Catholic Sports Radio

He is an undefeated professional MMA fighter, currently boasting a 9-0 won-lost record, with his most recent victory having come on March 22nd, winning by way of a third-round submission in a featherweight match, after which he said, "I feel really great in this weight class and please with the help of God we can keep this streak going." He hails from Dublin, Ireland, and is signed to Bellator MMA. From March 2012 to November 2018, he had 24 fights as an amateur. He had begun his combat sports journey through boxing at age 12 before transitioning to MMA a few years later.

She grew up playing soccer from the age of 9 and played goalkeeper and striker for AC Premier, Croatia Cleveland, and Kirtland High School and was trained under some notable former U.S. national team players.  She also has received her youth futsal/indoor referee license from the U.S. Soccer Federation, and she served as the girls’ head soccer coach at Braves Soccer Academy for U9-U11 teams for two years.  She now partners with Ignite Athlete Training in Dallas, Texas, as a soccer trainer. Meanwhile, she quit her six-figure, Fortune 500 job in corporate America as an HR consultant at age 26 to start her own business helping faith-based believers who feel like they've hit a breaking point in their lives or careers to discover their unique purpose, boost their confidence, and become the most authentic versions of themselves while keeping Christ as the focal point through mind-body-spirit wellness and connection.

He has had a long career in baseball, including being the all-time leader in wins as coach of the Carnegie Mellon University baseball team, which he guided to consecutive conference championships in 2015 and 2016.  As a professional scout, he has assisted in professional player signings all over the world and in 2002 was named General Manager of the Global Scouting Bureau.  He is also a professional hitting instructor, conducting his own hitting camps in several states and serving as a hired instructor at many baseball camps. He was voted into the “Steel City Sports” Hall of Fame in 2014, and is the author of a book called, "Lead from the Heart Up, Not the Neck Up."

He has played sports his whole life. He was captain, All-Star, and MVP of his high school baseball team and a starter on their varsity basketball team.  Collegiately he attended Notre Dame and played in the Bookstore Basketball Tournament all four years that he was in college.  After high school he had continued to play in a variety of sports into his middle age, including softball, tennis, golf, and basketball, across multiple leagues. Present day, he continues his exercise in the form of walking, yoga, stretching, and calisthenics.  He also has been an avid sports fan his whole life.  And, he has created a free, downloadable publication called, "Find Your True Purpose: A Simple Workbook to Help You Connect Your Gift to Your Work."

He has a miraculous health-related story. On the sports side, he played football in high school and college, including in the Glenwood Football League and training camp with the New York Jets’ farm team. During his first two years he became the best table tennis player in college. As a Pulmonary Fellow at Mass General Hospital, he worked with some of the world-class runners competing from the Boston Marathon. He is the author of a novel called, "A Man Like You and Me: A Supernatural Adventure Story," whose purpose, he says, is to increase faith in God in the reader, and is about supernatural events that started in his life in 1982.

He attended The Citadel on an athletic scholarship, going on to co-captain the men's basketball team in his senior year and then receiving the Senior Class Sportsmanship Award at graduation. He had played for Marist High School in Chicago and was co-captain and MVP of his team in his senior year and was All-State Honorable Mention. He had also played for St. Charles Prep High School in Columbus, Ohio, playing both for the JV and the varsity basketball teams. He'd started out playing on the St. Anthony Middle School basketball team that won the Boys’ Basketball of America National Championship. More recently he was the varsity coach of the girls basketball team at Emery High School in Houston. He is also the author of a book called, "Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles to Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life."

He was active playing baseball as a youngster, and then added swimming to his list of sports when he got to junior high. As he got into high school, he stuck with swimming but dropped baseball, only to find out in the future that he was being scouted at the time. Later in life he taught at a Catholic school where he was also the softball coach and took a group of girls who never won a game prior to him coaching to being division champs. He would also coach baseball for the city parks and rec league, plus he coached for a couple of years in the Catholic Youth Organization.

She is a trailblazing sports broadcaster, TV personality, author, and philanthropist. She is the first and only female NBA scout, holding the front office executive position with the Los Angeles Lakers. A former ballet dancer, she is the first woman to dance at a professional level for three teams in two sports: the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys. She is the first woman to be awarded six championship rings in two professional sports, earning a Super Bowl ring and five NBA championship rings. In addition, she has competed in barrel racing and created her own rodeo drill and flag team. She is also the author of a brand-new book, called, “In a League of Her Own: Celebrating Female Firsts in Sports.”

He has written a book on coaching youth sports, which just came out at the start of this month and is titled, "Beyond the Skills and Drills: The Keys to Successfully Coaching Youth Sports." He has been involved with both high school and youth sports for 47 years. In addition, his nationwide coaching and parenting seminars have been attended or watched by nearly one hundred thousand participants.  He was previously a guest on this show more than three-and-a-half years ago, back on Episode 78, and since then has had two impactful developments in his family that are part of the very emotional testimony he shares here.

He played hockey from a very early age, starting off as a center before switching to goaltender, playing for his high school, and then going on to become a goalie coach and ultimately head coach. He then spent approximately two decades as a referee for the Michigan Hockey Association of United States. He has also written multiple books, including, "Terror Strikes: Coming Soon to a City Near You," which was a Number 1 Amazon bestseller and is a Christian book with a baseball sub-thread. He also hosts his own show, called, "Christi-Tutionalist Politics," which has a sub-heading of 'Christian and U.S. Constitution.' He also talks about being both a cancer survivor and a suicide survivor.

He played baseball in college and has coached over thirty youth sports teams across baseball, soccer, and basketball.  In addition, back in 1994 he started Phillies Fan Central, bringing fans of the MLB team together toward a common goal of enhanced communication with the organization.  This will mark thirty years of providing services to Phillies fans.  Meanwhile, he is an award-winning author and therapist, who says that everything he does is designed to bring people closer to the Lord, and to help them understand how to move from the worldly distractions that cause so much pain and into a more spiritual way to live.

She is a sports content creator who has more than 1.6 million followers between TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter combined. She is also an NFL and college football correspondent, and has extensive sports broadcasting experience, including having been a sports reporter at the local news station in her hometown and having done sideline reporting for the NBA affiliate team from her hometown as well.  As a student-athlete she had competed in softball, basketball, and cross country, and later started into doing triathlons. On the faith side, she has powerful testimonies of perseverance, which she shares during this interview.

She just retired a year-and-a-half ago after having been a pro soccer player, although she has now started a new semi-pro women's indoor soccer team. Her pro playing career had seen her with a team in Turkey, which was preceded by playing for a team in Finland. Before that she played for two different teams here in the States in the National Women's Soccer League, and before that played for a team in Colombia that became champions of the first year *of* the women's pro soccer league in that country. That came one year after having played in Sweden. As a student-athlete she had played Division I women's soccer at the University of Louisville after having been her high school's all-time leading scorer.

He is in the middle of completing three ultramarathons in 30 days. The last one will be at the end of this month and is being called an Adoration Ultra, which will start in Mass, then Adoration, and then running to other Catholic churches and spending time in Adoration at those. He currently owns one course record for most miles ran in 24 hours (103.5). In his days as a student-athlete he competed in JV football, JV soccer, varsity wrestling, and ran cross country.  In the case of the latter, he was team captain and the team finished third in the state and he got scouted by some smaller colleges.

He is closing in on 21 years since his ordination to the priesthood. He is Vicar Provincial and Vocation Director for the Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. He is also a well-known conference speaker AND leads pilgrimages to Catholic shrines around the world. He is the author of 18 books and has a radical conversion story that he tells here. On the sports side, he has been surfing since he was eight years old and has surfed all around the world.

He is a competitive Masters Athlete for Olympic weightlifting and strongman competitions, AND he works as a referee, plus he is on the Board for USA Olympic Weightlifting. He has won bronze and gold medals at local and Texas state meets and even did a strongman competition in late 2019 and finished in third place for the master’s group and qualified for Nationals. He also dabbled in “Vintage Baseball” – baseball played by the original 1860’s baseball rules – and he played on such a team for about three years. On the faith side, he is managing partner of Virtuous Leadership LLC, working with bestselling author Alexandre Havard. He is also a Legatus member, serves as a national board member for Young Catholic Professionals, served on the Board of Catholic Charities Dallas, and was a member of Regnum Christi for eight years.

He is the Team Administrative Director for the National Football League's New Orleans Saints and has the distinction of being the organization's longest serving employee, having started with the team in 1977 as an assistant athletic trainer. In 2017 the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame presented him with the Joe Gemelli "Fleur-De-Lis" Award, and he has affectionately earned the unofficial title of "Vice President of Everything." He had been a football manager all through high school, having attended Brother Martin High School, which is a private, Catholic, all-boys college preparatory school run by the United States Province of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

A catcher who this past June was chosen by the Detroit Tigers in the sixth round of the 2023 Major League Baseball Amateur Draft after having played collegiately, first at Tulane University and then at Wake Forest. Prior to that, he was a four-year letterwinner on the baseball team at Jesuit High School in Tampa, having been part of the team that ranked No. 1 in the nation in 2020, at 9-0, and that won the state championship in 2019, posting a 27-5 won-lost record.  Away from sports, he is a convert to the Catholic faith, as heard in this discussion.

A special episode, of sorts, he returns after having previously been on this show way back on Episode 120, more than two-and-a-half years ago.  He is the Senior Director of Mission Integration, CYO, and Social Action for Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Cleveland.  Earlier this year he was awarded St. Ambrose parish's Servant Leader Award.  Over two years ago he had started a parish-based mental health ministry at St. Ambrose, and, as we hear about in this conversation, back in January of THIS year CYO began training their athletic directors regarding the mental health crises of children and teens.

He is the head men's basketball coach at Belmont Abbey College -- a Catholic institution. Previously he had been an assistant coach at the United States Military Academy (Army West Point). As a student-athlete he had played collegiately for two seasons at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, before moving into a student-assistant coaching role. He had earned his first coaching position in 2018 at UNC-Charlotte and is a graduate of Charlotte Catholic High School.