Dumb Jocks Is Right: On State Of Iowa & Division I Volleyball Peril

It's 5:09A. I still haven't slept. I'm realizing, after yet another Iowa Civil Rights Commission form, as the way I've spent an inordinate amount of my time at home, here in Iowa, in my adult life, that some other interesting things have happened, perhaps as I became a "big Yoga Teacher." First, someone told me about the mess of a book, by the "TH," the local paper with a rep that would explain it. Then, there was the Athletic Hall of Fame. Should I care? Should I not care? Does Ashtanga-based Yoga count toward continuation, when I've pioneered & mainstreamed it? Apparently not. I was reminded tonight, in some online, random, 1st-time searching on classmates & teammates that "The Des Moines Register" didn't even give me an Honorable Mention on their 2019? Greatest Iowa Volleyball players of All Time List. LOL! Maybe that's because no one wants to talk about what I went through at DePaul, & how they couldn't help but throw the royal crown of the big Jean Nordberg Award for impeccable everything at me--twice, so I show up, oddly with the most heroic accomplishments of my career missing, in these Dark chronologies, if at all. I have had to celebrate all of the 1st's I was, including in Sport, anywhere I was, as a Korean and Asian-American female, by myself, in my own quiet realizing. I would not doubt if I was still alone in noticing or acknowledging how powerfully important and unprecedented that was. I am the only athlete, at any level, that I know whose story reads, especially as my prep career did, overcoming 3 season-ending injuries--2 in high school, 1 as I'd finally gotten all the stupid people drama out of my way, going into Sophomore year at DePaul, caused solely and completely by my own teammates, severely and grotesquely. This last realization just occurred to me, prompting me to write this Post. I have always felt that the Evil tidal wave of racism sent these obstacles to me, but it has never seemed so obvious as now. I was bullied and viciously ganged up on--by the upperclassmen on my own team--for starting and outshining everyone in pre-season, as a Freshman...but I was still the one coming across the finish line 1st, then going back for others to push them across the line, in team running drills, since they didn't do their summer training...or just weren't that athletic in other ways. Then, around 2012, when a certain highly influential group of Wahlert constituents & parents came to me, believing I might be the Messiah of the yogic world &--Could it be?!!--of Wahlert Volleyball, as well. What do you think? Some of us, during the REAL Wahlert Volleyball Empire were almost flawless in the Back Row, but we wouldn't have thought for a moment about touting ourselves as Olympians and above our own idols unless we played all around. Don't get it twisted. Players of the year on a nationally ranked team watching dumb jocks with no class play a sack of potatoes for impressive stats, talking smack outside their lane, dishonoring our sacred tradition means you LOSE. Everything. I turned down the path of a Scholar and Division I Coach ("You will never pay for School again"), before I left Undergrad because I saw this coming, and then I was solicited by a U.S. Diplomat to be one. What are you? Weaving tall talers, with no merit, except your physical, like a slave, eating Wheaties, trying to pound an endless stream of bulls**t out of that leather ball, like a Neanderthal in 2021. Sport used to be about Intelligence, Style, & Grace that demanded that from its context. Looks like that left the scene when I did. Dumb jocks it is, then!