Amazing Greats: Crazy great Jesus stories.
Amazing Greats shares inspiring Christian testimonies and faith stories from professional athletes, actors, authors, musicians, and other remarkable guests. Each episode explores how Jesus transformed their lives, strengthened their faith, and worked through both success and hardship.
Host Ric Hansen goes beyond careers and accomplishments to uncover the defining moments when faith became real. Every episode explores hope, redemption, purpose, and the remarkable ways God continues to work through ordinary and extraordinary people alike.
Amazing Greats is building one of the largest libraries of modern Christian testimonies from influential people.
Amazing Greats: Crazy great Jesus stories.
300,000 kids went to basketball camp and came home changed forever.
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Fred Crowell is a coach, counselor, author and master motivator. He was the head basketball coach at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and one of the youngest head coaches ever hired at the age of 23. He founded NBC Camps in 1971 and has built the organization to one of the largest and most successful sports camps in the world.
In this episode, you'll hear about his aha Jesus moment.....
how camp became so much more than Basketball,
and why he's not afraid to die.
This is truly one of the most powerful conversations and inspiring stories that I have been blessed to share.
Snag a copy of his newly published daily devotional book called "Words of Hope" and let Fred be a shining light to help coach you spiritually through the next 365 days...and beyond.
Available at http://crowellu.com/words-of-hope/ or on Amazon
Although his original book "Meet My Head Coach" is no longer in publication after 7 updates over the years, it is still available, used, in limited supply on Amazon at
To find out more about NBC Sports camps check out the website at https://www.nbccamps.com/
To connect with Fred or ask more questions contact the Amazing Cory James, who will help you out.
cory@wordsofhope.com
Please let us know if you enjoyed the conversation by hitting "Like" or "Share" with a friend.
"Amazing Greats" is a library of interviews with highly successful people who have amazing career and life stories and who share how God has impacted their journey. Hosted by broadcaster Ric Hansen & produced by Klem Daniels. Available on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Google and our YouTube Channel.
Please help us grow our audience by "liking", "subscribing and "Sharing". Thanks so much.
Hi, Rick Hansen here with the Amazing Greats podcast. Yeah, today, one of my favorite conversations of all time, you're going to hear about 300,000 kids who learned about Jesus as they learned to play basketball at summer camp. This is a truly inspiring story from a lifelong coach, a mentor, a teacher, a Jesus follower. His name is Fred Kruhl. Hear how he went from skeptic to believer and changed thousands of lives in the process. And if you like this episode, click like. If you like more inspirational shows like this, click subscribe. Thanks so much. Here we go. We are here with Fred Crowell from the NBC Camps, the largest basketball camp in the world, who have trained, um, interacted with and produced 300,000 great campers over the last uh, what, 40 years? And you're in Spokane. You're our guest today to share with us not only about NBC camps, but about your life, which is a is a great story in and of itself. And on top of that, we're going to talk about how Jesus has walked with uh youth along the path. So welcome, Fred.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's a privilege to be here, Rick. I think uh when I look over your shoulder and see amazing greats, I don't really realize why I'm on there, but I'm thankful you think I am. As long as you think I'm amazing, I'll I'll go with what you say.
RicWell, you are great in so many ways. Not just not just a great basketball coach and mentor, but a great Christian. And so today we're gonna we're gonna start the conversation with that Christian story. And what I love about the start of your story is the start of so many people's stories, including my own. And that is the story of the skeptic, the guy who says, uh, you know, I don't know about all this stuff. So tell me, tell me about the early Fred.
SPEAKER_01Well, the early Fred group in Anna Cortis, Washington, one of the great basketball hotbins of the state of Washington, and the they call it the golden era of basketball. So we won uh my coach won 252 and lost like 50 games, and we won the league championship eight years in a row. So I was really privileged. I grew up in a large family. My mom had eight kids in 13 years, very poor family. My mother was the glue, the she was the mother Mary of my life. I would, I'm so thankful to be able to say, even to these years I'm 79, to say when my mom asked me to be home at 11 o'clock, I came home at 11 o'clock. And uh I never wanted to look into her eyes and see disappointment. But she died when I was 21 of pancreatic cancer. And you know, I read one time several years ago that all great religions of the world are designed to do one thing, to give you the tools to navigate a cruel world. And I didn't have the tools. So my theology, my training uh as a young uh Catholic boy, um, I delivered newspapers from age nine to 15, so I missed church all those years because I was delivering 150 Seattle PI newspapers, and uh and I wasn't uh my priest embarrassed me three times in my life. And uh so when my mother went into the grave, in fact, at my mother's uh rosary, my priest told me I was going to hell. And I being belligerent, I said I'd be glad to go to hell as long as you're not there. So uh so I I became agnostic, I never became an atheist because I wasn't smart enough to think I knew that. But for three years, I I lived in bitterness towards God. In fact, uh when my mother uh I remember the casket going down August 23rd, 1963, and I made two vows to myself I would never cry again the rest of my life because I cried every day for four months at her bedside when she died of she weighed about 60 pounds when she died.
RicOh man, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_01And the other thing is I would never have to be holding to anybody for finance because my dad went bankrupt and we lost cars, and so that fire in my belly enabled me to go to college and become a pretty good student and become the head basketball coach at the University of Alaska at age 23. Wow. So here I am, the winningest coach in the history of the program at age 23, making really good money. And lo and behold, my wife gets ill, Susie. And she, through her illness, was told by a family doctor that she needed Jesus Christ, which really angered me, really upset me. She asked me to go see a minister, and I said, No, and she begged me, and I said, Okay, I'll go, but I'm not gonna be nice. And I wasn't nice, and he asked me to leave. Really? Yeah, yeah. He said, Why don't you leave? Because I know you're not interested, but your wife really is. I want to talk to her. So I was out by my brand new Chevelle Super Sport 396 in July, Court d'Alene, Idaho, and my wife, she's my my kids call her Glamma because she's she's 879 and glamorous and beautiful, little tiny 115-pounder. And she walks up to me and she says, Fred, I really love you, but I just did the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I invited Jesus Christ to be my savior and Lord. Oh I don't know, I don't know what she's talking about. What are we talking about? Some doctor in this guy of the Bible? And I went back to the University of Alaska and I saw a change in her. She never pressured me. The only thing she did I didn't like, and Fairbanks we'd be lying in bed, and she'd say, Can we say a prayer before we go to sleep? And I said, No. And she says, Why? And I said, See the ceiling. We could look up and see our eight-foot ceiling. I said, When I say a prayer, it just bounces back in my face. Why would I ever want to pray? But over a period of time, um I I had a guy walk into my office and he was an engineer, and he also wrote on the crew teams at Washington. Anybody that grew up in Washington in the 60s knew that if you were a crew athlete, you were an animal. Yeah. And his name was Fred Dyson, and he would run Ulerhaven Hill, Seven Mile Hill, with my basketball team. He came in and introduced himself to me, and we talked basketball an hour. And he said, Before I go, coach, I want to ask you a question. I didn't, I thought he was gonna ask me about the Zags or somebody, you know how the how the team. He goes, I want to know what you think of Jesus Christ. Oh Lord me, I had no, I had no answer. But um I was teaching the history of physical education, in addition to my coaching duties, and we were studying different religions and how they affected physical education. And my wife taught me to go into this one particular church, and they said, Now, next Sunday we want to have a debate on why believe the Bible. We'd like two of you to be skeptics and bring all your arguments against the Bible, and two of you to volunteer to defend the Bible, and nobody volunteered, and so I raised my hand that says, I'll be a skeptic, I'll I'll I'll come ready to tear the Bible apart. There was a great big Sioux Indian in the back named Peter Threestern. He said, Oh no, no, no. Hey, Coach Curl, you you debate you defend the Bible, that'd be more fair, and I'll go against you. And I never said a word, I don't know why. And I got in the car and I said, Susie, what am I gonna do? She's I don't know, but it's gonna be really interesting. And quite a few of my basketball players found out about it and showed up for that next service. I found myself at the University of Alaska Library studying Christianity. There's thousands of words and encyclopedias about Christianity. And you start getting into the really archaeological, you know, you take the great historians of the day, and they write the nine reasons that Caesar was alive and real, and those same nine reasons prove that Jesus Christ walked the face of the earth, died, and was reported to be crucified. And I got hit in the face with the crucifixion and the resurrection, and all of a sudden, the teachings of my high school basketball coach came back, Bill Taylor, who wasn't a spiritual man, but he always said, if it's right, you have to do it. And I knew in my heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross. But I didn't want, I didn't want to do this because I knew it was gonna cost too much. It wasn't gonna be a Sunday, go to church, ask, do a confession, and then the seven, six days do what you want. I knew it was gonna cost me everything. Yeah. But I said, okay, yes, I'll be all in. That's be that began the journey of from 1966 to right now.
RicWow. So we call that I give we always ask what was your aha Jesus moment, and that kind of grew out of that requirement to defend the Bible. And I probably God's little nudge to set you on the right path, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, my aha Jesus moment happened about four or five months because I would ask Jesus into my heart every night and not really know that he was there. And one day on a Wednesday, it was 53 degrees below zero, and there are 12 people that were meeting to start this little church, and my wife was all in, so I'm kind of in because of her. She got the flu that day, and I said, Well, I'm not going. And she said, No, I really want you to go. And they were going to sign the paper that you were going to be one of the charter members. But I went with the intent that I was going to tell them I couldn't do it anymore. So I was quite nervous, yeah. I'm going to this meeting, and Bob Hubiar and his wife, the pastor, they sat down and I sat right to Bob Herbiar's right shoulder because I figured he would start with me. That's what I would have done. I would start with the guests. But he didn't do it that way, he went the other way. And he started with his wife, and he went around, and so I was actually like the tenth person in line instead of the first. And I had my little speech all memorized. I can't do this anymore. I don't believe like you, it's not working for me. You're never going to see me again. That was my speech. By the time it got to me, I broke my vow that I made three years earlier that I would never cry again. And I stopped. It was embarrassing because I got slapped around as a kid if you cried. If you're watching a movie and you cry, your dad's gonna call you a sissy. And I'm not picking on my dad, that's just the way they were raised in those days, you know. If you got hurt and you cried on a baseball diamond, you freaking gonna get beat when you get home. There's not gonna be any tears. Yeah. So, so all of a sudden I'm sobbing. And that sobbing, whether it was one minute or three minutes where I couldn't talk, all my bitterness towards my hatred of God towards my mom went away. And when you're full of bitterness, you're really blind. And my life has been spent helping people, blind people who are blinded by their bitterness and their anger and their unresolved conflicts. If you can't get rid of those, you're not gonna be a very good basketball player. If you can't get rid of your hatred towards your dad, it's gonna be hard to play for a good man coach. If you hate your mom, it's gonna be hard for a girl to relate to a, you know, to relate to a female coach. And so that's why for all these actually 50 years, we have letter writing night to families because we want to restore kids with their family, because it's gonna make them a better person. It's the only commandment of the ten that promise blessing. So even if your dad is an absolute idiot, the one thing you can thank him for is his he gave you birth. And the great gift to a child is we didn't get to choose our parents, but we get to choose the parent we become. So when I give the parent talk, I said, Would you rather choose your parents or choose the parent you get to be? So if you have a bad dad, you gotta you got all the reasons why not to be a bad dad. If you have a good dad, copy what he did. But if you have a bad dad, do exactly opposite. So my two brothers and I, we joke all the time. We had a great teacher, we do exactly what our father told us didn't do. We do it opposite.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
RicYeah, there you go. You had the great great teacher from on the flip-flop. So that's cool. Now that that story about the the group, the the church group that was you know starting up uh was not even in the in the book. I was gonna show this great book that you wrote in 1973. So it's been out for a while. It's had seven uh revisions, if is that correct? Something like that. And uh it's a fabulous. I I as soon as I knew I was gonna have a chance to talk with you, I wanted to read your book. And it's a fabulous book in so many ways. And I'm not a I told you earlier, I'm not a basketball player, but you don't have to be to love this book. And and it's really not available new anymore. You you you have to buy it in a used condition, and that's what I got. But that story was not in the book. So I'm I we got a special story today, I think.
SPEAKER_01And the reason it wasn't in the book is uh I was I wasn't prepared in 1973 when I wrote the original to talk about my Catholic faith. And as God would have it, in 1959, my spiritual mentor became a Catholic priest. So I had a bad priest and a great priest. I don't want to identify myself because I have fifth, I have 12,000 kids coming to camp, and I don't know, we don't want to know what they are. We don't, we don't want to ever brand people. I'm I'm just a follower of Jesus Christ, and wherever you go to church, that's your business. I don't even want to know. I don't care about your denomination. I think that's irrelevant. So I could be Catholic or I could be Lutheran or I could be anything where Jesus Christ is honored, and I think we've really messed up the message. I always say that there's about a well, there's thousands of brands of Christianity, just like there's thousands of brands of cannibal soup. The problem is I don't like most Campbell soups. There's a couple I like. I like tomato and I like chicken noodle. But in Christianity, I only like one love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and love people. That's all it is. So when you come to my basketball camp, you're gonna get loved.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01That's so we're gonna believe in you. So Christianity is a hard message.
RicWhen you first started the camp, did were did you um was was Christianity an element right from the get-go, as soon as you had started the basketball camps, or was it a basketball camp first and then kind of grew into something beyond that?
SPEAKER_01I bought I bought into the coaching philosophy of the greatest coach who's ever lived, John Wooden. And John Wooden had a famous line if basketball doesn't make you a better person, it's a waste of time. 2% of all the guys that play college sports go on to some form of professionalism in soccer or something. So 98%, I think 1% of 1% of the college players in America today are gonna be in the NBA. So what's all this fuss? I'm gonna give my life to basketball. Basketball is always gonna betray you. Basketball is gonna be betrayed Michael Jordan. He still wants to play, but he can't play anymore. If you're not careful, you become bitter. Some people never know when to quit. And so I saw, and the reason I went into the basketball camp thing, my I left coaching because my daughter became one of the almost a bubble baby. She almost died several times as a baby. She didn't make gamma G. And so my doctors and psychologists said, you probably need to have a career that you stay home every night. So I didn't know I had a career crisis. I mean, I love to coach, it was my religion. And I always, my wife said, How many kids do you want? I want five, two guards, two fours, and a big city. And uh and uh I love that. So I listed all the things I was good at, and I I started Northwest Counseling Service in Ray Berwick, and I had 1,500 clients in four years, but I only charged 20 bucks an hour and I only collected on 25 percent. So I I didn't go to a basketball game for two years, and and I went, I was invited to speak at the oldest basketball camp in the state two weeks in a row, and I said, This is what I like. So I started a basketball camp, and we had 108 kids the first year, and I said, What does it take to build a great human being? I started there. What's it take to build a great human being? I got a one-year-old child, 21 years. I got 21 years to teach this kid. Number one is physical. The physical need is critical, but it's the easiest to satisfy. You're hungry, feed it. It can be satisfied very quickly. If you build a life on sexuality and marriage, it can be satisfied quickly in marriage, and then you're in trouble. If it's only physical, if then you have the psychological need, and every person has three psychological needs: love, belong, and success. I I become a suicide expert. So my first diagnostic on a suicide person is who loves you and who do you love? It's zero, zero. We're in trouble. What do you do well and what do people think you do well? Zero, zero trouble. Who what do you what belongs to you and who do you belong to? That's why dog therapy is so critical. Give a kid a dog, give a give an elderly a dog. That's my dog. This is my dog, and this dog loves me unconditionally. The greatest single need of a child is unconditional love, and we don't do that. You know, my kid becomes a homosexual. Oh, I'm not gonna ever speak to him again. Are you freaking kidding me? That's your son. You should love him unconditionally. My kid becomes a drug addict. Now, that doesn't mean we we advocate and take care of that. Yeah, we don't, we don't, we've got to help them get back on their feet so they can help themselves because they'll if you help somebody and keep helping them, they'll end up being bitter towards you. So, and then the third, and then what do you do well? And and so then when when you see those areas, then you the the the prescription that the the prognosis says, How do I show this kid love? And how do I get them to love people? How do I help them be successful? So a kid comes to basketball camp and they can do one push up the first day, and on the seventh day they can do 10. That's success. That's success. Yeah, if you can do one thing well, and then we always have the TEC method, teach, encourage, correct. We got to teach exactly what we want. The more clear I am in what I want, the more power I have in getting what I want. So when I take kids on a basketball tour, I lay down, these are the four things, three things you got to do. And if you don't do these three things, you're going home. You walk into a cafeteria, we're quiet, we're not boisterous. We're gonna say thank you and please, and we're gonna clean our table after we leave. If you can't do that, you don't get to eat. It's real simple. So you teach it, and then anytime you get what you want, you encourage it. And then the last one is correction. You know, when I teach a seminar to parents, we talk about our coach, we talk about TEC. Guess where they place 90% of their emphasis on the correction. Ah, yeah. On the correction, and they should place 10% on correction and 90% on encouragement. Crystal clear teaching. So, anyway, that's the very first, and yeah. Let me finish this last thought. Thank you. Yep. Then the third one is the spiritual. Now, physical, mental, then the spiritual. The spiritual is the toughest thing in the world to teach. And you can go you through your whole life and and live pretty good without the spiritual. There are a lot of successful people that have done okay without without God. I tried it myself, and I was doing pretty good. I didn't realize that I could do a lot better with God, but I was pretty happy without God, and I think it could have gone okay. But when he says, I will give you 10, 20, 50, 100 fold, I think I'm a hundredfold example of what when you let God have it all. But he doesn't want 99.9, he wants it all, and that's where people get in trouble. But the spiritual is not something you can force on people. The spiritual is not taught, it's caught, and it's caught through unconditional love by people. So we want to create it in an environment where I'm teaching, whether it's a basketball camp or a suicide seminar or whatever it is, the number one thing is to create an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance. And when people are loved, this is a tight flower. When they're loved, they'll open up. When they really know they're safe, they're they don't have to worry about Paul Turnier said something that really hit me. He said that all criticism always brings defensiveness. Anytime you criticize some, like if I said, Rick, you know, your show really is not very good, you should do a better job. Immediately that's going to create a negative in you and it's going to cause defensiveness. Why do it? Yeah, why why come at somebody? And so a dad says, How do I, my kid doesn't work hard, he's lazy. And I'm nagging him all the time. So his focus is not teaching, it's not an encouragement, it's in correction. And I said, Well, here's what I would do. I would take him and say, Can we sit down for and here's you know, here's a sandwich, and we have a create, I'm gonna create a safe environment. I'm gonna start. I really love you, son. You're really valuable to me. And I just love you being part of our family, and you're gonna always be part of our family, whether you do chores or not. And I'm gonna ask forgiveness. I've been on your case for the last six months like nobody's business. I have not been fun. I've nagged you, I've called you names, like you're lazy, you don't care about family. I've said things I should have never said. You will you forgive me? I'm really sorry. And I'm never gonna ask you to do it, I'm never gonna ask you to do a chore again. You don't have to go out on the barn and clean up the poop, you don't have to uh do anything. But you know, we're a family, and if you're really part of the family, then we cheerfully work together as a team. And so until you really want to do your chores and really want to participate, you don't have to do any of them. But what I want you to learn to do is go go to your mom, and I want you to learn how to do your own laundry. From now on, you're doing your own laundry. And the food you'll have a shelf in the in the kitchen, and that's your food, and that's what you fix for your meal because you're gonna eat your meal. You can eat it with us, but we're not preparing your food for you. Because a family works together, but I'm never gonna criticize you again. It's kind of like the player that says, I don't want you to correct me anymore. I don't want you to yell at me when I'm coaching. You know, I yell when I coach because you're 50 feet away. I'm not yelling because I think it's effective. I'm yelling just so you can hear me. If we're right, if we're rowing a boat and on the rapids and you're sitting there and I need you to move or we're gonna drown, I'm gonna, I might grab you and say, roll. And so this kid says, I don't I don't do good when you yell, man. Good, I'll never yell at you again. I'll whisper. So I had one kid.
SPEAKER_00I hey Chris, I want to play. Can you hear me? You want to play? Yeah, then you better start defending people. You're sitting here. What do you want to do? Sit here, play. So I can do that too.
SPEAKER_01So unconditional love is the rest of my life, Rick. Seven or eight of my good friends have died this last five years, and they're good people, they're in heaven. Here I am. I've been beating cancer for 11 years. I'm going to UCLA medical next week. Last four days I've been puking nonstop. You know why? I think I was supposed to develop my stomach muscles. But the point is that what I'm saying is, why am I alive? Why are you alive? I think we're only alive for one reason to love God with our heart, with all our mind, all our soul, and love people. So who do we get to love today? I get to love you. Thank you for making it easy. You have a great smile, by the way.
RicThank you. Well, you gave me a lot to smile about. I mean, you've just been smiling the whole time I'm talking.
SPEAKER_01I can't believe it.
RicThat's because I love what you're saying. That's because uh this is this is just great stuff. I really appreciate it. I would I've often I wondered because you have a basketball camp and you know some moms and dads are sending their kid off to camp to learn how to play basketball. Has there over time has there been a pushback on this whole Christian thing that uh and and people maybe even not even deciding to send their kid to camp because it's they're gonna push Christianity on them? Has that ever been an issue along the way?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes, very so. We get criticized for two things. One is our Christianity, and two, we work them too hard. I had one coach tell me I'm not bringing my kids to your camp anymore at your team camp because you make us get up at seven o'clock in the morning and my kids want to sleep till noon. So I go to this other camp for the games at one, my kids sleep till noon, and you make us clean the toilets and you make us clean our rooms. You know, I just believe that you know, it's amazing in in Proverbs it talks about they marry wisdom and discipline together. You want to be wise, you better be disciplined. You want to be disciplined, you better be wise. So when we don't we don't teach kids to flush toilets, we don't teach kids to say thank you. We don't say we've lost our manners in this country. We we are we are a country without manners. And so the problem with Christianity is if I say I'm a Christian, well, back in the day when I was 22 years old and you said you're a Christian, I won't avoid you. Why? Because so many people have a very negative experience with Christianity. So it's hard for me to say I'm a Christian, it's easier for me to say I'm a spirit man. Because if I say I'm a Christian and you've had a negative experience, which I would say more than half of our population has had a bad Christian experience by somebody. Absolutely, yeah, yep. And so what does that that word doesn't mean anything anymore, except in many cases it's negative. So we have to say it on our brochure so people aren't blindsided. But we've had as much criticism, for example, if I teach uh the four things that will take a kid down, you're a teenager. When you you're you're a parent and you're listening, and you're got a 12-year-old, seventh, eighth, ninth grade of your critical years. You got to get your kid through those three years, and you better you better be in control. Like on a rule we would have, our kids could never go to anybody's home home that we didn't know. One lady has a big party and she's serving wine cooler and doesn't think it's alcohol. If our daughter would have been there, she'd have been drinking wine cooler. But any kid in the school could come to our home because we're gonna control the environment. Anyone that wanted to date my daughter had to have a personal interview with me. You're gonna take, I'm gonna let you take my daughter out, the most important child in the world, and I'm gonna trust you with this guy. You better know what I'm standing for. You better understand that there's rules, and I'll tell you exactly what they are. So it eliminates a lot of dating, too.
RicThat's true, probably that screens a few folks out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so one parent said the four things will take you down. One are drugs, number two is alcohol. Number three is premarital sex. It's gonna take you down. You're gonna make a baby when you're 15, 16, 17 years old, your life's gonna change. Stay away from that. One parent says, I didn't send my basketball camp to hear that kind of conversation. That's not your job. Well, it's gonna, you know, one basketball team in Alaska had so many pregnancies they didn't have a team one year. Then it becomes my job.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_01Can you imagine? Uh I tell you a funny story. I I spoke in a high school that had 53 pregnancies one year. So they want me to come out and speak to the student and talk about saying no to sex. I go, Oh my gosh. Do I want to stand up in front of 500 kids and say don't have sex? So I said, How am I gonna do this? I mean, how am I gonna do this? Because the minute I tell you don't do something, what are you gonna do? You want to do it? Don't date that kid, you're gonna do it. Don't touch that, you're gonna touch it. So I said, I had to come up with a joke, and so I said, Well, I'm gonna start. I'm supposed to talk about sex, and I'm supposed to tell you not to, but I'm not gonna tell you not to. Because if I tell you not to, you're gonna do it anyway. But you know, I you know, sex is something people don't want to talk about. But you know, one one kid in first grade was this teacher said, Did you know that a single dolphin could as have as a single dolphin could have as many as a hundred babies? And the little boy goes, Well, how many could a married dolphin have? And I said, you know, we we all play these what if games. I said, What if, what if uh, what if, for example, um we played this game that you're the greatest athlete? What if you were Suggs? You know, what if you were because kids are doing that right now. What if I were I'm Suggs and they're out in the they're out there practicing that shot right now? Guaranteeing Spokane and around the world, they're practicing that Sug shot.
RicAbsolutely.
SPEAKER_01So we all look to play what if games. So I said, let's play what if a game. What if tonight you go home and you uh you tell your potion, oh this guy was on this this guy came and spoke about sex, and all of a sudden you turn on channel two, ABC or CBS, CBS. There I am, New York City. I'm on all channels. And I'm gonna make I'm gonna make the most profound statement. I said, what whatever I say is gonna be true. I said, for the next 365 days, next 365 days, it's absolutely impossible for a female to get to get pregnant. Impossible. What are the 250 boys do? They're cheering like crazy. I said, Well, on the other hand, for the next 365 days, boys, you get pregnant, not the girl. Now the girls are cheering. I said, Can you imagine the star quarterback for the Huskies is gonna go out and he comes to the coach Saturday morning? Can't play. Well now, coach, I can't play tonight. Why? I can't tell you. Tell me I'm pregnant. Would that change? I would that change the culture? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so rather than go in there and tell them not to, you know, yeah.
RicShow the show what the consequences.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I I have a lot of fun when I speak.
RicSo the uh couple of things from the book that I before uh you know, and I I I don't don't want to get this get away from this interview without having to ask about one of the things that you talked about in a couple of chapters was this whole concept of practical Christianity. And I think that's so um important. And and you and I both have in common the fact that we were raised Catholic, and and sometimes there was there was not a lot of practical information that came out of a Catholic mass. And I think that's maybe what what drove me away or kept me from uh church. So what explain your concept of practical Christianity?
SPEAKER_01Well, and I got some great training. I was in an auditorium with 400 uh people, and this guy said, you know, if you're here and you don't intend to do take any action on what you learn, you would be better off not being here. And then he said something like this He said, doctrine is always dynamic. So doctrine is your belief system, and doctrine and belief system are alive. What you and I believe is our most precious gift, we better guard what we believe, because our belief will dictate our behavior. Whatever we believe will ultimately dictate. Then he said, Revelation always demands a response. Mike Nilsen's favorite line is if you know it and you don't do it, you don't know it. So anytime I say, you know, your team doesn't rebound very well, and the guy says, I know it, they're lying to themselves. If they knew it, they'd be doing it. So it hit me early that when I heard, I'm when I read something or you say something and I hear a nugget, I'm always figuring out how can I use that? How can I put that into practice? So I'm listening to Jack Nicholas talk about golf. And he says, you'll never be a great golfer until you can swing the ball, and you're actually standing there watching your swing the ball. My limited experience is when I hit the ball and the teacher says, Don't hit it so hard, I don't know what he's talking about. But when I shoot a basketball, there's two Fred Crohl shooting that ball, the Fred Krull shooting it and the Fred Crowl watching it. That's called self-existential diagnosis. That means you're taking your eyes out of your head and watching yourself. And if you don't have that skill, you're gonna say things in meetings. Wisdom is doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. That's why you want wisdom. Knowledge is your all your information. Wisdom is how to use that knowledge at the right time, the right place. And so the book, so after the five chapters, then I said, okay, what are the five most important things? And I started with unity. Unity is the glue that makes everything work. Unity made Gonzaga work. Unity made Baylor work. Disunity made the other teams fail. And the goal of a team to defeat the other team is to disrupt their unity. Baylor was able to disrupt Gonzaga's pure. Gonzaga was the most fun team in the world to watch because they had freedom of movement. Baylor did everything they could to force them to dribble the ball. There weren't any easy passes. They disrupted their unity. And for that reason, in John chapter 17, here's Jesus getting ready to be crucified. And he says, These words, Father, the hour has come. Gly thy son, that thy son might glorify you. And then about five verses later, he says, I pray for my disciples. We're talking about Peter and Paul and those guys. I pray that they all have one mind and one heart, as you and I have one mind and one heart. And then in verse 20 or 22, he says, I not only pray for these guys we have right now, but I pray for future generations that they all have one mind and one heart, so that the world might believe Jesus Christ is real. So why is the world having a hard time? First of all, the Christians can't even get along. This denomination can't get along with this one. This one's right and you're wrong. If you're not this, you're not that. And then the question would be if if it's God's ultimate desire to have unity, and there's a devil, there's an evil force called Satan, what's his? His job is to cause divorce in families. His job is to cause a child to hate a parent, a parent to hate the child. His job is to cause disunity in basketball. And so the greatest glory we can do, and so one of our rules in our family is if we're not unified, if the Kroll family is not unified, we're talking about when my kids were little, we all got to vote on dad speaking. So if I took a speaking engagement and we're not together, I don't get to speak. So that's why I took my kids with me because I didn't want to have to have the family tell me you're not qualified. And there's a lot of people in ministry right now that should shut their mouth and get their family in order. And I don't mean to be harsh, but unity is where it all starts, and that's why I that's why unconditional love is so important. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what the book's about. And then goes into how to love, how to pray, how to smile. Smile coach, God loves you.
RicYeah. Tell me about your prayer. Tell me, do you how do you how how what's your prayer ritual? Do you do you pray in the morning, in the evening, all day? Um how does how do you interact with with Jesus uh on on in prayer?
SPEAKER_01During the uh 2000 crisis when everybody thought the world was coming into an end, I I made a terrible financial investment, and that led me to the Catholic priest. And I I was very depressed uh because I lost a sizable amount of money and it really caused me to really beat down on myself. I went to him and I poured my heart out to him for an hour and he just listened. At the end of the hour, he said, Tell me about your prayer life in two weeks. So I had two weeks, and I realized I didn't have a very good prayer life. And for 22 years now, I've been practicing on prayer life, and what I've come up with is that the greatest place in the world is not Hawaii, it's not France, it's right in here. It's called a secret garden. You have one, Corey has one, my son has one, my wife has one. Hard to find. And you can only find the secret garden in silence. And too much of Christianity is loud noise. You go to church and they just blast you to death with music. I can't stand that. I need silence. So I years ago in Earl Nightingale in the 70s says you can solve most of your problems if you could be quiet for 15 minutes. Well, I have a pastor that his professional baseball number was 17, so instead of 15.00, I have 17.17. And I said a boom. And Ignatian theology, which I have embraced, he St. Ignatius was a great spiritual giant, the Jesuits, and his his uh his theology was all biblically based. And he said, We have a great imagination, and God gave us the gift of imagination. And I was glad to hear that because the only way that I could live in my youth, because it's pretty tough youth, was daydream. So I lived a fantasy world, and when I became a Christian, I realized I couldn't do that anymore. And then all of a sudden, Ignatius comes along 40 years later and says, use your imagination. And so when I pray, I preach scripture. People say, I don't know what God would say. Yes, you do. The Lord is my shepherd. Thank you, Lord, for being my shepherd. And Jesus would say back to me, He is my shepherd. So last week, last October August, I had to go to the University of Washington Medical for serious tests, and I didn't have anybody to go, and I went for five days. And I said, Jesus, will you go with me? Will you ride shotgun? Now, this might seem absurd, but in in my imagination, and you know it's true, you could have a talk with Bill May right now. You could say, Bill, or your wife, or you the more you know somebody, the more you could have a two-way. That's called most Christians dialogue pray. And when I dialogue pray, excuse me, when I monologue prayer, that's only me talking. It's hard to sustain. But if you have a dialogue with somebody really interested, you can talk hours. I drove to Leavenworth three and a half hours, and it was like it was five minutes. But Jesus and I were half talking this, I say, Well, I don't know what he would say. Well, oh my God, I earnestly seek you. I thirst for you, I long for you. I've seen you in the sanctuary, and I beheld your power. Lord, I've seen you, I've seen your presence. And the Lord says, Well, I've delighted in being you. You've been in my presence, and I love you, Fred Crow. And it's hard for people to say, Jesus really loves me, and actually have Jesus speak. Like I could say right now, Susie. Loves Fred Crowe. That's my wife. Why can't I say, Thank you, Jesus, that you love me? So it's really amazing. The apostles came to Jesus, teach us how to pray. One of the greatest speeches ever is 109 words, I think, and that's the Gettysburg Address. Jesus didn't write a book on how to pray. He did it in 70 words. 70 words. I think I prayed that eight to ten times a day for 15 years. So on my bed, I remember a youth of the watches the night. I'm as an old man, I've got to go potty seven, eight times a night. When I lie back on bed, I either do five five gratitudes. I love life. Rick Hansen is an amazing man. I love this podcast. It's a beautiful day. Jesus loves me. Those are my five. I just did five right there. Some people can't do one or two because they haven't practiced.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Gratitude is part of prayer. So that's that's I just I go into silence and now I pray without ceasing. Because it's the only thing, it's the only thing that's given me any peace through this cancer. I would tell all of you watching, I'm not afraid to die. Our culture doesn't talk about death. I know people that when they get sick, they hole hide in a hole and they don't tell anybody. I tell people, and consequently, I have see my world is young men, and especially young men that I've coached that'd be like sons to me. I'm called papa or or dad to hundreds of young guys that are now 45, 50 years of age, and even some 20-year-olds. I've got a freshman in college that calls me papa, and I cherish that. And they're gonna get they get to watch me die because someday they're gonna die. And I want to be brave, I want to be content, I want to be joyful. And my doctor looks at me and goes, I want you to do chemo. I said, I'm not doing chemo, I can't, and I'm not afraid to die. It's okay because I know where I'm going, and that's the great mystery, the great joy of knowing Christ. And so I would say I pray like I breathe. And I and I'm not a spiritual giant, I'm just like you, I'm no different. I'm just a I always tell people, how old are you? And they say, 50. Well, I'm I'm 79. That means I'm 29 years old, and if I failed a hundred times a year, I failed probably 290,000 times more than you failed. But the goal is to get back up.
RicWhat I want to do before we wind this down is to find out a little bit about the book, your new book, uh, Words of Hope. And that just came out in November of this last year. And it's not a book that you read cover to cover in one sitting, it's a devotional book. So yeah, show that if you show your show your book there. Oh, there we go. Perfect. Um tell me. The inspiration behind the book?
SPEAKER_01Well, it started in 1990 when my daughter went to Germany and I wrote her a letter seven days a week for eight months. Then in six years ago, my oldest granddaughter went to Oklahoma City to college, and I started emailing her every day. And my wife said, gee, those are really good. And they sent friends, and pretty soon I was handpecking about 60 out a day to friends.
RicWow.
SPEAKER_01I met this wonderful guy named Corey in our office, and he was a genius. And I said, I'm doing this. And I said, I'd like to start a blog. And we called it Words of Hope. And he said, There's one condition, because I've helped other people build big sites, and then they one day called up and quit. He said, You have to promise me you'll never quit. So we've been doing this over six years. We have over a thousand of these. And then my friend said, You got to do a book. And I uh he helped me. We chose 365 out of our arsenal because of 365 days. And we wanted to do a hardback because I just wanted to be my legacy. This is probably the greatest piece of work I've done in all the things I've done, other than life. My trophies are living people. But as far as the trophy on the wall, this is my trophy. Yeah. And uh the cover that Corey did is just, but anyway, uh, I got a call one morning or a text one morning from Advantage uh uh books, and they wanted to feature me as an artist. And I I thought it was a joke, sent it to him. And anyway, we we ordered 10,000 of these and sold all 10,000. I have a thousand people wanted to help me, and so I have a thousand still available, and you can get them on Amazon, but you can also get them through us, and they can also order my uh my other book, the Meet My Head Coach book. Uh I have about 1,800 of those still in in the warehouse. Oh, I just been too sick to to go out and sell books. I'm not gonna sell books anymore. I'm just gonna let them sell themselves.
RicSo they can they can go to your website. Um is that where they can find it to purchase? Okay. And that's um what's the website address?
SPEAKER_01It's uh wordsofope.com. Words of hope. Is that right, Corey? Words of hope.com.
RicBring Corey into the picture. We want to all say say hi to Corey. Corey's been this is my genius. There's Corey.
SPEAKER_01How are you doing, buddy? Corey is one of the greatest human beings I've ever had. He's like my son now, and he married a beautiful Russian. His his story of marrying this woman for Russia. He got the better, you got the best woman in Russia. And on in the book, in the book, his daughter wrote a poem on hopeless and hopeful. And if you read it down, it's hopeless and up. She's a 10. She wrote this was fifth grade assignment. It's it's one of the greatest in the book. In this book, her daughter.
RicWas that where did I read that? Was it in this book at all? No, this book. No, it's in this book. Because I read that and I didn't realize it was your wife that wrote that. That is it was a daughter masterpiece. The 10-year-old daughter. Oh my gosh. So, yeah, so you read you read down it, just so our audience knows, you read down the poem, and it's all negative, bad stuff, but you read it back up and it's all positive, wonderful.
SPEAKER_01And you ask yourself, how could a 10-year-old do this? I mean, this is genius. Yes. This guy's this guy's this guy's one of the finest men I've ever known in my life.
RicCorey, it's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much. And thanks for Mick helping us put this all together. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna put all that information um how to get the book, where to get the book in our show notes, so people will have an opportunity to find it and and get it that way. Um, and this has just been a tremendous um time for me. I the one thing I've learned, God brought me to doing this podcast. It was like, and he kept kept on me about it because I thought about it for a year, more than a year, and kept thinking, well, I'm too old, and I'm you know, I just retired and I'm just kind of busy, and uh all the reasons why I shouldn't. And then but it but it wouldn't go away. And and so what I found not only is not only is this um uh not only is it a is a is a is great to glorify God to other people, but it's been a it's a God gift to me to have an opportunity to talk to people like you on a regular basis. So I appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_01Your huge smile and your laughter just kind of brought the either the the best out of me or maybe my I don't know. It just I felt like I just wanted to say more all the time because of you. So you did a great job with me. You brought thank you. I think you brought my best out. Good.
RicWell, this will be hopefully this will kind of be a legacy as well, you know, that you'll have something visual that will have it'll be available on YouTube, but we'll have it available in the audio podcast.
SPEAKER_01And uh so we wanna we want to promote this. So if you get to Corey how we do this and when they're gonna when how they link up, we're gonna do that with her. We're gonna do it through the NBC and to CrownBC.com and words of hope.com.
RicOkay, oh perfect. That'd be fabulous.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
RicSo good. Well, thank you. I'll let you go. You've been you've been a pleasure. Good luck. When you come to Spokane, we'll take you out to lunch. Oh, for sure. There you go. And I and I will, like I told you, I have some roots in Spokane. So I'll be back. Yeah. I I love Spokane. I want to say a prayer.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Father. I thank you for Rick. What a beautiful man, what a generous heart. Thank you that he did say a prayer. But I just thank you the way he's honored Corey and me and treated us like we're special, treated us like we are amazing. So we just want to say thank you, bless him, and cause him to touch many, many hearts before you take him home. Amen. You're a good man. I I love you. I love you too. Thank you so much. This was this was a treat.
