Catholic Sports Radio

One of the winningest coaches in high school baseball, having coached for ten years at Tampa Catholic High School where he posted an amazing won-lost record of 329-39. His teams won four state championships and a national championship. He went on to coach at the University of Tampa and also scouted for Major League Baseball's Kansas City Royals. Last year he was No. 26 on a list of the top 50 coaches in Tampa Bay sports history and he has been inducted into four Halls of Fame. He has his own foundation, which is dedicated to teaching young children life skills through sports. And just over a year ago he launched a series of what is now six books to bring life skills to young athletes through a diverse set of characters representing each baseball position on the field.

Every year since 1981 a tournament has taken place to promote high school baseball in Hillsborough County (Tampa, Florida area). It was first established as a memorial for Tony Saladino, Sr. and has grown from eleven public schools to now a 32-team event, with 38 players that have participated in the tournament having gone on to play in the Major Leagues, 12 of which were first round draft picks. The guest on this episode of CSR has been at the heart of all of this for all those years and is a lifelong Catholic.

To borrow a football term, an audible is called at the last-minute when the scheduled guest doesn't show up, utilizing this episode instead to share some insights brought back from the 2nd Global Congress on Sport and Christianity. The conference took place in late October in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and this installment of CSR cites content from that event that underscore the longstanding relationship between sports and faith.

Since June 2017 he has been the program's second head men's lacrosse coach at Benedictine College, a Catholic institution in Kansas, where he graduated from in 2013. As an undergrad he was a co-founder of the Men's Lacrosse Club team there. He also has been an assistant coach at Rockhurst University AND was the head coach for the boys lacrosse team at St. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic high school in Overland Park, Kansas. This past April he was named the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year.

In college she was left paralyzed with a broken back after a bus accident involving her swim team from the University of Notre Dame, with two teammates having been killed instantly. After five back operations and being told she wouldn't walk, not to mention swim again, miraculously, she returned to competitive swimming for Notre Dame 21 months after the bus accident and her injury. Her 2008 book, What Though The Odds, details what she went through and her "journey of faith and triumph." She later became Assistant Swim Coach at Xavier College Prep, the all-girls Catholic high school in Phoenix that she had attended. She also talks here about two pilgrimages this and two years ago that she says reignited her faith and commitment to service.

He was with the NFL's Green Bay Packers and Buffalo Bills and, more recently, the Atlanta Legends of the Alliance of American Football. He had played college football at Dartmouth, and has now transitioned into the corporate world and life off the playing field. He also talks about what he's doing at his parish as well as in the community.

A current member of the Charlotte Independence, which plays in the USL Championship, the largest pro soccer league in North America. He had played collegiately at Belmont Abbey, a Catholic school in North Carolina. He loves the game of soccer, but he is on fire for his faith, having become Catholic approximately 15 months ago.

The Flying Fathers were a hockey team of Catholic priests originally started back in the early 1960s. There is optimism of-late for the team's resurrection, according to Father John Perdue, Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Peterborough in Ontario, Canada. He not only is playing for the team but leading their return. He talks about it during this conversation that was recorded while he was in Rome for the canonization of the five newest saints.

He is a champion of numerous surfing events. He is also a licensed scuba diver and licensed private pilot. Plus, he is a skydiver and has rappelled off mountains. He has even been a mentor on the adventure reality show "Clean Break" on the FOX network, as well as been a guest star and stuntman on "Hawaii 5-0." He also has been seen on EWTN television and heard on EWTN Radio and has led pilgrimages to places such as Greece and Israel. Plus, he wrote two books, including one called, "Deep Adventure: The Way of Heroic Virtue." He also is a Benedictine Oblate to the Mary Spouse of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Hawaii. He is also an inductee in the Sports Faith Hall of Fame.

He played 15 years of pro soccer, having retired last year from the United Soccer League after having initially been drafted into Major League Soccer. He had played the sport collegiately at Seton Hall University (a Roman Catholic university). Although he founded a program that teaches basic soccer skills to kids, he is now working for a pro-life organization. He is also in the Knights of Columbus and has started a men's ministry. He also has a faith-based line of apparel.

In college he played Division I baseball and was being scouted by the New York Mets, going on to play at another college before eventually made his way out of the sport. He remains an avid surfer and has also found success in comedy and films, including a movie released earlier this year that he says is, "Littered with Catholicism." He and a friend are also going around college campuses giving talks, which was spawned from his having participated in FOCUS.

He has been a sports TV anchor and sports reporter in Seattle and many other markets, and he has been a sports radio host. He even still does some work for media outlets that need him for the visiting teams that come in to play the Seattle Seahawks. He has two daughters, one of which just finished a four-year scholarship in golf at a Catholic college in southern California. Matt himself played football in high school.

Finished her softball career at Nicholls State University (in Louisiana) as the program's all-time leader in victories, following a career at Central Catholic High School in which she played three sports, which included (as a pitcher in softball) over 1,000 strikeouts and multiple no-hitters. In high school she was a leader of Sisters in Christ and Retreat Team Leader. And, in college she was leading a Bible study as early as her sophomore year. Since graduating from Nicholls State University, she has become an on-campus missionary elsewhere. In this interview Megan also talks about how tearing her ACL became a wake-up call for her as well as the challenges she faces in where she is and what she's doing now.

Fans taking sports too seriously. Parents being WAY too involved in their son or daughter's sports. Superstitions that fans carry out. Sports betting. Hear about these and other issues from a professional and spiritual perspective via the Clinical Psychologist at Saint Paul VI Institute in Omaha, Nebraska, where part of her work includes meeting with priests, religious, and lay men & women who are seeking faith-based counseling. With a sports background herself, she also works with seminarians attending the Institute for Priestly Formation and conducts psychological evaluations for individuals interested in entering seminary, the deaconate, or religious communities. She is a member of both the Catholic Psychotherapy Association and the Catholic Medical Association.

Fifteen years ago she was told by doctors that she had six months left to live! She was the Head Volleyball Coach at Saint Mary's College in Indiana, then moved on to be the Assistant Volleyball Coach at Kansas State University, and then was the Head Coach at Cornell University before moving on to the University of Maine where she established the first NCAA Division I volleyball program in the school's history. She is also the founder of the Maine Volleyball Coaches Association, and in USA Volleyball's Iroquois-Empire Volleyball Association Region she serves as Director and Head Coach of the High Performance Volleyball Program there.

Currently at St. Joseph's College in Indiana, his alma mater, he previously was the Director of Athletics for ten years at Seattle University after having held the same position for 15 years at the University of San Francisco, both of which are Jesuit schools. Before all that he was the Athletic Director (and was even the basketball coach) at St. Joseph's, where he had played basketball during his college days. Active with the Knights of Columbus, he also served on the Executive Board in Seattle for the Special Olympics and was part of the decision to host the 2018 Special Olympics USA Games there.

He has done 52 marathons and has been a triathlete for 24 years. Back in the day he also played football and basketball. The day before this interview was recorded, he did a 240-mile bike trek from his home in Milwaukee to a Catholic school in Michigan. In addition to that journey, he also talks about a book he's writing - but not about his athletic endeavors.

He spent many years in the National Football League, as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, plus he was the offensive coordinator for both the Baltimore Ravens and the then-San Diego Chargers. He was also quarterbacks’ coach of the Washington Redskins. In addition, he has many years of experience coaching in college football as well, most recently as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks’ coach at LSU. He also went through two health scares in the form of serious melanoma and later a prostate cancer diagnosis.

A four-time member of Team USA for the Paralympics, winning seven medals - two silver and three bronze in swimming, and two GOLD in running. She set one world record in swimming and holds two American records in swimming. In all she has amassed an amazing 250 trophies from able-bodied competitions. A lifelong Catholic, she was also a 1996 Olympic torchbearer.

A Team USA competitor in karate, he has participated in a long, long, LONG list of events ranging from Pan American Games to World Championships, the World Games, and more, having won numerous gold, silver, and bronze medals nationally and internationally. He attended Texas Christian University where he met his now wife, who is also Catholic.