Growing Community Media is excited to announce that Wednesday Journal and Riverside-Brookfield Landmark’s local sports coverage will expand to audio reporting and storytelling. “The On Deck Pod” will be hosted by sports editor James Kay and will contain interviews with players, coaches, alumni and other members of the local sports community.
Right now, we have two episodes out on PodBean. The show will be added to Apple Podcast in the near future (hopefully other platforms as well).
If you have ideas for episodes or stories that you think translate well to this medium, email our mailbag at ondeckpodmailbag@gmail.com.
Here are recaps of the first two editions of the podcast.
Episode One: Sports and Resistance
It took OPRF’s boys basketball head coach Matt Maloney over a decade to create a class that analyzes American history through the lens of sport. However, it wasn’t approved and added as an elective in the history curriculum until 2013. Initially, it was called “Race, Class, and Gender in America Sports,” but the name has been changed to what it was originally proposed as: Sports and Resistance in American History.
“I was really happy for the student athletes who were taking the course,” said Maloney during the interview. “There were a lot of students who I thought that got excited about the subject matter and said things like, ‘this is the first time I have been excited about history or the first time I have seen myself in the curriculum.’ And then to share with them that this is goin g to benefit [the students who took the course] as a part of your core GPA; I had kids telling me that they read more, written more, thought more deeply because they were actually engaged in the subject matter.”
Throughout the episode, Maloney details how the class has evolved, how he dealt with the discussion around Colin Kaepernick in real time, how professional athletes being more open about their political beliefs has helped the course thrive, and much more.
(You can find the link: here)
Episode Two: One on one w/Tricia Liston
Tricia Liston left Fenwick in 2010 as one of the best basketball players the program had ever seen. In this episode, Liston discusses her time adjusting to playing at Duke, how difficult the process was going from college to the WNBA, and how she dealt with life after basketball.
Like most WNBA players, Liston had to split time between the WNBA and Europe to make enough money as a professional athlete. She details the process of what it is like to play a sport in a foreign country and how she worked with former athletes with the transition she had to make after retiring from the WNBA in 2016.
“You kind of take a step back and for me, and I am sure most girls feel this way, you don’t really know what’s next,” said Liston during the interview. “It’s not because you haven’t found it, but for 20-something years it was basketball. Having to kind of take that step back of, ‘Okay what does my life professionally look like?’ It’s hard. It’s really hard to find what’s going to keep you ticking the way basketball did.”
(You can find the link: here)
