Episodes

Sherri Retif

She has been the head coach of the varsity girls basketball team at Germantown Academy for more than 20 years.  Her teams have captured the Inter-Academic Athletic League Championship 19 times, including a streak of 14 consecutive titles and 109 straight Inter-Ac victories. She had previously coached in New Orleans, where her teams captured back-to-back City Championships. She played basketball for the Tulane Green Wave and was inducted into the Tulane University Hall of Fame. In later years she was inducted into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame. In “Perspective on Youth Sport and Spirituality,” published by Notre Dame Press in 2015, she contributed a chapter on best practices. And, she co-authored a handbook called, “More Than a Game, Stories, Prayers and Reflections for the Student Athlete.”

Guest quotes:

“I grew up as a Catholic.  I went to Catholic schools all the way through twelfth grade and then I coached in a Catholic school for eight years… in New Orleans.  My husband took a job and we moved to Philadelphia and I just kind of thought I was done coaching and lo and behold Christ had another path for me and I was back coaching by the Fall.”

“I walked away from the game not thinking that was my calling.  I thought my calling was being a mom and a parent.”

“I realized my Christian values that I grew up with of honesty and accountability and community, and they just merged with the same values that I brought to the (basketball) court.”

“I learned that God was with us in adversity and God was with us in joy and bliss.”

“Being on a team is an opportunity for our students to have a small faith community, to have a safe place to grow and develop and make mistakes and learn.”

“If you’re focused on only winning or achieving a scholarship or outcome, you’re missing the journey, you’re missing the process.  And I think the invitation is to be aware of… is the experience moving them closer to God or is it moving them away from God?  Is my conversation with my athlete helping them grow closer to God or further away?”

“I think that’s where we all need to be as coaches – meeting our students where their needs are in our athletes.”

“The more we see Christ in others, Christ will grow in ourselves.”

“It doesn’t have to be all about winning on the scoreboard, it’s about winning in life.”

Related links:

Books mentioned:

Youth Sport and Spirituality: Catholic Perspectives

More Than a Game: Stories, Prayers, and Reflections for the Student Athlete

Chris Godfrey

He played guard in the NFL for the New York Jets, New York Giants, and Seattle Seahawks, including winning a world championship with the Giants in Super Bowl XXI.  He also played on three University of Michigan Rose Bowl teams.  He is the President and Founder of Life Athletes and nowadays is an attorney in Indiana.  He even talks here about a conversion experience as well as having met (Saint) Mother Teresa!

Guest quotes:

“My faith at that time, I was loyally Catholic, but, not necessarily, oh, I went to Mass and stuff like that, but I didn’t really have, maybe mumbled a few prayers at night, but wasn’t the first thing on my mind.”

“My new freedoms and the horizons and all these new things I was learning and seeing really distracted me from thinking much about my faith.”

“I remember hanging up the phone and falling to me knees and saying, ‘Lord, I give up.  Whatever you want me to do, wherever you want me to go, You’re the boss now.’  And I’d never really prayed like that before and I meant it.”

“I just knew that I knew that God had a hand in the whole thing and that He was close to me.  And because He was close to me I wanted to get close to Him.”

“I was a Seattle Seahawk at that time and our fourth child was due right at the time I would  have to leave to go to Seattle for camp, so a lot of things were making me realize that, well, it’s been a good run, but I’m going to retire.  But I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet.  And so I went on retreat and the prayer in my heart was, ‘Lord, what do you want me to do next’?”

“All of a sudden the parable of the rich young ruler came to mind.  That’s, ‘Lord what do you want me to do,’ well, ‘Give away everything that you have and come follow me.’  And I can remember just kicking the ground and going, ‘Ah, jeez, I’ve been tithing, going to Mass… doing all these difficult things and now you want me to give it all away’?”

“It’s not so much our money that God wants, He wants our hearts.”

“One of the things that I’ve been doing out here for several years — and it’s really a nice fit with some of my other charitable interests — is that we brought the Lourdes experience back here to our friends and family members in northern Indiana.”

“We invite the young people to join us – over 300 professional and Olympic athletes – to live lives of virtue, abstinence, and respect for life.  And we invite them to make the same commitment that we’ve made.  We call it the Life Athletes commitment.”

“Our Super Bowl rings are as much a symbol of perseverance as they are success, and, if perseverance is important in something like football or sports, it’s way more important in our personal lives.”

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

Rich Garcia

A former Major League Baseball umpire, having worked in the American League for 25 years and been involved in four World Series.  He went on to be a MLB Supervisor for eight years. He was raised Catholic and is also a veteran, having spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps.  In high school he played baseball and did some boxing, getting two baseball scholarship offers for college.  He also coached high school baseball.  Wait for his big revelation near the end of the interview!

Notable guest quotes:

“From first grade all the way to the ninth grade I went to a Catholic school.”

“My grandmother lived with us and she did most of the raising, thank God.  She was a saint.  Her nickname was Joan of Arc.  That was a great, great help for me, growing up.”

“Everybody else went fishing and swimming and stuff.  I just played ball.  I played baseball.”

“I knew I had God in my life.  I knew He was there.”

“When you go to Catholic school for that many years, you have that instilled — it’s in you.”

“The way things are today as far as the umpiring profession, the ministry has really, really grown.”

“They have phone calls every Friday.  They have a conference prayer call every Friday.  All the umpires that want to get on can get on.  The minor league umpires are also included in that.”

“As an umpire if you want to survive you better pray.  You need a lot of prayers.  There were a lot of times where I’d talk to God.  ‘Get me out of this jam.’  ‘Get me out of this city.’  ‘Get me out of this place.’  And, like most of us, very selfishly it was done when we needed Him.  Fortunately, I’ve grown to not only talk to God when I need Him… but, to do it every day.  And to keep Him close to me.  And I thank Him every morning for the blessings that He’s given us.”

“He showed me a lot of different ways to pray.  Showed me a lot of different ways to get close to God.”

“I’m really God-based right now.  I’m as high as I can be on our Lord.”

(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)

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)