Lipscomb alum Sam Phalen fulfills lifelong dream on Survivor

Sam Phalen stood, feet in the hot Fiji sand, with what felt like 100 cameras pointed at his face. None of it felt real until he heard the words “Welcome to Survivor” come out of Jeff Probst’s mouth.

Lipscomb alum Sam Phalen (2022) recently got the chance to live a “lifelong dream” as a cast member on the popular reality TV show: Survivor. 

“It was a dream forever,” said Phalen. “I had always told people I would do it one day.” 

If making the cast list weren’t enough for Phalen, he made it to the last day of the show and finished as runner-up for Season 47.

This isn’t the first time Phalen has gotten the chance to live out a lifelong dream. When he’s not on the beaches of Fiji competing for immunity challenges and searching for idols, he spends his time covering the Tennessee Titans as a beat reporter. 

Phalen has always been involved in sports, whether playing or reporting. At his Chicago-suburb high school, he was a dominant relief pitcher for the Schaumburg Saxons. His talents garnered Division I attention, and he was recruited to play baseball for Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. 

At Bradley, Phalen discovered his passion for sports media while pursuing a major in sports communication. He also discovered that Peoria and the Central Illinois media market might not be a fit for him. 

“I started to feel like I needed to make a change,” Phalen said. “I wanted to find a Christian school as well, so I began searching for opportunities to transfer.”

That’s when he “stumbled” upon Lipscomb University. Phalen was hooked after a phone call with then chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism, Alan Griggs. 

“Griggs told me about the sports media major that was coming to Lipscomb, this new opportunity that no student in Lipscomb had pursued yet, and it piqued my interest,” he said. 

While at Lipscomb, Phalen took no shortcuts. He fully committed himself to the school and to his passion for sports media. He became a tour guide for the admissions team to help inspire prospective students like he was. He also landed his first job as a beat writer covering Vanderbilt men’s basketball for Rivals. 

“Thanks to Dr. (Jimmy) McCollum, I got plugged in with a man named Chris Lee,” Phalen said. “(It) was a really nice thing to put on my resume, but also I gained my confidence a lot in the sports space to leverage it into a role after I graduated.”

After Phalen grabbed his Lipscomb diploma in May of 2022, he quickly made the jump to the pros at A to Z Sports, covering the Tennessee Titans NFL team for a full-time beat reporting job.

It was in this role where Phalen faced one of his biggest challenges: imposter syndrome. 

“I went from playing fantasy football to interviewing the people that were on my fantasy football team,” Phalen said. “It was this very weird what-am-I-doing-here sort of moment… I think I carried that with me for a little bit.”

Phalen said he felt this imposter syndrome a lot during the casting process after he applied to be on Survivor. For him it was surreal and unexpected to keep getting good news. He remembers the day that he applied and just how long that process was. 

“I was at a Titans and Bengals game in fall of 2023 and decided to pull out my phone and just start talking about my life,” he said. “So that was my audition video, which I submitted to Survivor, and I got a phone call a day later.

“Every time I would wrap a call or a meeting or submit something there was a level of anxiety of ‘Will I ever hear back?’ It was an anxious six, seven months.”

During these seven months, Phalen continued to hear good news leading to his qualifying for casting finals in Los Angeles. It was shortly after this when he got the call making it official.

“I ran around my apartment, I made a bunch of phone calls and then immediately started prepping up a plan for how I was gonna get ready,” Phalen said. “I had like a month from when I found out I was going, to when I left for Fiji.”

That plan for Fiji involved Phalen cutting caffeine, hitting the gym and doing yoga. He practiced puzzles, binged podcasts and studied past seasons. Phalen said his life was consumed by Survivor and the chance to win a million dollars.

Suddenly, the time arrived for the season to begin. Survivor 47 began filming in May of 2024 with that moment on the beach when Phalen met Probst for the first time. 

Phalen quickly became one of the game’s biggest characters on the show, getting plenty of testimonial interviews. He won the audience’s hearts after fighting from the bottom, nearly getting voted out multiple times. Arguably the most notable instance was a stunt called “Operation Italy,” in which Phalen teamed up with castmates Genevieve Mushaluk and Andy Rueda. They created a plan with a fake idol to split votes among the rest of the cast members. Miraculously, it worked, and all three stayed alive.

“I just had a weird confidence about Operation Italy,” Phalen said. “As we started the plan it, it started to make more and more sense. It started to feel like more and more of a possibility of a real path for us and I just had fun.”

Phalen’s victory was short-lived when only a few days later he contracted an infection, making him fall severely Ill. 

During an important final week of the show, Phalen suffered from fever, nausea, chills and exhaustion. He played through this illness during the final-six and final-five immunity challenges, where winning was more important than ever.

“I went to the medical tent, and I was just like, ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna do this challenge, something’s wrong with me,'” Phalen said. “The doctor looked at me, he said, ‘You got an infection; you’re just gonna have to let it run its course.’ (Finishing) was kind of a miracle… because I had nothing left in my body.” 

Phalen again faced elimination shortly thereafter when he was forced into “fire-making” during the final challenge of the season. 

The moment that Phalen lost the final-four immunity challenge, he knew that he was heading to make fire. This set him on an “emotional ride” of confidence when he had to confront reality: he didn’t know how to make fire.

“I wasn’t able to figure it out,” Phalen said. “As I was going I realized it was much harder than I had given it credit so, I started to panic.”

That’s when Phalen had to face the fear of coming up short after being so close to victory. He decided to cope by reading his “loved one letters” from his family, enjoying the beauty of Fiji.

“I said a lot of prayers on the beach that day,” Phalen said. “I was really just praying for peace.

“I had kind of accepted the fact that I was gonna give it my best and that my best might not be enough that night, and that was OK….I think that helped me keep my cool.”

Phalen remembers feeling a unique sense of peace as he attempted to spark his fire, despite castmate Teeny Chirichillo building a roaring fire that quickly began licking the rope. 

Phalen didn’t give up. He faced the adversity head-on, and just like he had all game, he found a way to come through. His flame finally sparked and grew higher and higher until it also began hitting the rope.  

Phalen immediately jumped up in the air in satisfaction and turned to see Chirichillo, head in hands in defeat. He wrapped Chirichillo into a big hug empathizing with Chirichillo’s defeat. This part he doesn’t remember so well.

“It was an out of body, spiritual experience for me,” Phalen said.

This brought Sam to the end of the road — just he, castmates Rachel LaMont and Sue Smey as the three remaining “survivors.” With Smey having no legitimate chance to win, it came down to the two former Gata tribe members facing off in the final tribal council making their cases to the jury to see who would be declared the winner.

Phalen saw LaMont as a big-sister-like figure, whom he competed with and against for all 26 days of filming. 

“There was a moment before we left for final tribal council that I kinda just looked at her, I’m like, ‘You know, I’m kinda coming for your neck tonight…it’s gonna be a battle,’ and she looked back at me and was like, ‘Yeah, ditto’.”

Phalen viewed himself as an underdog to LaMont and knew he had to be aggressive to get his case across to the jury. Despite his best efforts, LaMont ended up the victor. 

“I was happy for her and devastated for myself,” Phalen said. “You don’t know whether to feel proud of making it that far and doing that well, or disappointed that you came up short.

“I was trying to remain as graceful as possible, remain as positive as possible.”

After all the pageantry of the Survivor finale, Phalen headed home to essentially restart his life. It was a hard adjustment for him. He remembered being in a weird place after living such a “impactful, traumatic experience” and not being able to talk about it with anyone. 

“I wanted to starve myself and sleep on bamboo again,” he said. 

Despite wanting to share about his time in Fiji, Phalen kept the results of the show a secret following the guidance of Probst.

“Jeff likes to say, ‘The power is in your hands’ with the information about everything that happens, and that it will be a more rewarding experience if you keep it,” Phalen said. 

“I found the experience of watching the show back so much more rewarding when I have family and friends that are as excited about the episode as I was in real time… it was great advice from Jeff, as always.”

Phalen remembered watching it back with his family and friends and being fascinated seeing the conversations and interactions that he had only heard about during the game. All the events that happened on the other tribes’ beaches, the individual confessionals each player gave he had pictured in his mind but never actually saw. 

Participating as a contestant on Season 47 of Survivor did a lot for Phalen. He said the 26-day experience changed him as a person. That imposter syndrome that he struggled with all his life began to fade as he overcame challenge after challenge in Fiji. 

“Throughout the Survivor casting process I kept feeling like, ‘Well, surely they’re not gonna pick me; surely its gonna go to somebody else…like, I’m just… me.’ I think one being selected to go play and going out there and making it all the way to the end of the game I got to do something and achieve something that, I don’t know, 60 people have done, ever.

“That to me gave me a lot of confidence to know that I was out there for a reason. They chose me for a reason, and God gave me gifts for a reason. I tried to carry that with me outside of Survivor to have the confidence to know the opportunities to come open to me in life are there because the Lord wants me to explore them and not because of happenstance or luck.”

Living out a lifelong dream on the beaches of Fiji meant more than just a chance at $1 million for Phalen. It meant finding himself, building connections with others and with God. It meant pushing himself out of his comfort zone in what felt like every way possible. 

For the young 24-year-old, “Welcome to Survivor” is just the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of growth.