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.

In one of the most personal and emotionally raw episodes of Be Valiant, host Todd Merkow sits down with his youngest daughter Sydney — a three-time Arizona high school state soccer champion, ASU psychology graduate, and now a full-time Pilates instructor — to unpack the full arc of her youth sports journey. What begins as a story of joy, early success, and competitive fire quickly reveals the hidden costs that so many young athletes carry silently for years.

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 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 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.

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 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.