by Eve Loehrer (Jegna Klub intern)
On Tuesday June 28, Washington High School alumnus, former NBA player, and namesake of the Earl Watson Early Childhood Center appeared on the Jegna Klub’s Evening Social Podcast. Watson discussed his childhood, his time in the NBA, and his coaching career with podcast hosts Moses Wyatt and Jabrelle Janae.
Watson was a college athlete at UCLA before playing in the NBA for 13 years. When he retired from the NBA in 2014, he took an assistant coaching position for the Austin Spurs.
Currently, he serves as an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors. After moving all over the country to play and coach for the NBA, Watson has returned to his Kansas City roots.
“We’re from a county that I think we take for granted. We’re from a county of free slaves,” Watson said about his childhood home, Wyandotte County, during the podcast. “That energy forever lives, right, and we don’t understand that power. We talk about superpower, that’s the source”
Now, Watson also works with his girls’ youth basketball program, Earl Watson Academy, in the Kansas City area because he believes everyone deserves an opportunity to improve in their skills and as a person. He works specifically with girls because women’s teams typically are given fewer resources and less support.
While Watson works with teens through basketball, the Jegna Klub offers teens the opportunity to work behind the scenes of the podcast. Through the Connecting the Dottes internship program, youth interested in broadcasting, social media, journalism, graphic design, and video production can develop their skills through real world experiences. Through these programs, Watson and Wyatt hope to bring opportunities to Kansas City so youth like them can achieve their goals.
“Somewhere along the line they made it seem like only one can make it, and that’s not true,” Watson said. “The world is bigger than the city we live in, our county. There’s opportunity everywhere.”