In Episode 4 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with one of his oldest friends in youth sports — Mike Strati, a former collegiate and semi-professional soccer player at the University of New Mexico and the New Mexico Chili's of the USL, a coach with nearly 25 years of experience at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels, and the founder of Strategic Alliance, a company that uses personality analytics to help businesses build better teams. Todd opens the episode by admitting something he has said privately for years: he envied Mike throughout the youth sports journey. This conversation is about why.

In Episode 5 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Steve Borelli — sports special editions editor at USA Today, weekly youth sports columnist, Georgetown English graduate, and the man his readers know simply as Coach Steve. Steve has spent decades coaching his two sons in baseball, basketball, and flag football, and since March 2023 has been writing a weekly column for USA Today that has become one of the most widely read and shared voices in the youth sports parenting space. Todd found him through a LinkedIn post and knew immediately: this is someone parents need to hear.

In Episode 6 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Dr. Bob Dranoff — former commissioner of the East Coast Conference in Division II, former athletic director at multiple levels of college athletics including Division I, Division II, Division III, and junior college, and current professor at St. John's University and St. Joseph's College. Bob reached out to Todd on LinkedIn the day Valiant Sports Society launched, and Todd knew from their very first conversation that this was a voice parents needed to hear. Few people alive have seen college athletics from as many angles — and fewer still have also sat in the stands as a sports parent, watching their own daughters navigate the same system they spent a career running.

In Episode 7 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Kevin McCabe — a man Todd has known for nearly 30 years, going back to their days together at Fox Sports Arizona. Kevin is the host of the Kevin McCabe Show on Arizona Sports 98.7, a weekly radio program that brings high school athletes and coaches into the studio to be celebrated, not analyzed. He has been covering Arizona prep sports for more than 40 years, starting in Flagstaff in 1981 and working his way through Tucson and eventually Phoenix, where he covered everything from the Suns to the World Series to Charles Barkley's Finals run — and kept coming back to high school sports every time, because that is where his heart has always been. He is known across the state simply as the Dean of Arizona High School Sports.

In Episode 8 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Linda Flanagan — freelance journalist, researcher, former cross country and track coach of 19 years, and the author of Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports and Why It Matters. Linda holds a bachelor's degree from Lehigh University, a master's from Oxford University, and a graduate degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. She was a founding board member of the New York City Chapter of the Positive Coaching Alliance, served on the Aspen Institute's Reimagining School Sports advisory group, and spent years as an analyst with the National Security Program at Harvard. Todd describes her book as the Bible of youth sports parenting — the resource he wishes he had found when his own daughters were in the middle of it.

Todd Merkow sits down with Linda Santo — sports media veteran, former colleague from the early days of regional sports television in Arizona, and the daughter of Ron Santo, the Chicago Cubs Hall of Famer — for a conversation that moves between the bleachers and the broadcast booth, between a childhood shaped by one of baseball's most beloved figures and a sports parenting journey that humbled her in ways she never expected.

Todd Merkow sits down with Crystalrae States — founder and owner of Boilermaker Softball Club in Pennsylvania, former Division II catcher and head coach, master's-level exercise and sport science professional, and mother of three young kids — for a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually looks like to build a female-first youth sports organization from scratch, why development and winning are not the same thing, and what happens when you stop being afraid of the tough conversations.