{"id":1322,"date":"2020-11-06T21:34:14","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T21:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2021-12-22T23:07:49","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T23:07:49","slug":"pod-and-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/pod-and-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Pod and basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From left, Tony Eackles Jr., ’14, Craig Tucker, ’14, and Derek Maloney, ’15. Tucker and Maloney started the 325 Sports podcast to talk about their favorite teams, but this spring Tucker switched tacks and interviewed former teammates, including Eackles, about their experiences of racism.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After 14 months off the air, Craig Tucker, \u201914, revitalized his sports podcast with a new topic: racism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

325 Sports Pod<\/a> began back in 2016, and ran for almost 50 episodes with talk between Tucker and fellow alumnus Derek Maloney, \u201915, about Fantasy Football, the NFL, the World Cup, Wimbledon, and pro baseball and golf. Mostly though, they talked about basketball.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both alumni played on EOU\u2019s championship basketball team in 2012-13. Tucker\u2019s jersey number at EOU was 3 and Maloney was 25, so when they decided to make their sports-centric phone calls public, they called it 325 Sports. The podcast became fairly popular on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>, but moves and marriages meant they stopped recording for a while.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When protests erupted across the globe last June in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s death, Tucker decided to end the podcast\u2019s hiatus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe big gist of it is that some of my closest friends are Black, and I didn\u2019t feel like I could just sit back\u2014I had to do something,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to talk to my friends about these concepts and these tough things to see what I could do better, and also to raise awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tucker held six conversations with former EOU teammates who identify as Black or people of color. During these hour-long episodes, EOU alumni shared stories they\u2019d never told before. The one with Maya Ah You Dias, \u201919, was downloaded over 500 times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo hear some of their stories of being disrespected, it hits more home when it\u2019s your friend,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cIt can be hard to connect with news stories that happen far away, but seeing what my friends go through it finally hits home. All of them told me a story that I\u2019d never heard before. I was blown away that my friends were being disrespected as humans because of the color of their skin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tucker said the \u201cWar on Racism\u201d series got an overall positive response. His goal was to raise awareness, but in the process he also strengthened the relationships with his friends and teammates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey know now that I\u2019m willing to step up for them,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take the white majority to take care of this issue, to make sure people in the minority feel safe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he\u2019s learned about the importance of having an open mind, making the effort to responsibly self-educate, and being kind to others in every circumstance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith social media and instant gratification, we can say mean things without consequences. The majority of things people type, they wouldn\u2019t say in person. Take a step back, try to educate yourself, understand and then respond,\u201d he said. \u201cConversations are important, but when you don\u2019t take the time to understand someone\u2019s perspective first, it just spirals down. Just treat people like you would want to be treated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

325 Sports Pod<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Excerpt from \u201cWar on Racism: Maya Ah You-Dias\u201d (June 7, 2020)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maya Ah You-Dias, ’19<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy dad was another young Black male that was murdered. My mom went back to the detective and couldn\u2019t get a full investigation\u2026.We still don\u2019t know all of what happened. That was the first real racial discrimination that my mom really talked to me about, \u2018Sometimes officers just don\u2019t really care about people because of the color of their skin.\u2019… I still feel like if he was a white male that there would\u2019ve been a full investigation, it wouldn\u2019t have been quiet or been let go. I\u2019m still trying to process that whole situation. I still struggle with feelings of guilt.\u2026 This is something that\u2019s really close to my heart that\u2019s really personal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That was when I was 7…. We moved to Middleton, Idaho when I was 11, and that was a bit of a culture shock coming from Buffalo, New York where 36% of the population is African American. My elementary school was one of the most diverse schools in the nation \u2026 then I came to Idaho and it was 0.6% Black people in Middleton. That\u2019s when I realized that I was different and there were stereotypes about Black people \u2026 Everyone was like, \u2018Your hair is so different. Your skin is so dark. You jump so high. You play basketball so well.\u2019 All this because I was Black, and I never even knew those were stereotypes of African Americans before I came to Idaho.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpt from \u201cWar on Racism: Tony Eackles Jr.\u201d (June 4, 2020)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tony Eackles, Jr., ’14<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really debating if I should share this cuz I don\u2019t know if I ever really dealt with it all the way. I moved to Washington in 2017, and one day I\u2019m in the mall shopping in January 2018. I\u2019m shopping in the mall and two policemen come up to me and just grab me. I\u2019m on the phone and my phone drops. I\u2019m confused, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. And they\u2019re saying, \u2018What else you got in here? You\u2019re not gonna get away with this.\u2019 I\u2019m confused. I\u2019m lost. I\u2019m thinking Ashton Kutcher is gonna jump out and I\u2019m punked. They\u2019re going through my jacket. Basically they\u2019re trying to find clothes, they think that I\u2019m stealing from the store. So they put me in handcuffs. I get put in handcuffs and I go to the back. And they said, \u2018This looks like the guy who\u2019s been stealing from all the stores in the mall.\u2019 … I was just like, \u2018What?\u2019 I was in so much shock because I\u2019d never been arrested before, I\u2019d never had any run-ins with the police before. I was just in so much shock, but all they identified me as was just, he was a tall, Black male.\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I\u2019ll never forget how the officer was talking to me. He was like, \u2018You probably stole before haven\u2019t you? You\u2019re probably a petty larceny thief.\u2019 I\u2019m still processing it to this day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was really skeptical about sharing this story because it bothered me a lot. They took me to jail. You never had a shame walk \u2019til you left the mall in handcuffs. You\u2019re thrown, like really thrown, in the back of a police car, they don\u2019t put a seatbelt on you. You\u2019re treated like less than a person…. I ended up being in there like four hours. I felt like they played me. I felt like I really got taken advantage of because they were like, \u2018Your bail is $500.\u2019 When it just happened to be that I had $500 in my wallet.\u2026 I bail myself out, I go home. I didn\u2019t even really know how to deal with it. It was real tough for me because I didn\u2019t know what to do.\u2026 I ended up having to get a lawyer that I had to pay for \u2026 it took me a year to get the case dismissed. I had to keep going back to the hearing. The judge read the charges and everybody laughed, like, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re gonna dismiss the charges for what looks to be a normal Saturday out shopping.\u2019 I\u2019m sitting in there with people who do drugs, DUIs. I just got back from London, I just won a championship. \u2026 I still think about that, so many things. I was racially profiled and I never got a chance to stand up for it. I never got a chance to see that officer again \u2026 You would have thought that I was throwing things in my bag and about to run out the store. They put me in a submissive hold for shopping, shopping! I just couldn\u2019t believe that something like that had happened to me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sports podcast re-emerged this summer with a focus on how EOU alumni have experienced racism. The conversations strengthened friendships and spread awareness during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":1323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,55],"tags":[23,25,56],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-stories","category-fall-2020","tag-alumni","tag-athletics","tag-diversity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions\/1333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}