Continuing the series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Absopure.
By Brad Rudner
Three days after the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the remainder of the 2019-20 athletic calendar, Jacqueline Young flew halfway around the world to the Philippines to live with her parents. The country was about to close its borders, and Young was racing against the clock to make it back in time.
She stayed there for months, watching a three-month lockdown slowly turn into five. The rules were so strict, only one person from her family could leave the house.
So how do you pass the time when you are essentially on house arrest? You start a podcast.
"Back in quarantine, I was on a lot of Zoom calls with friends to stay connected," Young said. "I was trying to think of ways to get meaningful conversations out of my time. I knew our lockdown wasn't going to lift for a while. It gave me an excuse to talk to new people."
The podcast, titled Benched Stories, put Young in the interviewer chair. Her goal was to get fellow student-athletes to open up about their personal stories -- the ones that rarely get told from the people who do not find themselves in the limelight. [ Listen to Benched Stories on Spotify ]
"There's a lot of value in learning from other people's experiences even if they aren't golfers," Young said. "If nobody listened to it, that's OK, because I had the conversation and I could learn from it.
To this point, she has produced five episodes: Abby Brenner (women's gymnastics), Guilia Pairone (formerly of women's tennis), Adam Wooten (men's gymnastics) and Young's teammates, Sophia Trombetta and Hailey Borja.
The production has been a family affair of sorts. Her younger siblings helped design the lead graphic, while her older sister performed the podcast's intro music. Her mother, who is a hypnotherapist and life coach, helps Young prepare for the interview by digging into potential lines of questioning.
"My goal is to have conversations that people don't normally have in interviews. Real conversations," she said. "Half of that is the questioning. If you ask people the right questions in the right way, they open up."
In addition to recording all interviews over Zoom -- from a distance, mind you; the Philippines is 12 hours ahead of Ann Arbor -- Young also tapes the audio on her phone. She stitches them together in post-production.
The podcast became an outlet for Young when golf could not be. She started playing the game when she was 4 years old in her native Singapore. The country itself is only 280 square miles, but for how small it is, there are actually quite a few courses available to play on.
In 2015, Young went to Australia for a June training trip, which happened to coincide with winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Growing up in Singapore, where it is traditionally 80 to 90 degrees (Fahrenheit) year-round, the exposure to the outside elements was eye-opening.
The next year, Young and her father flew to the U.S. to begin looking at schools. Initially, the University of Michigan was not on her list. She did not visit because she did not think she would get accepted.
Then two months before National Signing Day, head coach Jan Dowling dialed Young up on Skype. The next time they spoke, Dowling offered her a spot on the team.
Cold weather can be a deterrent for some people. Young, instead, was drawn to it.
"That trip to Australia, we played in 35-degree weather and hail for nine days," she said. "It was so tiring, so ridiculously difficult. But I love challenges and want to experience new things. That showed me that there was a whole new side of golf that I hadn't explored. I wanted to go somewhere that was academically and athletically strong. Everything lined up."
Young is taking the fall semester off, but plans to re-enroll and return to Ann Arbor in January. It was not a decision made lightly. She did not receive a passport until late August, and there were too many unknowns -- from the U.S. government's back-and-forth rulings on international student visas to the question about whether there would even be a competition season in 2021.
Despite that, she is still on track to graduate with a degree in economics. To help fill the time and expand her skill set, Young will spend the next three months as an intern with an insurance company in Singapore. Once she gets through the mountains of paperwork, she plans to become certified as a financial advisor representative through the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
The financial industry -- more client-facing discussions on wealth management and insurance plans -- is one potential avenue for Young to pursue post-college. The other two are marketing and sales. Young mentioned a financial immersion trip from the Michigan Athletics Career Center (MACC) that helped her narrow down options.
"I took higher-level economics courses in high school, and liked seeing how graphs and charts figured into the real world," she explained. "I think it complements my business interests real well. Both my parents talk about business a lot, but economics deals with more of the logistical side of things."
Until she is back, expect to hear more of Young on the airwaves. Her first season of Benched Stories is planned to be nine episodes, meaning she has at least four more episodes in the can. She has even received comments from people asking her to record a podcast on herself and her own experiences.
"I would definitely love to continue it," she said. "I'll keep having conversations whether they're recorded or not."
She also can't wait to be back in Ann Arbor, cold weather and all.
"In Michigan, I've grown to find a community I was always looking for," she said. "It's cheesy, but I mean it. I feel at home there. I can't wait to go back."
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September 23, 2020 at 09:03PM
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