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| Jill Thaw |
Thaw was born in Tampa, Florida. Thaw's parents worked in healthcare administration and were constantly relocating during her youth.
"I've lived in just about every single state with an SEC program," Thaw said.
She now resides in Athens, Georgia.
Thaw says it was her family genetic makeup that undoubtedly influenced her to participate in athletics. Thaw's father played in the College World Series in 1981 for the University of South Carolina.
While growing up, Thaw played both tennis and basketball. Now, as a master's student at S.I. Newhouse School, she continues to be active by instructing spinning classes for Syracuse University students, faculty, staff, and the community.
When it comes to her ambition, Thaw says she aspires to do magazine or script writing based on how current and former professional athletes, as well as athletes in general, live their daily lives. Thaw says she would like to focus particularly on their diet and fitness regimens.
Thaw says she is also intrigued by how retired professional athletes cope with life at the conclusion of their careers.
"Once in a while you can find an article about x defensive lineman (in the NFL) who talks about how hard it is to just get out of bed in the morning because of what happened to his body over the course of ten years of playing a professional sport and I think it's just very interesting, very fascinating," Thaw said.
Interview with Jillian Thaw
JT: I did.
JT: I'm not from Atlanta. I am from the southeast in general. I've lived in just about every single state with an SEC program. Mainly grew up in Louisiana. Spent about eight or nine years there so to follow my professional teams New Orleans and then to follow LSU but my younger sister is a senior at UGA so I'll have a few schizo moments but east and west SEC so I think I can mesh it together for football season this year.
AP: What influenced you into playing sports? Did you play sports growing up?
JT: I did play sports growing up. I was always really active and it comes I think from our family. My dad played baseball every day of his life growing up. He played in the College World Series in 1981.
AP: For what school?
JT: South Carolina. And my mother while she didn't play anything to that extent she's always been very active as well so I think that at least wanting to move around a bit was sort of an inherent thing in our family.
AP: Now did they, your dad in particular, did he heavily influence you into playing a sport when you were at a young age or did he kind of let you be and decide what you wanted to do?
JT: A little bit of both. I have a younger sister so it's just all girls and him and he-we both played softball growing up but he was always very productive-I mean just very positive about what we wanted to do so if we didn't like a sport or if we didn't like an activity he never pushed us to do anything but he always said that we needed to do a sport of some of-of some nature so that what you learn from playing a sport is...you know...
AP: And what sport did you participate in? Or sports?
JT: I grew up mainly playing tennis and basketball. I played basketball through...about halfway through high school and then there was a coaching change so quite a bit of us just kind of quit afterwards...which happens. I'm not particularly tall or anything. I don't think I have like a super great future in basketball but it's very fun playing it and I was pretty good. I was pretty fast but I was a point guard or wing for a little while and then tennis I played pretty competitively also about halfway through high school and then after that just sort of took to running and took to kind of doing whatever I felt like and I got more casual and then it became more of a-I started realizing that I liked more aspects than just the competitive part of it. But that-learning to play sports competitively you learn so much about having to work as a team and having to work with individuals whether their your coaches, your teammates, your trainers...
AP: What planted the seed if you will to follow sports and to have that as an ambition in your life?
JT: Again, I think it's at least personally some of it is just my interest of being kind of active and to having grown up playing it but I think it's a great...it's a very relevant part of society. It's a very influential part of society especially American football, which is sort of why I'm...
AP: Can you elaborate on that? What ways?
JT: Well it's-it's recession proof. It's you know DVR proof so you-you're always watching it which is why you know you even look like economically why these commercial spots are costing millions of dollars. Every-it's schedule and in American society what do they say that between the DVR your own schedule is what you can do on television. On the internet people are kind of doing their own thing but everyone stops on Sunday to watch football for a few hours so it gets everyone together socially for four hours on Sunday watching your team becomes a really great venue to market something so it's why some of these you know some of these reporters and athletes have so much power I think to be a really positive influence on it and so my interest again with that is how do you take the health and the healthy aspects of that to a society that has so many health problems and fix those health problems.
AP: What would be your approach if you were to be hired to...to work in that field?
JT: I think I would...right sure no, no, no my ideally would be to be sort of behind the scenes where I'm working with magazine writing or doing script writing or something like that. Giving someone a little bit more charismatic, a little-a little more good looking to you sit up in front of the TV screen you guys can talk. You guys can do that it's fine but-and sort of studying how-how these healthy benefits are coming across. What are they eating? How are they training? How you know obviously most of us aren't going to be able to-we're not being active for a living so you're not going to be training for eight hours a day but what parts can you take from their life to incorporate that into your life so that we're not having problems with cardiovascular disease. We're not having problems with diabetes. We're not having problems with you know whatever throw it out at you over training but you know it becomes specialized but I think that when you take the aspect of these people being whether they like it or not role models in some capacity you know that's a great way to sort of not-to put a different kind of pressure on them. I think it would be much easier for some of them to embrace the role of being okay like go out there and run. That's why a lot of those guys really like to go to schools and do that kind of stuff as opposed to being the good boy who doesn't go out and drink or like hook up with girls or whatever and they get very tense about that but that's a way for them not to do that and I think that's a better way like who cares what you do on the sidelines as long as you're sort of promoting this healthy living thing and again you know childhood obesity. How do you combat that to keep these kids active and if you watch sports where people are constantly getting hurt and are whether it's-they're out for a season or they are out for the year or they end up the Junior Seau case where he ended up killing himself you might not have parents who are wanting to put these kids in programs and not only are they not learning teamwork and how to be-how to work with other people they might not get along with very well or you know how to solve problems on the field they're also not getting that active benefits of it.
AP: So you would look not only at what current players are doing in terms of their dietary habits but also players that have retired from the game...focus on both?
JT: Oh absolutely. Players who have-who are struggling with a lot of long term effects of having played a sport especially before technology has really started to make it somewhat better it's still not quite where it needs to be but great resource and then you watch them-I mean you watch them struggle. Once in a while you can find an article about x defensive lineman you know x center from the NBA who talks about how hard it is to just get out of bed in the morning because of what happened to his body over the course of ten years of playing a professional sport and I think it's just very interesting, very fascinating.
AP: Well thank you.
JT: You're welcome.
To listen to the interview click here.
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