Episodes

Cristy Murray

She is the Head Archery Coach for Holy Rosary Academy in Anchorage Alaska, having launched the program herself, and last year one of her student-athletes qualified to compete nationally. She also competed in the Taekwondo National Tournament and has participated in the mud run. Away from sports, she is a certified Catholic neurocoach and expert in helping daughters heal from the trauma of being raised by covert narcissistic mothers. Plus, she is the founder of Blue Veil Wellness, providing comprehensive online coaching programs AND she is the host of a podcast called Maternal Narcissists: Unmasked.

Notable guest quotes:

“I believe we should have faith in everything that we do, especially with sports and the media that sports is getting nowadays, it’s really a good way to evangelize.”

“I was born and raised Catholic, and then did go to Catholic school, starting kindergarten, up until like first two years of college.”

“When she brought me to Our Lady of Lourdes – this was in the Philippines – February 11 is her feast day, and they have a healing Mass.  They are like the whole day would be like a healing day.  And according to her after she had brought me there, I rarely got sick.”

“I always tell everyone I made it because not because I was strong, not because I was great, but because I prayed every night.  Even as a child, I had a pouch of prayer books with me, and I prayed every night before I’d go to bed.”

“I got into taekwondo after the military. I won state and then qualified for national championships.”

“Our church here in Alaska, they put a pilgrimage together last year and it’s to visit the Marian sites in Europe.  So, we went to Fatima and then we went to Lourdes… when I got to Lourdes, it really felt to me that I was coming home.”

“A church is not just like one person going and worshiping.  I mean, it’s good to have your time with Christ, but we’re a community and we’re there to help each other and lift each other up.”

“I also have a specific time to go to Adoration every week, which I really look forward to going to and it’s another best kept secret which should not be a secret that you hear Christ when you’re in front of the Blessed Sacrament.”

“I wanted to be a neuro coach because it’s more than just mindset.  It’s digging deeper and figuring out those neuro pathways that have been formed since you were a child that’s clearly affecting how you function in your day-to-day life.  And what’s better is if you add scripture to it.”

“Christ does not want you to feel eternally guilty and feeling bad.  That’s actually the enemy (that) wants you to feel bad because he wants you in despair, but then Christ actually is there.  He gave up his life for you and saved you.”

Related link:

Cristy’s official 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.)

Carolina Marrelli

She started fencing in junior high, stopped during high school to pursue both track and field as well as competition squad cheerleading, then went back to fencing after graduating from college and competed for several years. After a 20-year hiatus she came back to the sport and is now working her way to getting on a national team. Along the way, on the faith side, she had been in full-time music ministry. Plus, she is a certified Health Coach and corporate wellness and women’s ministry speaker.

Notable guest quotes:

“I actually went to Mass growing up as well as the Protestant church and I went to a Protestant school from my fourth grade to my senior year.  I didn’t have much Catholic faith formation except at CCD.  I was baptized Catholic, and I received my first communion, but I stopped after that everything else, at least, the Catholic journey.”

“My dad was a fencer, and my grandfather was a fencer and you could not take a sword out of my hand as a little kid, like, fake swords.  I’d take wrapping paper rolls, I was always trying to sword fight, and my dad was like, ‘You know, you really should try fencing. I think you’d really like it’.”

“Junior high is really rough on kids, and I was made fun of a lot and fencing is where I found peace of mind.  I felt like I fit in.  Fencing is a very neurodiverse sport.  You have a lot of people with ADD and dyslexia and there’s a lot of autism and I have ADD and so for me … it was really, really great.  It’s a great outlet physically and mentally and then just emotionally because I was with people that I, you know, a little bit more comfortable with.  I fit right in and so it became my happy place.  It was really a place of refuge for me.”

“Soon as I graduated college, I joined the Baltimore fencing center, and, fencing never left me.  It was just waiting for me to come back to it.  And so, I trained five days a week with a personal trainer and then in the evenings I would go train at the club, take classes, and then on the weekends I would compete.”

“I connected with the Lord on the music like that’s where I really fell in love with church was through music.”

“I had been on a 10-year journey back into my Catholic roots at this point and when I was working in full-time music ministry, I was not only on staff at a church called New Thing Fellowship … but I was on staff there.  And then I would also go to Mass, and I was leading music for a Catholic Bible study, I’d fill in for drummers at a local Catholic church, I’d fill in for the cantor here and there.  I was playing for Catholic retreats and little conferences, and Paulina’s bookstore had me in a few times to play for some events that they had and then I’m doing stuff for the Protestant world.  So, I had one foot in the Catholic world and one foot in the Protestant world.”

“The Lord took me on this wild journey and just like, ‘I want you to start going back to Mass’ and then, ‘I want you to go to confession’.”

“I had such a radical encounter with the Lord during confession where … I was actually looking at the priest, who was super, super old … Monsignor Jude in Miami and I saw the Lord in his eyes and I just, when he said, ‘Daughter your sins are forgiven,’ … I’d never experienced anything like that.”

“In the Catholic faith Mary’s everything.  She’s our spiritual mother.”

“We’re called to be a light in the darkness and so I’m there for a reason.”

“I am working on a different way of training.  I’m actually working with a sport specific trainer once a week on mobility and agility.  I’m strength training and then I’m fencing with the Charlotte Fencing Academy … And then I compete a lot in preparation just for my goals… I’ve been surrounded by some world champion fencers that are just super encouraging and really helping me to uplevel mentally and with my game.”

Related link:

Carolina’s Linktree

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

Jose Pulido

He competed for four years in track and field in high school and present day is a coach of an evangelical nature. He is the founder of Holy Family Evangelization, a Catholic coaching organization, AND he is the author of a brand-new book just being released, called, “How to Evangelize Anyone,” which is a complete reversal for someone who was an atheist. He has evangelized at universities, Fortune 500 companies, and various non-profits in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia. He has also advised numerous organizations and parishes on evangelization and catechesis.

Notable guest quotes:

“Track and field is just one of those sports where perseverance is very much rewarded, right?  It’s just basically you racing against your past time, and I’m someone that perseverance is sort of one of my values from an early age… I also did cross country.”

“I became an atheist because I couldn’t quite grapple with the problem of pain.  How does one deal with the fact that there’s a suffering world.  And I decided you know what, things don’t quite make sense.  So why would there be a God?”

“I like to joke that I came back to the church kicking and screaming.  The logic brought me back, but I wasn’t happy about it.  Though I was in the church logically, I wasn’t there emotionally.”

“Over the course of a year, 2011, I really drew closer to the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and then all three together in the form of the Holy Family.”

“Around freshman, sophomore year that’s when the logic brought me full force into the Catholic church, but emotionally I wasn’t quite there yet.  And then it was at the Newman Center with Father Greg Schaefer and the FOCUS missionary … where just my heart started to beat.”

“It’s really important to both have a logical context for the faith as well as a personal experience to the faith.  I think that’s what keeps people in over the long term.”

“It was December 24, 2011, where I had a really profound experience with the Holy Family of Nazareth… it was in the Gothic Cathedral of Barcelona.”

“I didn’t just need to be in the perfect family and to feel that love.  I also needed to know that I could give love, that I could be strong, that I could also win.  You know, like, nobody wants to be part of an all-star team and be the worst player.”

“All of us at Townsend Harris High School had to take something called the Ephebic oath.  And it basically details what a good citizen of the city is.  It’s from Athens.  And the last line profoundly impacted me… ‘I shall not leave my city any less but rather greater than I found it.’  And as a Catholic it’s this, like, I shall not leave my church any less but rather greater than I found it.”

“The idea is so much of successful evangelization is to see the other person as God might, as the members of the Holy Family might… So, the litany of gratitude is, just what do I see in this other person so that I can then start with love and end with love.”

Related link:

Jose’s evangelization website
Order Jose’s book

Jamon Copeland

He is the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Ave Maria University. He is in his 15th season as a head coach, having previously held the position at Aledo High School, The University of Texas at Tyler, a previous stint at Ave Maria, Texas State University, Trinity Valley Community College, and Keller Central High School. He led Ave Maria to the conference tournament championship game in 2021 and his 2023-24 team earned an at-large bid to the NAIA Tournament and won the program’s first-ever national tournament game. He is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a CrossFit Level I Trainer.

Notable guest quotes:

“My mom was kind of the backbone of the family spiritually and we were in Mass every Sunday, got a religious education and she just did an incredible job. My dad ended up converting to the Catholic faith.”

“I finished at Franciscan University in Steubenville, it’s a Newman Guide School, and that was actually the first time I’d ever had a Catholic education that wasn’t run through the parish.”

“Being in a small town in Oklahoma, baseball was the most readily available. So, that was the first organized sport I played, but I played organized baseball, football, basketball, cross country, track, I was on the swim team.”

“There was a really generous donor that was able to give me a substantial scholarship to Franciscan to be able to attend. It was a private school. I couldn’t afford it. And so, I just kind of felt like that was God’s will at the time. It kind of came out of nowhere; just had a knee injury, just had knee surgery, and wasn’t sure how that was gonna go. (I) got the huge scholarship and it just kind of all fell in my lap. I kind of just thought it was divine providence and took a chance and loved my time there.”

“That entire retreat I just remember praying, ‘Lord, your will be done. Wherever you want to send me, I’ll do it. Your will be done’.”

“He’s like, ‘Hey, Jamon, I just got this job, and I want you to be my top assistant. Would you take it?’ And it was another God thing… I had just been praying and praying, and the Holy Spirit had just been tugging on my heart like, ‘Hey, just be open to God’s will,’ and (I) got that call … and I accepted it on the spot.”

(in Tyler, Texas) “We were around some incredible priests, some incredible families, with an incredible bishop. And the faith definitely grew.”

“We start every practice with … a thought for the day… typically it’ll be a quote or a thought for practice for the day. And then right after that every day we have the saint of the day and we talk about the saint of the day, whoever saint’s feast day it is… and then we’ll start with our prayer and then post-practice we’re gonna close with a prayer. We do a team retreat. We go to daily Mass together on the road. We say rosaries on road trips. It’s incredible. It’s just, it’s in every fiber of our program, the Catholic faith is.”

“I’ve done the consecration to Mary and the consecration to St. Joseph … I’ve actually done the consecration to Mary multiple times.”

Related link:

Jamon’s bio on Ave Maria 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.)

Antwyne DeLonde

He was Varsity Basketball Coach for seven years at The Boys’ Latin School of Maryland. On the business side, he joined forces with NBA legend Walt “The Wizard” Williams to assist former NFL player Wale Ogunleye with the UBS Sports and Entertainment Division. Together, they revolutionized wealth management for elite clients, including the National Basketball Players Association, and brokered historic deals such as connecting Players TV Media Group — a collective powered by icons like Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, and Kyrie Irving — with UBS. He is also a U.S. Army combat veteran, and he demonstrated a true Christian heart by quitting his seven-figure job to create a social impact company that focuses on financial education for the underprivileged.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was raised Baptist, and I decided to convert to Catholicism back in 2017 when it was time for my son to get baptized and we wanted to make sure that he was brought into one faith.”

“When I was in Iraq in 2003 … I had an opportunity to open my mind to religion on a deeper and spiritual level.  It was probably the first time that I saw people who were in doubt just based on the circumstances of being in war.  And with that, it made me open up my Bible more and get more in tune with my faith.”

“Leaving Iraq and coming back into the States, it made me think about what I wanted to do and who was really guiding me, who actually protected me, to make it out of the circumstances that I was in, who guided me on the path that I am today.”

“Growing up in San Antonio, I would … go to the San Antonio basketball camps, whether it was David Robinson, I was good friends with George Gervin’s son, George Gervin Jr., and so just growing up and seeing basketball played at a very high level within San Antonio made me really interested in playing basketball.”

“I just knew that I wanted to coach because I wanted to give back to the game from a mentorship standpoint.  And that’s kind of how I viewed coaching was being in a position to coach up young men.”

“I grew up in the church.  My grandmother was a deacon in the church and so we grew up in a small church and so we were the church, right?  So just about every day I spent time in the church.”

“The opportunity of potentially playing basketball for Norfolk State University was also really intriguing to me after having several conversations with the coach leading up to me arriving (there).”

“Every trip that we took, we were in imminent danger … it gets very dark in Iraq early and so … it tested my faith, right?  I had to believe in the divine power in order to get through every single mission and that’s what got me through is my faith, which is something that I carried through today and I’ve always said that God provides vision with provision.”

“I actually ran and currently still run a mentorship program with the varsity basketball team.”

“Faith teaches discipline.  And to me, that’s what the army also represented was discipline.  And it goes back to being disciples, right?  And so, I felt that my faith allowed me to be a disciple, whether it was in the boardroom, whether it was coaching, or whether it was being a father and a husband.”

“When I received that calling, I started to do a deeper dive into myself through my faith, with my wife and my son.  And I realized that while I got great at making wealthy people wealthier, there was a system built for individuals that felt forgotten.  And my purpose became led by that call.”

“I had done everything I wanted to do at a young age, and I still felt unfulfilled, and it was God telling me that I hadn’t done enough.”

Related link:

Antwyne’s bio on his company 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.)

Todd Botto

He is a Professor of Athletic Training & Sports Medicine at Quinnipiac University. Over the last 30+ years he has worked in higher education teaching the next generation of athletic training and physical therapy students. He has also practiced clinically in a variety of athletic settings providing medical and rehabilitative services, including having worked as an athletic trainer in professional baseball here in the U.S. and professional soccer in Costa Rica. He was also the Rehabilitation Coordinator, Head Basketball and Assistant Football Athletic Trainer at the University of Southern Mississippi. He worked as a private consultant in the industrial athletic training setting and has provided medical coverage for numerous high school and private athletic events. Over his three-plus decades of professional service he has provided medical coverage for an estimated 7500 athletic events.

Notable guest quotes:

“I was about six years old when I started competitive swimming, and I played baseball and basketball.  I did that all the way up through about 14 years old and then I eventually got a part-time job at 14 and I stopped playing sports at that area, but I always had interest in sports and later on I got involved in sports medicine.”

“At (age) 21 I had an accident in the summer … I fell 27 feet on the concrete and broke six bones, herniated two cervical disks, ended up in a wheelchair for a little while and it really changed my career path… During my rehab … the athletic trainers … did my rehabilitation and that’s why I first learned about the field of athletic training and became interested in that.”

“I wanted to go into communications because ESPN just kind of started up some years earlier and I was thinking about going to work at ESPN because I wanted to be around sports in some fashion.  I didn’t know sports medicine existed.”

“On my drive home, I decided I had to change career paths just because I thought I wasn’t leading the life that God wanted me to live.”

“My career became everything; it really became my God.  Where you spend your time is where your God is, where you spend your attention is.”

“God was really like Santa Claus to me in a way; I wanted to believe in them, but I never really felt Him in my life.”

“When we think of practicing like in a sports sense, you’re thinking about somebody giving their all to get better.  And as a practicing Catholic I wasn’t doing that.  I was basically kind of going through whatever motions I thought at the time would check the box.”

“I prayed asking the Blessed Mother – and I still do it to this day – to bring the people into my life that are gonna help me and redirect me towards God.”

“The big thing is – in Medjugorje – is that you could feel that God’s really there.  I really truly believe the Blessed Mother’s there.  It’s something that I cannot explain.  We saw the statue of the risen Christ weep at the top of Cross Mountain.”

Related link:

Todd’s bio on Quinnipiac website

Chase Crouse

He played tennis and beach volleyball in high school and the latter when he was a student-athlete at Texas State University. Present day he participates in mixed martial arts, lifting weights, hiking, and doing Spartan races. He is co-founder of and fitness director for Hypuro Fit, whose mission is to bring a technically excellent and authentically Catholic approach to personal training. He also has a story about his own reversion to the Catholic faith, which he shares during this interview.

Notable guest quotes:

“My dad loosely non-denominational agnostic and my mom growing up was more of like a cultural Mexican Catholic, but she had her reversion later in life, so growing up we were nominally Catholic but not practicing by any means.”

“My dad actually was a semi-professional beach volleyball player.  So, I was kind of playing with that a little bit when I was in middle school but nothing too seriously and then by the time I got to high school I settled on tennis so that was kind of my main sport in high school and then eventually beach volleyball.”

“I got confirmed when I was in high school.  My mom made me go through the confirmation process.  It was kind of just like a check box kind of thing.  And I kind of got a little bit more into my faith going into junior and senior year.  I’d met some friends at the local church.  By that point I was already getting into partying and drinking and at first, I didn’t realize that those are two contradictory things.”

“Tennis was everything for me for a number of years.  I was playing on average, like, two to four hours a day.  Me and my doubles partner were ranked number four in the state of Texas at one point in doubles and colleges started emailing me and my parents probably my sophomore year going into my junior year.”

“I thought I was going to go to college.  I thought I was going to do it as a, maybe I don’t know if as a career, but something very serious and God had other plans.”

“Basically, my whole first year at Texas State I was never an atheist, right?  I was never agnostic.  I was always ‘Catholic,’ it was not part of my life at all.  I didn’t give it much thought.”

“The next thought struck me, and this was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, which was, if I died right now where would I be.  And for 19-year-old Chase that was a terrifying question.”

“I knew, like really knew, and experienced, that Jesus was real and that he loved me and that I should be striving more and more to do everything I can to honor, love, and serve him.”

“God just put this fire in my heart to serve him and so I wanted to tell others about his mercy and so I became a missionary and while I was a missionary that’s when I really fell in love with theology and knowledge for the first time and that’s when I knew I wanted to go back to school and study it more formally.”

“I eventually went to a school called John Paul the Great Catholic University to finish my undergrad, so I got an undergrad degree in what was called the new evangelization (which) was the name of the degree, which was essentially a theology and a philosophy degree.”

Related link:

Hypuro Fit website