In Part 1 of this conversation, Brigitte Shulze introduced us to her daughter Sarah—not simply as an accomplished Division I runner, but as a young woman full of curiosity, determination, humor and compassion.

Before Sarah Shulze was a Division I runner, she was a daughter, a sister, a friend, an adventurer and a young woman who wanted to make a difference.

Callista Elmore knows what it feels like to love a sport enough to build your life around it.

The Proctor Family Series concludes with the voice that matters most: the athlete himself. Will Proctor — multi-sport kid from Manhattan Beach, top-100 national prospect, true freshman starter at the University of Georgia, Cape Cod League champion, Saturday starter for the Bulldogs, and now filmmaker — sits down with Todd Merkow to close the arc that Jeff and Lisa opened. This is the athlete's perspective on everything his parents described, and it's more honest, more self-aware, and more useful for parents than almost anything else in the series.

Todd Merkow sits down with Lisa Proctor — career attorney, former competitive tennis player, 30-time marathon runner, and the mom at the center of the Proctor family story — for the second episode in a three-part series titled "When the Dream Unexpectedly Changes." Where Jeff's episode was the dad's perspective, this is the mom's: more emotionally present, more willing to sit in the hard parts, and more honest about what she'd do differently.

Todd Merkow sits down with Jeff Proctor — longtime friend, Valiant Sports Society board member, director, producer, game show creator, and now documentary filmmaker — for a wide-ranging conversation about what it means to be a sports parent when you've lived the athlete's life yourself.

In one of the most emotionally significant episodes of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Mark Hilinski — co-founder, with his wife Kim, of Hilinski's Hope, a foundation dedicated to mental health education, awareness, and suicide prevention for student athletes. Mark and Kim lost their son Tyler in January 2018. Tyler Hilinski was a 21-year-old quarterback at Washington State University, beloved by teammates, coaches, and everyone who knew him. He died by suicide. Months later, the family learned that Tyler had been diagnosed with CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — at Stage 1. He was 21 years old.

In Episode 9 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow welcomes Charli Turner Thorne — Hall of Fame head coach of the Arizona State University women's basketball program for 25 years, former head coach at Northern Arizona University, Stanford graduate, two-time USA Basketball assistant coach, and gold medalist at the World University Games. She is nationally recognized for her emphasis on leadership, mental performance, and holistic athlete development, and she currently teaches an optimal performance class at ASU while serving on the Phoenix Mercury coaching staff. She and her husband Will raised three children, and the conversation moves fluidly between her decades of coaching experience and what it was actually like to be a sports parent on the other side of the sideline.

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.