As a first-generation low-income child in Sacramento, California, my mother instilled in my sisters and me from a very young age that sports and education were our way out of our rough situation. And she was right; sports have taken me very far in life. Sports have played an integral part in my development as a person and a scholar.
Many moons ago, I decided to move across the country and attend a random school in Ohio that nobody in my immediate circle knew anything about. And the rest is history.
By the time I graduated from that random school in Ohio, I was a 2x DIII National Champion in women's track and field. I am the first female national champion in school history and the only multiple-time national champion, regardless of gender, in the history of Oberlin College. And yes, I did this all as a queer Black woman at a predominantly white institution that just so happened to be the first college in the United States to accept Black students. As you will notice on my CV, my love of sports has spilled over into the classroom in many ways. For example, during the fall of 2021, I was a teaching assistant for a Political Science first-year seminar titled "Sport, Politics, and Public Opinion". I played an integral role in updating the syllabus for the course.
I believe that sports teams represent laboratories for leadership and democracy at large. I argue we can learn a lot about American politics by paying attention to what occurs within sport settings.
