The Surprising Story Behind My Professional Career - You Won't Believe it!

Defeat is Optional: Ronnie Baker's Journey of Faith and Resilience in Sports

In this episode  Ronnie Baker, a professional track and field athlete, shares transformative stories from his Olympic journey. Ronnie discusses how turning pain into victory, overcoming injuries, and using adversity to his advantage shaped his career. He emphasizes the importance of resilience, tenacity, and faith, all rooted in biblical truth. Highlighting his personal recruitment story at Texas Christian University (TCU), he demonstrates how intricate connections and God's plan guided his path. He encourages athletes to trust in God's design, embrace adversity as part of their growth, and maintain faith through all challenges, reinforcing that with God, every setback is a setup for a comeback.

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Transcript

Welcome to Defeat is Optional, the podcast dedicated to athletes determined to achieve success and overcome adversity. I'm your host, Ronnie Baker, a professional track and field athlete here to guide you through this life-altering journey. In this podcast, I'll share powerful, real, and transformative stories from my own Olympic journey. Stories of turning pain into victory, overcoming injuries, and using adversity to my advantage.

If you're driven, seeking motivation, struggling with setbacks, or on the verge of giving up, this podcast is for you. You'll discover the power of resilience, tenacity, and, most importantly, faith. Defeat is Optional is about gaining mental strength to succeed in sports, all rooted in biblical truth. Get ready to unlock your potential and defy the odds with every episode.

Defeat is Optional is not just a podcast. It's a way of life.

Segue

Before we get started, I want you all to know that 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

My words are not God-breathed; they're merely my inspiration from God. While this podcast may be helpful for you, my goal is to encourage you to seek Christ. Romans 12:1 says, "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." This is how you spend time with God—by offering yourself in study and prayer. All the inspiration I get for this podcast comes from the time I spend in prayer and reading my Bible, combined with some life experiences. And if you don't know the word, you cannot test what I'm saying. 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 says, "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast to what is good."

So hold fast to God's word, not mine, and you'll start to know in your heart that defeat really is optional. Now, back to your regularly scheduled podcast.

Intro

Hey friends. Welcome to Defeat is Optional, the place where I remind you of the power of resilience, tenacity, and, most importantly, faith.

This podcast is all about gaining the faith you need to succeed in sports as a Christian athlete, all rooted in biblical truth. I'm your friend and your host, Ronnie Baker.

Episode Start

A key to excelling in sport is taking your mental game to the next level. To do that, you have to understand that success is not always measured in wins and losses and that blessings, also known as wins, are meant to be an everyday occurrence. There may be something specific you're doing that's blocking you from experiencing wins on a more regular basis. I'm going to share a personal story from my life on how I became an Olympic athlete and how I connected with a coach who helped me get there. This story not only helped me recognize more everyday blessings but also increased my faith and trust in God's plan for me. It made me realize that I can take more calculated risks as an athlete, and I can receive bigger rewards because I understand that God is always working things out for my good. I don't have to be afraid when I know that God is sovereign over my life. And with this type of mindset, your mental game too can excel because you can understand that adversity is a part of God's plan to mature you in your faith and help you conquer your setbacks.

I want to start by asking a question. Have you ever been in a situation where you doubted your abilities but somehow pulled off a win when the odds were against you? Perhaps you were recruited by a school and at the last minute they found the scholarship you needed. Or maybe you were healed from an injury just in time to compete. I'm here to tell you that these things are no coincidence. God is at work, guiding you and orchestrating even the smallest details of your life, even in your sports. In this episode, I'm going to share a story from my life about how God had a plan for me to attend TCU, which ultimately was a major catalyst that led me to becoming a professional athlete.

I actually believe that we have free will, but I also believe that God knows all of our choices before we make them. In knowing, He directs and guides our lives exactly into the spaces He wants us to be in based on our decisions because He loves us and has our best interests at heart. When we as athletes understand that no matter the decisions we make, God will see us through—whether that's growing our character by using our decision to teach us how to be gracious in temporary defeat or allowing us to experience the win in the exact way we had it mapped out—it's still a blessing, even when we have to suffer through some pain in the process. In fact, embracing that pain is the foundation of the Defeat is Optional podcast. I hope in this episode, I can help you relax and take any troubling situation to God, knowing that whatever is happening in your athletic career is exactly what was supposed to happen all along. Yes, even if that means losing or dealing with an injury.

My Story

Now I tell people all the time that I was destined to run. I'm about to tell you a story about my recruitment to be a D1 athlete that has deepened my faith, brought joy to my life, and allowed me to be at peace, trusting that God is in complete control over everything. So let's go back to 2003—a younger, much slower version of Ronnie Baker. I was a kid in elementary school; I was actually in third grade at the time. And I was always the fastest kid in my class.

I would win every mile test we had to do. If we played tag, I was never it. I remember being in school and our gym teacher, Mr. Jones—I'll never forget him—was an awesome guy. Shout out to Willow Crest Elementary School in Anchorage, Alaska. Yep, that's right; I lived in Anchorage, Alaska, for seven years of my childhood. But anyway, Mr. Jones liked to test my speed every once in a while. At the end of gym class, he would have any kid who thought they could beat me in a race race me. But this wasn't a race in a straight line; this was a race to see who could finish a suicide first. A suicide is a conditioning drill used in basketball where you sprint different lengths of the court. This was a race to see who could finish a suicide first.

But here's the kicker: Mr. Jones would always give the other kid a head start. And of course, I would always win. I had the signs of some athleticism at a pretty young age.

Fast forward to high school. I won two state titles, one in the 100 and another in the 400 meters. I actually did that both my junior and my senior year, so I won a total of four. I always got second in the 200—don't ask me why, but the 200 has never been my friend, and it still isn't to this day.

So, I won those four state titles my junior and senior year, and I was actually ranked in the top 50 high school sprinters in the nation. But growing up, my father wasn't always around, and so being the oldest, it was sometimes a challenge because I had to be the quote-unquote man of the house and help my mom get things done. My mom never finished college; my dad never went. And so you can imagine we knew nothing about the process of getting recruited. I didn't know anything; my mom didn't know anything. But it was my senior year, and I was doing well. I had won the Kentucky Gatorade Track and Field Athlete of the Year award, and I was ranked in the top 50 high school students in the country for the 400 meters.

I knew there was a possibility of me going to college. The thing is, I didn't want to stay in Louisville for school, and I knew I needed a full ride because my mom couldn't afford for me to go to college, and I didn't want to have a bunch of student loan debt. Either way, we started getting some letters from various universities and calls from coaches during the recruiting period. I had a few offers—one from UCLA, one from TCU, one from Ohio State, and I was also talking to Arizona State. At the time, I had gotten letters from Purdue and Princeton and all these other places.

I'm not sure why Louisville and Kentucky never reached out to me, but I think it was because I had told my high school coach early on that I didn't want to stay in the state, and maybe they had called him, reached out to him, talked to him at a meet or something, and he told them that maybe they didn't reach out. Who knows why they didn't reach out, but it was all part of God's plan.

One night, while my mom was doing her hair in the upstairs bathroom, she called out, "Hey, come up here for a second." So I headed upstairs, and she asked, "Would you want to take a visit to TCU?" I remember immediately being confused. I was like, "What's TCU?" I immediately thought that TCU was a place in Tennessee or something. My mom laughed, and she said, "No, it's in Texas. It's Texas Christian University." I remember this like it was yesterday. I frowned and immediately told my mom, "I do not want to go to a Christian school." So, you know, we kind of talked a little bit about it.

She said, "Hey, I think you should take a visit there because they're offering you a full ride." I only had five visits. I knew that back then you could only take five official visits, and I didn't want to waste one on TCU, but my mom told me that they were going to offer me a full ride. So I said, "Hey, we should probably check it out, right?"

We visited TCU, and I absolutely loved it. I really just loved the campus. I loved Texas; it was warm there. I didn't like winters because I had lived in Anchorage, Alaska, like I told you guys, and I wasn't fond of the snow. I wanted to go somewhere warm. I was going to be outside running, so I figured, hey, Texas is a good place for that.

I loved the Southern hospitality; everything about it was great. I loved the small school feel, one because I was going to be really far from home. I didn't want to get lost in the sauce with class sizes of 100, 200, 300 kids. I wanted to be able to have a personal connection with my professors.

All these things went into my decisions, but also TCU has some of the richest sprint history in college track and field. If you guys didn't know, we held the four by 100 collegiate record for like 25 years; we had the most sub-10 sprinters of all the colleges in the history of college track and field.

So those were all things that I was taking into consideration when I was making my decision, but I loved it. I didn't have the most fun on that visit because, you know, I went on visits to Ohio State and UCLA—bigger schools—but something about TCU felt right. Little did I know this was a part of God's plan all along. So I took the TCU visit first; I was really excited about going there.

I also took a visit to Ohio State and UCLA, like I said, but I took those visits because honestly, I was a kid that lived in the hood of Louisville, Kentucky. I hadn't been anywhere, and I wanted to go to California for free and Ohio State for free. I knew that they were going to put me on the football field, and it was going to be a great time.

So I took those visits, really just to go and have fun and also to miss school. So I'm not going to lie. But the big thing about TCU was that it was the only school that offered me a full ride scholarship. You know, I'd taken the visit to Ohio State; they had told me that they weren't going to give me a full ride, then, you know, right before I was supposed to drive up there to Ohio, they said they were going to give me a full ride.

They were kind of back and forth, and then when we met with the coach and the staff, they said that they were going to be 90%. And so I'm like in the back of my head, I'm really just there for a good time because I'm like, I know that TCU is going to give me all the money that I need to go to school debt-free. That was a big thing.

Now here's where the story gets wild. How did I end up at TCU? It all started years before I was even born. Back when my mom was graduating high school, she desperately wanted to join the Air Force. My mom told me she pretty much begged my grandmother to let her go, but my grandmother wouldn't allow it. So my mom ended up having to stay at home. My mom actually ended up going to WKU instead, which is Western Kentucky University.

The big thing about that is that she never actually applied to go to the school herself. Her friend, Sherry, actually filled out the application for her because she didn't want to attend university. My mom's heart was set on going to the Air Force; when she couldn't go, she wasn't going to go to school.

She was just going to work, but her friend Sherry said, "Hey, I'm going to go to school. You're not doing anything. Let's go." So she filled out an application for my mom. My mom got to WKU. Sherry convinced her to go to one of those mixers that they do. If you've ever been to college and you've been a freshman, you know they have all kinds of mixers on campus when you first get there, whether that's in your dorm or in the common area. They have all kinds of events so you can meet people and get to know your new friends that you're going to be going to class with and graduating with in four years. While she was there, she actually met one of her best friends, still to this day. Her name is Stanya Taylor, and her brother Avery was also going to WKU. So she met both of them at WKU.

I call Stanya my aunt because she's like one of my mom's best friends. I remember when I was really young, we went to visit her out in California when she lived out there; we went to Disneyland. It was super fun. But my mom never finished school at WKU. Neither did Stanya, neither did her brother Avery, nor did my mom's friend Sherry. So fast forward 18 years, and my mom is on the phone telling my aunt Stanya about my success in track. My aunt gets ecstatic about this, and she asks, "Ronnie runs track?!"

Which is crazy that she didn't know that. Maybe she did; maybe she didn't know how fast I ran, but she asked my mom that. Anyway, Stanya's brother Avery, who was a principal and track coach, happened to know the assistant sprint coach at TCU. Avery reached out to TCU on my behalf.

Guys, here's the kicker: the assistant sprint coach at TCU just so happened to be married to the girl that Avery had adopted years ago. The connections, the timing, the people—none of this was coincidence. It was all God's design.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." God knew where I needed to be, and He used all of these intricate connections to make it happen. All this happening couldn't be a coincidence, which further solidifies that God had already planned this for my life—for me to end up at TCU. My grandmother had to first convince my mom not to join the Air Force. Then my mom's friend needed to enroll her at WKU. My mom then had to decide to actually show up and go to school, let alone go to a mixer she didn't want to go to and meet Stanya and her brother Avery. Not to mention that none of them finished their degrees at WKU, which, if you think about it for my mom, I think her sole reason for being there was to meet them. They ended up going on and finishing their degrees in other places, but for that time that my mom went to WKU, they were there and they met. Avery would just so happen to be an avid track and field fan and a principal and high school track coach at a school in Maryland. Not only that, but he also had to adopt the girl who was now the assistant sprint coach's wife at TCU. Oh, and don't forget, TCU was the only school to offer me a full ride scholarship.

Our whole life is cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. And if you're listening to what I'm saying, God is working on giving you things and blessings in your life that you don't even know you want yet. This stuff was happening before I was even born, before I was even conceived, before my parents were even married. These things were being put in place. Psalm 139:1-4 says, "You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely."

So why do we worry as athletes? Why do we stress so much about our future, our competitions, our preparations? I'll tell you why: it's because when we pray and make God aware of what we want, we also, as humans, become hyper-aware of what we don't have, and our tendency is to focus on the things we lack versus focusing on the things that we've already been blessed with. The goal in order to develop mental strength is to keep our focus as athletes on God and trust that He hears our prayers and knows what's best for us. The best thing we can do is to ask God and then focus on staying disciplined in our daily endeavors to achieve what we asked for, all while trusting God in the waiting.

God knows every detail of our lives. He's not surprised by the hurdles we face or the decisions we make. Romans 8:28 reminds us that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. So even when things seem uncertain, God is working them out for our good. So don't be afraid to make decisions; don't be upset when you face adversity. For the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Your life and all the decisions you've made and will make are leading you into all good. That includes your athletic career too.

If it happened that way, and it was painful, it was always meant to happen that way.

A time that was really painful for me this year was missing out on making the 2024 Olympic team. A couple of hours after not making the team and missing out on the final in the 100, it was hard. You know, the first day, the first two days, the first week really is hard because you're thinking about all the things that you could've done to change it.

But I started to talk to God; I started to pray about it. I realized by praying and then also having some conversations with some friends that I was never going to make that team. It was a part of my life; it had already been written years and years ago.

But it's okay, because what I understand and what I know now is that God never makes mistakes.

Now, some of you guys are listening to this podcast and you're saying, "Well, if you were destined, it was already written that you were not going to make this team, then what's the point of trying? If we have free will, but God already has a plan for us, then what are we doing? Why are we making these decisions?"

Because our decisions don't matter. I think that sometimes we can get lost in asking these questions, and these were questions that I asked myself because I was like, "It doesn't matter what decisions I make. It doesn't matter what I do, how I recover, how I train, because it's already going to be written whether I'm going to make it or not." They think this is a part; this is, I don't think it is.

This is a part of God's design; we are not supposed to know. The friend that I had a conversation with this past summer after the Olympic trials, her name is Talitha Diggs. She's a professional track and field athlete as well; she runs the 400 meters. She asked me this question: "If you knew you weren't going to make the Olympic team this year, would you have trained as hard as you did?" I looked her in the face and said, "Absolutely not. I wouldn't have trained as hard." And this is a part of God's design. We're not supposed to know; we're supposed to have faith that the work that we're putting in is going to result in us achieving our goals.

And He couldn't allow me to know that because I would have slacked.

I wouldn't have been disciplined. I wouldn't have tried as hard. And it's in the journey; it's in the trying; it's in the work that we put in; it's in the discipline that we grow and mature as athletes, and also it's the way that we grow and mature in our faith. God needed me to be clueless about the future and what was going to happen, but He needed me to trust Him. In me trusting Him is what allowed me to do the work.

It's what allows me to do the work with gratitude. It's what allows me to put my full effort into my training because in that journey, in the training, in the hard work, that is where you grow. And if you already know the outcome, then you won't try as hard. You won't seek God at all because you'll know the outcome. So it defeats the purpose of having faith.

If you don't get anything from this podcast, understand that God never makes mistakes. He's not making a mistake in your life; He's not making a mistake; He has never made a mistake, and He never will make a mistake.

I understand now that without all the adversity I faced in sport, I wouldn't actually have sought to gain the mental strength and change my mental game because I would have been getting everything I wanted. So I wouldn't have had to go to work on who I was as an athlete and who I am as a person. But because of the adversity that I've gone through, it made me want to be better.

It made me want to change and strengthened my mental game. And honestly, if I didn't have all the adversity, there would be no Defeat is Optional podcast. I wouldn't be here sharing my insights with you, helping you guys to not only be better in sport but also to seek God for answers, to seek Christ to help you become a better person so that you can be ready when the success comes. I'm right where I'm supposed to be, and so are you. Proverbs 16:9 says, "The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." And when I look back on my journey, I see that it was all orchestrated by God—my gift of speed, the friendships my mom made, the connections with TCU—everything, all of it. And it led me to becoming a professional athlete, winning two NCAA titles, breaking a few records along the way, and becoming an Olympic athlete in the 2021 Olympics.

If you're feeling lost or uncertain about your future, I want you to know this: that God is in control. He's not just guiding your career; He's literally guiding your life. Psalms 37:23 says, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way." So I want you guys to trust that He's ordering all of your steps as well.

Outro

So athletes, whether you're facing injury, whether you're facing rejection, or uncertainty, remember Defeat is Optional because with God, every challenge is an opportunity for growth. And every setback is a setup for a comeback.

Thank you guys for listening. I hope my story encouraged you to see God's hand in your own journey. Remember, nothing in your life is a coincidence. As long as you keep the faith, God will guide you through every trial and triumph. If you enjoyed today's episode and it helped you, then share it with a friend. Remember, Defeat is Optional is not just a podcast. It's a way of life—a series of choices you get to make every day to grow your faith so you can be successful as a Christian athlete. I love you guys, and I will catch you in the next episode.