Margolies_Episode1

The speaker, Alou Margolis, discusses her college volleyball team's efforts to raise awareness for social justice and equality following the George Floyd incident. The team wore "blockout racism" t-shirts during warm-ups, practices, and even outside the classroom. The head coach, Coach Fran Flory, pledged to make a donation for every block the team made in support of social justice. The shirts gained popularity and sold out quickly. The team's actions were impactful and empowering, demonstrating their support and desire to spread awareness. Despite limited exposure, their efforts made a difference within their community and college. The speaker emphasizes the importance of coming together and understanding different perspectives to become stronger as a whole. The team's actions continue to inspire others and promote awareness nationwide. Hi, everybody. My name is Alou Margolis. I'm a senior here at Ohio University. I have participated in college volleyball for the last four years here at this university. It has been so amazing and I've loved every single moment of it. So today in this podcast, I'm going to be talking about an experience that I had around the time of the George Floyd incident and what our volleyball team did to bring more awareness to this issue. So a little bit of background on what I'm about to talk about is we wore these blockout racism t-shirts. They were black shirts that had like a volleyball over the blockout racism and they were basically worn during warm-ups. They're worn during practices, any honestly anywhere we could wear them to like we wore them outside of the classroom and all that we could wear wherever we wanted. And basically this was to really just spread more awareness about the issue of social justice and equality. So especially since after that incident, I think that was when we started to buy these shirts and really spread more awareness about it and get involved with what was going on. So of the LSU volleyball head coach, her name is Coach Fran Flory. She wore them to spread awareness about the issue of social justice and equality all across our country. She created a video on this and it was like a 45-second video and it was basically just her saying for every block that the team reports, they will make a donation to the community or campus in support of social justice. So basically in volleyball, we have fundamentals. If some people don't know, it's like setting, hitting, blocking, passing. And so a block is where you go up against the other opponent and basically block their kill or block their set or whatever it is, or if it's an overpass. But basically every block that their team got, they donated money. And that was just such an impactful moment, I think, in college volleyball, especially during the time as other teams and other head coaches started to really see how impactful it was and how it was really making a difference not only to what was going on, but just spreading so much more awareness. I mean, the shirts were put up on Etsy so quickly. The shirts were put up on Amazon. The shirts were just sold out everywhere and our team got ahold of them, like I said, and we wore them for every game. We wore them for every match. We wore them for practices when we wanted to. And it was just such a powerful moment for us, I think, coming together and just listening to what people were going through and listening to all the different perspectives and all the different lenses, I think, is just super important. Like I said, like knowing or trying to understand or just getting a better idea of what somebody might be feeling and how and what's going on in their head due to such traumatic experiences or traumatic incidents that happen all across the world is just coming together to really become stronger as a whole. I think it was so empowering. It was so impactful. It was so powering. And even though women's sports didn't really get that much exposure, I mean, we were televised and stuff, but we would post it on social media and that wasn't the purpose. I think the purpose was that in our hearts we knew that we were doing the thing that we wanted to do to show support and spread more awareness. I think we had the right mindset going into it. I didn't think we were doing it for publicity or to tag along on the train or whatever, but we were doing it because we wanted to. We were doing it because we were spreading so much awareness. And although it didn't make the biggest difference, it made a difference to the people around us. It made a difference to the community, to the campus, to the college. Everybody knew that we were in support. We were here. We were here to listen. We were here for everything that was going on. So I think that moment, especially in college volleyball, how other opponents that we would play, the LSU head coach just started to continue to bring more awareness to the issue just by making a t-shirt. It made the biggest difference in the world and just by us wearing it, you could tell that a lot of people were very appreciative of it because they were like, wow, like, you know, we're getting heard. We're getting listened to, even though it didn't seem like a lot of that at that time. But we knew that we were there for everybody that was going through it. And so, yeah, that was just a really empowering, empowering moment playing college volleyball here at OU. And I know that it continues to go on to this day. It's not stopping. And I think just making those shirts and doing the small things that you can to really just get awareness all across the country is super important. So thank you for listening.