ‘Ah, it’s one of them.  Watch your wallet.  Keep your hands in your own pockets’.”

“My daily prayer is for the priests of this archdiocese.”

“I hesitated to become an agent.  The very biggest hurdle I had to get over was not only the image of agents, but, so many… are not honest.  They face conflicts of interest.  They make demands and claims that aren’t true or justified.”

“Not only do I have to be consciously ethical, I have to be a salesman to a degree – which I hate.  I don’t like sales.  I was never a salesman.  I was trained as a lawyer and then a manager but now I’m in sales, to a degree.  And I’ve been thinking about that in my Catholic faith lately, that, … for many of us it’s not enough simply to be faithful, we have to learn and know how to talk about it and communicate it… in order to make it effectively faithful.”

“The devil often tempts you with things that look good or things that correspond with gifts you have.  And so if you’re an extraordinary competitive player, you have a lot of the warrior in you – of the priest, prophet, warrior, and king – so you have that in there that God’s given to you for a reason in your life, the devil will tempt you from that vantage point.”

“Our first client questionnaire when someone hires us has them list charitable causes in which they’re interested.  And we kind of work it up from there, even as amateurs, to say, ‘Do you want to get involved, so, you don’t have the money yet, but, do you want to get involved in volunteering or appearances’.”

“We can tell them all those different ways of tithing – both time and treasure.”

“I’ve met those parents many times, crossing paths, and there’s no changing them.  They’re kind of coming in with the idea, ‘I’m going to exploit my kid to the greatest extent possible’.”

“I think raising the kids is the most important thing and then sports next.””We talk about issues of wrapping your business life in with your Catholic faith.”

Related link:

Tom’s agency

Chris Gomez

He played college hockey and now coaches in that sport, while serving as the Board President for Catholic Sports Camps.  (His father had run a hockey camp in the 1980s with the Chicago Blackhawks.)  All that despite having also attended (for graduate school) the largest Catholic university in the United States, because, he talks here of being called back to the church after falling away after he left his parents’ house, having been raised a cradle Catholic.

Guest Quotes:

“When I was going through (graduate school), still, no relationship with our Lord and, it’s funny that I picked a Catholic university.  It just seemed to be the one that was, just kind of like, made the most sense based off of the notoriety of it and the proximity to where I was working at the time.”

“I feel like God loves to use the most unlikely sources to work miracles.”

“At (age) 30 I had a St. Paul conversion experience when he was on the road to Damascus.”

“There was, like, a dark shadow, and out of the shadow I hear God say to me, ‘Christopher, I love you and I need you to come back to my church’.”

“When you’re committed and really starting to practice, like, all of a sudden all of your relationships are improving, your business relationships are improving, there’s so much more peace in your life.”

“Our goal is for the children to meet Christ, to have that mountaintop experience.  I mean, they’re organized, it’s a sports camp, but what it is is a retreat.  And so, that’s our biggest prayer, that, when these kids come to the camps they meet the Lord and then obviously they grow in their sports formation as well.”

“When I was in high school athletes were always the leaders of community and if you can evangelize the leaders then they will just go ahead and evangelize all their communities.”

“If the father of the family is not practicing, like, it’s really just a strong chance that the family’s not going to be practicing.  But if he is on fire, then it’s like a 94 percent chance that the rest of the family is practicing.”

“You think you’re going to change and transform kids’ lives, but for myself, I would say that running this ministry has definitely just exploded my walk with the Lord.”

“We really need to answer that call for a new evangelization.”

“You can never out-give the Lord in generosity.”

Related links:

www.CatholicSportsCamps.org

Mike Gutelius

The head football coach at The Catholic University of America, which is located in our nation’s capital, although he has – in his words – experienced the differences of being a practicing Catholic in seven states and the District of Columbia.  He is a lector in his current parish and did so – along with being the Chair of the Finance Council – at his previous parish as well.  He begins his third season at Catholic University of America in 2019.  In his first season the team tied a program record with three d3football.com all-region players, the most for Catholic University of America in nine years.

Guest Quotes:

“I’ve landed in some other places where… be it a state school, where you weren’t even allowed to talk about God because that could be seen as some sort of endorsement.”

“I had to, carefully, without offending anybody, walk through the fact that what we wanted to receive was the true body, blood, soul and divinity, not just some sort of protestant representation of it.”

“The requirements to work here are that you will not undermine the church’s mission or its teachings by the way you live your life.”

“We’ll recruit in many areas where the Catholic tradition is strong… but if you go … down into southern Virginia and North Carolina, you can wind up sitting in someone’s living room and having to explain to them many of the misconceptions they have about the Catholic faith.”

“The one thing you have to be willing to do if you’re going to come here as a student is you have to be ready to think about bigger things, like ‘Why am I here,’ ‘How do I serve.’  If you’re open to all of that, then you won’t have any trouble with the strength of the faith that’s here.”

“This is a sport where you have to surrender to something greater, the team, and to me it runs a very strong parallel to what being a good Christian is.  Being a good Catholic you have to pick up your cross, and if you’re going to play football you better suffer and you better be team first and you better make sure that you’re not the biggest thing in your life… And then you look at Catholic teaching and see how that fits with the gospel message of service and Jesus being the greatest thing and you’re just a worker.”

“Last year the way I did it in the (team) meetings was, I did the four cardinal virtues and showed how employing those, one, would make you a great teammate and leader, but, also help you in every other part of your life.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m here to win… but I’m here in a bigger sense because we need young men to be strong in their faith and to understand what the church really teaches.”

“We started doing a Bible study on Monday nights during the season with the guys.  And something I like to do is, Friday nights on the week after a win… we always will say a rosary with the guys who want to come.”

“We ask a lot of our athletes, so I don’t want to overtax them.  But there certainly is opportunities for them to serve and to help and to give back and provide very concrete works of mercy to people in this city.”

Related links:

Catholic University of America football

(This episode contains a prayer from the South Bend Indiana Inner-City Catholic League, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport)

Bob Fisher

A 25-time Guinness World Record holder for free throw shooting, he began coaching basketball in 1982.  He had played high school basketball and went on to play in recreational leagues until he was 44.  Born and raised Catholic, he is a member of the Knights of Columbus and joined Teams of Our Lady with his wife a couple years ago.  Listen to hear how he connects with the Bible story about the five talents.  Bob’s accomplishments have taken him to “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” a TV program in Beijing, China, an appearance at NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles, and more that are told during this interview.

Guest Quotes:

“I did not set my first Guinness World Record until the age of 52… And, looking back, it’s easy to see how the Lord puts things in your life when it’s a stepping stone through life.”

“The Bible verse that really sticks out with me is the parable of the talents… The parallel is… God has given us talents and it’s up to us to develop those talents.”

“We all are given a certain number of gifts from the Lord and we need to develop those gifts.”

“We were from a large family, a family of ten, and we attended Mass.  Mom and Dad were devout Catholics.  They went on missions and went overseas to different places… and they wrote their own prayers.”

“The endeavors are where we strive to read the Word daily and we have couples’ prayer… For (my wife) and I it has been really, really good.  I’ve been drawing much closer, religiously, to the church.  Before we got into this (my wife) and I were not real good at praying together.  And we really have improved on that.  Having the support of other couples in your parish… it’s been very, very good for us.”

“Without (my wife’s) support — love and support — throughout all this I wouldn’t have any Guinness World Records… I would just be another good shooter.”

“That is, I think, what gives us our greatest joy in life is being able to help others.”

“I told Father Pat about it and he said, ‘Oh, no problem,’ he says, ‘I’ll say a prayer for you that day at Mass.’  And immediately a sense of calm came over me… It just made a tremendous difference.”

“We know God’s in control and we know God is guiding us but we get caught up in the moment and we forget.”

Related links:

www.SecretsOfShooting.com

www.TeamsOfOurLady.org/

[This episode contains a prayer by Oldenburg Academy of the Immaculate Conception (Oldenburg, IN) Athletic Director Tim Boyle, as seen in Play Like A Champion Today’s prayerbook for sports, God, Be In My Sport]

Mark Van Guilder

He played for the NHL’s Nashville Predators as well as many years with the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals, plus he has been playing pro hockey overseas in Europe.  He played his college hockey at Notre Dame and never missed a game (163 consecutive games).

Guest Quotes:

“Maybe wearing a wristband with a Bible verse or cross necklace, people kind of started approaching me about it, really.  That’s how it all kind of started.  I’d share a wristband, I’d share something.  Teammates would see me maybe sneaking off to church on a road trip.”

“Play to your strengths.  You have strengths for a reason.  Just let your actions do the talking.”

“It doesn’t have to be scary, or, it doesn’t have to be intimidating to kind of share your faith with people.”

“Think of the people that are making sacrifices… parents… trainers… These people are making incredible sacrifices… I think it’s really important to recognize these people.”

“The NFL… I actually really respect those guys.  You don’t see a lot in hockey, opponents at the center ice praying, like after a game or before a game.  You will often see that in the NFL and college football… I wish maybe the hockey culture could pick up on that a little bit as well.”

“I was raised Catholic.  That was just kind of, I don’t remember ever not being Catholic or that not being a part of my life.”

“It’s so different when you don’t understand a word of the Mass.  You can follow along, of course, because the Mass is the same everywhere.  My wife and I will follow along with the readings… But, to not be able to understand it is very different… But the people that we have been surrounded with in Italy and Norway, and now in Switzerland, have been amazing.  People that don’t speak English, and we’re in their hometown, we’re in their country, not speaking their language.  But people have been so accepting, so welcoming to us… You can feel that sense of community, even with the language barrier.”

“I tell myself before the game, ‘There’s kids watching, so, like, ya’ gotta play the game with class’.”

“When things don’t go well or when it’s difficult, your attitude, your body language does make a huge difference.”

(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)