In Episode 2 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with his oldest daughter Madison — a three-sport high school athlete, collegiate beach volleyball player at MiraCosta College, student athletic trainer for the ASU football program, and now an entrepreneur with her own fitness and wellness company, Lyt Active. What unfolds is a conversation about a young athlete who spent years being shuffled between positions, misread by coaches, and playing through injuries she probably should have sat out — until she found the one version of her sport that finally made sense.

Madison’s earliest sports memories are exactly what youth sports should look like: rec soccer with her dad coaching, orange slices at halftime, player tunnels, and parents who were there for the fun of it. She describes those years as the most joyful of her athletic life — not because of trophies or development, but because nobody had turned it into something serious yet. That simplicity, she says, is what gets lost as kids move up the ladder.

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Rec was the most fun. You should just be a kid and learn what the sport actually is. It really doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad — and everybody had so much fun.

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The transition to indoor volleyball brought a new kind of challenge. Madison was athletic, competitive, and could jump — but she stopped growing earlier than her peers, and in a sport where height determines position, that meant years of being shuffled from outside hitter to middle to libero and back again, depending on which club needed what. She describes the tryout circuit as a mad dash — clubs scheduling tryouts within hours of each other, parents making blind-faith decisions with no real time to evaluate coaches or culture, and coaches who were more focused on winning tournaments than developing the player in front of them.

The turning point came when a trainer pulled her aside and said: you should try beach volleyball. For Madison, it was an immediate fit. She could hit the ball. She could play defense. She knew exactly where she stood on the court. The sand absorbed the physical punishment that had been grinding down her body in indoor. And for the first time, she could see herself in the sport long-term. She became one of the first wave of girls to play high school beach volleyball in Arizona when the AIA launched the program, and her sister Sydney joined her on the court for one season — using her soccer feet to score a few points along the way.

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I got tossed around for all of my indoor years. Eventually you get to an age where you want to lock in on something and hone in on your skills. I just floated around. And that’s when I tried beach — and I got to hit the ball and put my face in the dirt. It was life changing.

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Madison’s college year at MiraCosta was a study in resilience. She arrived on crutches after fracturing the top of her tibia at a river trip the summer before school started. She sat out the indoor season, waited for beach to begin, and then watched the coaches who had recruited her take a better offer at another school days before the season started. A new coaching staff came in mid-stream. She played anyway, competed for spots against teammates she lived with, and made it to championships in her collegiate year. She describes the dynamic of teammates being pitted against each other for roster spots as one of the more emotionally complicated parts of the college experience — something she has seen derail athletes at programs across the country.

The conversation takes a serious turn when Todd asks about the concussion Madison suffered late in her high school career, just as college recruiting was ramping up. She describes the fear of diving that followed — the mental block that made her pull back on balls she would have gone after without hesitation before the injury. One coach noticed and worked with her individually, running drills to rebuild her confidence. The rest of the coaching staff, she says, largely moved on. The recruiting machine kept running, and when she was sidelined, the attention went elsewhere.

Madison is candid about playing through injuries she should not have played through — rotator cuff tears, broken fingers, concussions — and about coaches who knew she was hurt and put her in anyway. She does not frame this as malice. She frames it as a systemic failure: coaches focused on winning, athletes who wanted to compete, and no one in the room asking whether the cost was worth it.

On the parent side, Madison describes her experience as largely positive — supportive carpools, parents who showed up, a home culture that encouraged multi-sport participation without forcing it. But she is also clear about what she wishes had been different: more direct conversations about mental health, more checking in on whether she was actually enjoying it, and less assumption that because she was competing, she was fine. Her advice to parents is direct and repeatable: ask your kid if they love it. Not if they’re getting better. Not if they’re getting recruited. Ask if they love it.

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The fact that so many people lose their love for the game is the sad part. We go in as little kids loving this game and having fun with our friends — and there’s always somebody to ruin the pretty picture we’re painting.

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Todd closes the episode the way he closes every conversation with his daughters — in tears, telling Madison he is proud not just of the athlete she was, but of the person she became. He describes watching her on the ASU football sideline with a water bottle as one of the proudest moments of his life, because it was the first time he saw her doing something she loved so much that not doing it would have hurt.