HLTH 320 StandwStanford podcast ep. 1

In this episode of Stand with Stanford, the host interviews Jackie King, a goalie for the women's water polo team. Jackie describes her intense daily schedule, which includes two practices, classes, homework, meals, and study time. She shares how this busy schedule affected her gameplay in a game against UC Davis. Jackie also discusses the lack of convenient counseling services for athletes at Stanford and expresses interest in a website that provides a support system for athletes. The episode concludes with gratitude for Jackie's participation and an invitation to the next episode. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Stand with Stanford. Stay tuned and we will take a dive into this week's topic. Alright, let's get started on this week's episode. I'm your host, Vianton, and today I have a special guest here for you guys. She will be sharing her current experience playing for Stanford and some of the struggles she's dealing with. So, everybody give a warm welcome to no other than Jackie King. Woo! Alright, so let's get started. What sport are you involved in at Stanford and tell me a bit about your position. I'm the goalie for the women's water polo team at Stanford. Yeah, and basically just walk me through a typical day for you during the competition season. Well, we usually have two practices a day and we alternate between an early morning lift and an early morning swim for conditioning. After the early start, depending on the day, I either go to class or get a head start on some homework. Throughout the day, I'd fit in some meals and study time if I don't have class before I go to practice. But our training is intense during the season with practices being like three hours long. But depending on the game that weekend, we'll watch some footage to see how we can improve, which adds like another hour to practice. Overall, it's a pretty packed day. That sounds like a pretty overwhelming schedule. Can you tell me a time when having this type of schedule affected your gameplay? Yes, it was during our game against UC Davis at the beginning of the season, I believe. We won with the score being 13 to 10, I want to say. So we were neck and neck for the most of it. In a game like that, the pressure is high and the competitiveness is super intense. But the game was so fast paced, I hardly remember any of it. But I remember how nervous I was. As a sophomore, I still have much to learn. And Maya Avital, who's our other goalie, who's actually a senior this year. She's taught me so much and I look up to her a lot. So I'm super sad to see her leave. But since she's a senior, she's such an amazing player in the cage. So watching her, I was super surprised when I subbed in for the second and the third quarters. While I was in the cage, all I could think about was the amount of work I needed to complete after this game. Thinking about my workload, obviously it didn't help my performance. But luckily, we came out with a win. But honestly, it didn't feel like a win to me. I only made three saves that day. And the game stuck with me for the longest time during the season. So it seems like that game was a huge learning experience for you and kind of showed you that your schedule was kind of inhibiting your athletic performance. Was there something that Stanford could do to help alleviate that issue? We do have counseling, but it's not very convenient when what's stressing you out is having a big, busy schedule that you're having a hard time with balancing. But it makes it hard for you to reach out to those services. Yes, I totally hear you. So basically, the purpose of our website is to instill a support system within the women's athletic department at Stanford so that it's convenient for you to go to. And since you've expressed that you and many others don't really make use of the counselors provided because of your busy schedule, our website is designed to your convenience and easy to navigate. So does that sound like something you or other athletes might utilize or even be interested in? Yeah, definitely. That sounds like something I know a lot of us could maybe need one day and would definitely not be afraid to utilize. I think the convenience of it would definitely be more accessible to us too, which is something that we can't always find anywhere or have time to research. Oh, well, that sounds great. Well, thank you so much for coming on to this podcast. That's all the time we have for today. And I'm really happy that you were able to come on. And thank you for listening in on this podcast. And we'll see you next time. Thank you.