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 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.

In Episode 10 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow welcomes Kirsten Jones — Hall of Fame former Division I collegiate volleyball player at the College of William and Mary, 15-year Nike executive who held leadership roles in brand management, retail, and global marketing while working directly with elite athletes and teams around the world, author of Raising Empowered Athletes: A Youth Sports Parenting Guide for Raising Happy, Brave and Resilient Kids, host of the Raising Athletes with Kirsten Jones podcast, national speaker, workshop leader, and certified peak performance and leadership coach. She and her husband Evan — who played Division III basketball at Johns Hopkins and Division II at UC Davis before playing professionally in Europe — raised three children: CJ, Parker, and Kylie. Two of the three went on to play collegiately. The conversation is one of the most wide-ranging and practically useful in the series.

Todd Merkow sits down with Dr. Eric Dean — Medical Director for Sports Medicine at HonorHealth, former Division I football player at the University of Arizona, team physician for the San Francisco Giants and multiple professional sports organizations, Medical Director for Scottsdale Unified School District Athletics since 2009, and father of two daughters who have both completed their youth sports journey. Dr. Dean has been practicing sports medicine in the Valley for nearly 25 years, and what he has watched happen to young athletes' bodies over that time is, in his own words, insane.

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 Jonathan Carone — founder and host of Healthy Sports Parents, former youth and competitive athlete, youth sports coach, and sports parent. Jonathan describes himself as the epitome of a marginal athlete: good enough to make all-stars in rec league, never quite good enough to stick on a school team, and completely fine with that. He played rec basketball through eighth grade, a season of travel baseball, and spent his high school years not as a player but as a student coach — learning the game from the dugout, from the JV coaches, from the varsity staff, and eventually from a year as a college intern with the same high school program. He is now the PA announcer for his hometown high school baseball team, a role he first held as a senior in high school and returned to after moving back to town five years ago. His day job is marketing and web design. Healthy Sports Parents is the thing that combines all of it.

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.