Blueprint: Unlacing Our Shoes is a podcast focused on answering a question that humanizes athletes, challenging the audience and interviewees to think beyond the surface level. The focus will be on a specific broad question that jumps head first into a rabbit hole pertaining to each individual athlete’s answers.
Title: Unlacing Our Shoes
One Liner for Episode: Holden Velasco and Queens College men’s basketball player, Jayden Seraphin, explore how losing their mother in youth affected their approach to athletics.
One Liner for Podcast: Challenging the audience and interviewees to think about the psychological aspect of athletics, not just the entertaining end result.
Interview Questions:
- How was your relationship with your mother?
- When did you lose her and how did you feel in the following months?
- In the immediate games after, did you think about her on the court at all?
- In the immediate practices after, were you able to focus like you did before?
- Did her passing affect your mindset in any way?
- Did that enact a change in your training regime?
- Do you do anything to honor her in your athletics in any way?
- What about in every day life?
- Do you think about her on the court at all today? Why do you think that is or isn’t the case?
- If you could speak to an athlete who lost their mother today, what would you say to them?
Hi Holden, I definitely think that people will be interested in this aspect of an athlete’s life. At first, I thought it was going to be about basketball players in general. But when I read the detail about losing a parent, I immediately became hooked because it shows a side of a person that many fans do not see. Usually we only go for the entertainment, but there is a whole other side to the story that needs to be told. As someone interested in topics relating to mental health, loss is one of those topics that grabs my attention right away.
Just curious, are you also going to share your experience? Based on the one-liner I thought that it also affected your approach to athletics. Could be the wording but could also make for a great podcast if it encompasses an aspect that also relates to your life.