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 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.

Todd Merkow sits down with Jody Jackson — longtime Fox Sports Arizona broadcaster, current Diamondbacks reporter, and sports mom of two — for a conversation that moves easily between the press box and the bleachers, between the professional world of sports media and the deeply personal world of raising a pitcher and a quarterback in the competitive youth sports landscape of the Phoenix metro.

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.

Todd Merkow sits down with Christian Lavers — founder and president of the ECNL (Elite Clubs National League), former Director of Coaching and Methodology at FC Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin finance and soccer alumnus, holder of both an MBA and a law degree, and father of four young children ages four through eight. The ECNL has grown from 40 clubs and roughly 2,000 players at its founding in 2009 to more than 120,000 players across both genders today, making it one of the most significant structural forces in American youth soccer. Christian is also the host of the ECNL podcast Breaking the Line, which Todd recommends without hesitation to any sports parent — soccer or otherwise.

Todd Merkow sits down with Andrew Beinbrink — former collegiate baseball player at Arizona State University (College World Series finalist), six-year professional baseball player who reached Triple-A with both the Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers, and CEO and founder of SportsForce (sportsforce.io), a recruiting advisory platform that has guided families through the college athletic recruiting process for over fifteen years. Andrew grew up in San Diego as a multi-sport athlete — soccer, baseball, football, basketball, tennis, golf, body surfing — and brings both the lived experience of a player who navigated the process and the data of an entrepreneur who has spent a decade and a half studying what actually works.

Todd Merkow sits down with Liz Masakayan — Santa Monica High School alumna, two-time NCAA national champion at UCLA (1984, 1985), Broderick Award winner for collegiate player of the year in 1985, UCLA Female Athlete of the Year in 1988, five-year Team USA member, Olympian at Seoul 1988, World Championship bronze medalist in Beijing, and one of the most decorated careers in the history of American volleyball. On the pro beach side: 47 tour career wins, 61 finals appearances, a 13-year pro career, WPVA World Champion in 1991, FIVB World Champion in 1994 (with Most Outstanding Player honors), and a 1999 World Championship bronze. As a coach she led teams to Olympic bronze in Athens 2004 and a fifth-place finish in Beijing 2008. She was inducted into the UCLA Hall of Fame in 1996. Todd also notes she should be in the Santa Monica High School Hall of Fame — if one existed.

Todd Merkow sits down with Barry Buetel — longtime sports broadcaster and executive, founding broadcast host for Fox Sports Arizona's Emmy-winning Diamondbacks poolside show, former on-air host for professional teams across the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA, son of a legendary Minnesota sports broadcaster, and most importantly, husband to Shannon and father of three daughters: Brittany, Lauren, and Kate. All three played soccer. Barry is one of Todd's oldest friends — they met in 1996 when they were both single guys helping launch Fox Sports Arizona, attended each other's weddings, and spent years on the same sidelines watching their daughters play together. This episode is the one where two guys who should have known better sit down and admit they didn't.

Linda Flanagan returns to Be Valiant — the first guest to come back twice — for a wide-ranging conversation with Todd Merkow about what is still working in youth sports, what is broken, and why parents need to understand the business hierarchy they are navigating before they can protect what matters most. Linda is a former athlete, youth and high school coach, sports parent, journalist, and author of Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids Sports and Why It Matters. This episode picks up where Episode 8 left off and goes further.