Okay, here we go. Three, two, one.
Welcome to Students Incorporated podcast exploring the topics of business, education,
technology and design. I'm your host, Mr. Jason. Join me weekly as my team and I produce content
that's informative, positive, fun and uplifting. Episodes include student conversations,
interviews with thought leaders and inspirational stories with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International Community
School of Bangkok. In today's episode, we have the privilege of talking with a professional athlete
who knows a thing or two about hard work, adversity and perseverance. But before we get
into our first segment, let's hear our quote of the day and get some headline sports news.
Our quote of the day comes from Tim Tebow. He's quoted to have said,
every time I step on the field, I'm going to give my whole heart regardless of the score.
This quote emphasizes a player's unwavering commitment and passion for their sport and
their teammates. It reflects their determination to always work for their best effort and play
with their utmost dedication, regardless of the outcome or score. It illustrates their immense
love and respect for the game. And now on to some sports news. Here are some top football news from
the United States. Beginning with college football, the Georgia Bulldogs are ranked number one and
continue to dominate other opponents each week. Just this past weekend, they crushed the Florida
Gators 43 to 20. The Georgia Bulldogs are currently undefeated with eight wins and zero losses.
Now onto the NFL. The NFL preseason is underway and there are currently three teams leading
in a three way tie. Those teams are the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Pittsburgh Steelers,
and the Washington Commanders. And finally, the trade deadline for this NFL season was set for
October 31st. Today, teams are scrambling to make last minute roster changes and trades right up
until the deadline. And that ends our American football sports news.
All right. Thank you for the quote and the headline news. Today, we welcome a special guest
who knows a lot about the sport of American football. Please help me welcome Asa Watson,
a former college player from the Wolf Pack of North Carolina State University and who also
spent a short time with the New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys. Let's give it up for Mr.
Asa Watson. Bremie is going to get us started with our first question. Thank you again for being
our guest. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and
what you are doing now? My name is Asa Watson. First off, thanks for having me on the show.
So glad to be here and be a part of the chapel. I've stepped in a warm welcome from Ben and
Cock and never been there before, but hopefully one day I'll have the chance to come visit.
But like I said, my name is Asa, 33 years old. I'm from Rock Hill, South Carolina, originally.
I have four kids and a wife and I've lived in Germany in the past three and a half years,
but now I'm back in the States where I'm a personal trainer and also working on my masters.
So yeah, I like sports, like football, and definitely enjoy sharing my story and getting
to know people and hearing their stories as well. Thank you. We're super honored to have you here
with us. We'd like to start with some more lighthearted questions. So our first question
is, did you ever have the opportunity to catch a pass from Tom Brady?
Yeah, I didn't break up a season game, but I definitely caught passes from him almost every
day in practice. So I was the guy who was standing there just catching passes to help him warm up or
catching passes during drills. So different crossing passes from Tom Brady, but he throws
the ball really hard. Oh wow, here's another question about another quarterback. What was it
like playing with Russell Wilson when he was in college? For the sake of our audience, Russell
Wilson played his first 10 seasons for the Seattle Seahawks and helped take his team to two consecutive
Super Bowls, winning one. He now plays for Denver Broncos. Yeah, so I think that's a good
question. So playing with Russell Wilson is definitely also a privilege. Russell is a smart
guy, a very hard worker, and a really great quarterback, really great player. And so he's
the type of person that when you're around him, you spend time with him, he makes the people around
him better at what they do. By setting an example, he first really hard, so that helps the team to
work hard as well. So playing on the field with him is fun, and also during practice time,
being around him and seeing his work ethic really helps me to become a better player as well.
And we understand your brother also plays football and has been influential in your life.
Could you explain a little bit about how that has happened and what that means to you?
So my family, when I was growing up, we had a really happy family. We wanted to play college
football as well. And so all of us at some point played sports. We played soccer, we played football,
we played when we ran track, or gymnastics and different things. But my brother, he excelled at
football and played for the team at NFL. For me, watching him grow up, he was a huge example for me.
He really worked really hard to get to where he wanted to go online. And so he said he
went home when he was a high schooler, a teenager, that he wanted to play in the NFL. And so he
walked his butt off as a high schooler, as a college player, to get to where he wanted to be.
And so that's really an example for me to see that hard work really is important,
but hard work actually helps your character and keeps you in the perseverance to go further.
And it really does pay off in the long run.
Thank you. That's really inspiring. And now building on the topic of hard work,
our next question is also about practice. We all know that becoming good at something takes a lot
of training and practice. Could you give us a little insight into what your training and practices
were like in college and in the NFL? And what kind of character qualities that build in you?
When you're in college, you basically get four years to play. And so when they bring you in,
you usually love a young guy, maybe 17, 18. And you've played football before, but you've
never really been challenged to give your absolute best to the race potential. And so what college
coaches do is they try to kill you. They try to bring you as close as they can get to the limits
as possible. And so during the off season, the time that we're not playing actual games,
there's about three or four months where they give you the hardest training in your life.
And so that's waking up at sometimes four to 35 in the morning. When it's cold outside to go to
ability and training and running to lift weights, to get yourself bigger and stronger and faster.
But it's the time where you have to mentally be strong
in order to get physically strong. And so that was everything from our training and weight
growing to our running to our dieting to stretching. But as a college student, even on top of that,
you have to be a great student. You have to go to class, you have to study. And so all of these
things are important to making you a good person. And I think having a good student at it helps you
to be even more balanced individual and more balanced in the whole, because I realized
that I've gone through some really hard things and I was able to give them perseverance.
But being a part of the team is a huge thing. That's super insightful. Our next question is
about expectations. Was it hard to deal with outside expectations from family, friends,
coaches and teachers when I came to school and sports growing up? When I was younger,
and I was looking up to my brother, we grew up in a small town. So my brother was pretty famous
where we're from. He was famous for being one of the strongest football players in the history of
his college, being a great football player. And so a lot of the pressure for me was
being just like him. I felt like he was the standard that I had to meet, that if I was going to be
successful in anything, I had to be just as good or better than him. But I realized after a while
that some of the pressure that I was feeling wasn't for my brother. It wasn't for people on the
outside. It was only for myself. And so I get to listen to that and that is something that we can
all take away is that when we compare ourselves to other people, it applies pressure on us and it
can hinder our view of ourselves. It can keep us from being our best. And ultimately, we just have
to understand that God has created us individually different from everyone else in the world. And we
all have different gifts that we have that we can offer. And so the best thing that we can do is
just give our absolute best with what we have.
Yeah, for sure. I think that too. And I think siblings or pressure from siblings definitely
plays a big role and also pressure and expectation, self-expectation also plays an important role as
well. And that's a follow-up with our last question of this segment. Regarding adversity,
expectations, and hardships, how did you overcome them and what does it mean to you to be strong
and courageous?
I think one of the biggest hardships I think I had during college was that I would feel having
two hard-stir duties between my freshman and sophomore year. And that actually took me out of
them all for a little bit. And for me, as a college student, first and second year, I was really
trying hard to prove myself. I was trying to show my coaches that I was good enough. I was trying
to show my teammates that they could rely on me. I wanted to make a name for myself and show that I
was as good as my brother was. And so feeling the pressure and then having a heart surgery
wasn't good mix. It took me out of the thing that I was trying to prove myself in. And so at a
point where I was trying to find my worth in the sport, in football, I was unable to do that
anymore. And so it was at that time that I really started to read the Bible and to really see how
God doesn't love me any differently, whether I'm good or bad or whether I perform well or not.
What it says is that my grace is sufficient, but my power is made perfect in weakness. And so
I felt like what God was saying to me was that, even if you're not the best athlete, even if you
have challenges, even if you make mistakes, I care more about your effort. I care more about
the attitude that you bring to whatever activity. God cares about what we do is what we have.
When I actually changed my perspective on my sport and changed my perspective on what I
was doing as an athlete, I came back after sitting out of the year and I became a better athlete.
I was a better football player because I wasn't thinking about the pressure that was around me.
I wasn't thinking about the pressure for myself or thinking about making mistakes. I was so
really focused on me giving my best for God because God gave me his best through his son Jesus.
So that really changed it for me. I guess that'll be the biggest lesson to my college days that I
can share. And with that last question for our first segment, you can just hold on Asa, we'll
come back to you in a moment. We'll be right back with our second segment, which includes questions
from some of our audience members. So thank you for that audience members. But first,
it's time for a short announcement. Hello student led organizations and clubs. You have the opportunity
to showcase your amazing organizations and clubs during our podcast episode PSA announcement
segment. This is a fantastic opportunity to promote and highlight the unique experiences
your students have. We're so grateful for your support and support. We're so grateful for your
support throughout the process. Your club offers as well as connect with our community, simply
fill out the Google form posted in the homeroom slides or contact any member of the students
Inc. podcasting.
We are back with our second segment. For this segment, we invited our students and faculty to
submit questions they'd like for us to ask Mr. Asa. Now in order to make this fun for them for
We also entered your names into a raffle drawing
with a chance to win an autographed souvenir
from Mr. Asa.
We'll announce the raffle winners
at the end of our next podcast episode.
Okay, let's get into our first audience submitted question.
Premier, will get us started again.
All right.
Our first audience question comes from Miles.
He asks, did you ever get scared on the football field
because some of your opponents were huge?
Yeah, I definitely been scared.
I was definitely scared going to the field sometimes.
There were times where you're coming out of the tunnel,
you walked out of this long tunnel,
and then for home games they shoot out smoke
and fireworks and there's flame throwers.
And you run out and there's 60,000 people screaming
and you don't want to,
the biggest thing is you don't want to trip and fall
and get run over by teammates.
But I think it was definitely that was where
I've been challenged by looking at the guy in front of me.
I blocked some people that were 300 pounds.
I got hit by people that were about 300 pounds.
So yeah.
Our next question is from Abby.
She asks, during your football playing years,
which player has impressed you the most?
I don't know, probably Tom Brady.
Yeah, I think it would be Tom Brady.
Just because Tom is like, he's just like a celebrity.
He's already a celebrity.
But, and then when you meet him face to face,
it's just like, you know, it's like,
you're kind of at loss for words because he's so famous.
But yeah, I think what impressed me the most about him
is that he was just a professional in everything he does.
He goes through practice,
but then he has a guy who works with him extra
to do drills with him, to do his nutrition,
to give him everything that he needs to eat,
to stretch him, to do all this stuff, recovery.
He's very professional about everything he does.
So I'd never say Tom Brady.
Our next question is from Aoi.
She asks, have you ever felt like
your body was not fit for the sport?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think I always felt like,
I was always pretty undersized for my position.
So I'm like, when I was playing,
I was probably like 225, 225 pounds.
And most of the guys in my position were like 240, 250, 260.
And so I always felt like I was smaller,
which was really hard because,
you know, if you're going against somebody
who's like 70 pounds bigger than you,
it would help to have some extra pounds.
But I think it just made me be a much more aggressive
and that much more,
I realized I had to hustle more
and work harder than everybody else.
So yeah.
Our next question is from Noah.
He asks, what was your best play
and do you like the Falcons?
No, no.
No, no, I don't like the Falcons.
But I think my best play,
okay, my best play in high school was,
yeah, I'll start with high school.
High school I had, yeah, high school was fun.
So I best play in high school.
We were on defense, the team was on defense.
We got, we took the ball,
and so we were on the one yard line.
So we had the end zone right behind us.
So basically what happens,
if you get pushed back one yard,
the other team gets two points.
So we don't do that.
So we were back up two yard line.
I was playing wide receiver.
The quarterback snaps the ball,
turns, I run straight through the middle,
linebacker through the space piece,
and the quarterback throws the ball,
I catch it, and I break it for 99 yards.
I got a full stretch before.
Thank you for doing that for me.
Oh wow, that is impressive.
And now our next question is from Jonah.
He asked, what's the best moment in your football career?
I don't know if it was an exact moment.
Well, I think in a general sense,
I think the thing that I miss the most,
it's just the friendships and the camaraderie
and just having a bunch of guys around you all the time
that want the same thing that you want,
that have the same goal,
and are all pushing each other in order to get that goal.
That's something unique that you don't really get
in such a way in any part of life.
But I think another moment I think I was proud of was
just when I was done playing college,
I went away to train for four months,
and then comes the draft.
And just the moment when you're picked by a team,
I was picked by the Patriots.
And so that was for me, I think, a really big moment.
Yeah, really exciting.
And our next question is from Julian.
He asks, who was or is your favorite NFL football player?
That would definitely be my brother.
I mean, I guess of course I have some bias,
but he was always very interested in my career,
even when I was in middle school playing football
for the first time, or in high school,
he was always giving me pointers and tips
how I can play my position better,
because I played the same position as him.
And so he was always really supportive.
And yeah, when I was, you know, he would send me gloves,
and would send me wristbands and all that kind of stuff.
And so he was always very supportive.
But one time when I was in high school,
he pulled me up to visit him when he was playing for Patriots.
And that was the first time I met Tom Brady
as a high schooler.
But yeah, my brother's always been my biggest inspiration,
not only as a football player,
also just as a person, as a dad,
and as a husband, he's really a person that I look up to.
That's really sweet.
If my brother was an NFL football player,
he would be my favorite one too.
Diving a little deeper now.
This next question is from Mrs. Amy.
She asks, how do professional athletes plan for the future,
knowing that an injury could end their career
much earlier than planned?
Do professional athletes have backup plans?
Yes, yes.
I think you have to have a backup plan.
And maybe, I think majority of the guys,
you're always thinking about your mind,
what could happen if I get hurt.
I think that's probably more scary
than the guy who's in front of you,
who's maybe bigger than you or stronger than you.
It's the thought of, what if I'm just running down the field
and I step wrong and my ankle breaks,
or I get hit in my head wrong,
and I get a concussion and I can never break.
That's a constant fear that football players have.
Because it's so unpredictable.
Football is a concept sport.
It's a collision sport.
And so it's been provided with an injury
that can happen at any time.
And so one way I think people prepare is just that
there's the National Football League Players Association.
And what they do is they support the players
to help them prepare for the next level.
They provide classes on how to start a business
or how to get into boot camp classes,
on how to do commentating,
or whatever they want to get into.
There's always support for them to help them
to figure out what's the next step.
And many people aren't thinking about that.
I know when I was in college,
there was a lot of guys who just thought
that college would never end,
even though it doesn't for years.
But yeah, it's definitely necessary
for people to think about that.
What happens when all this is gone.
Our next question is from Highlight.
She asks, how has being an athlete helped shape your identity?
I think some of the best lessons that I've learned in life
and some of the most.
All right, so I'll say this.
The biggest and the best lessons in life that you learn
that will come from the easy moments in life.
Most of the really formative lessons
and the things that really shape your life
and shape your character come from difficulties.
They come from challenges.
They come from times where you struggle
and you may not have the answers
and you may be in a really difficult spot.
But I know one thing is that when you push through,
when you persevere, when you find a way to get through,
whether that's by yourself or somebody's helping you
and you learn to rely on other people,
you'll always learn something
and take something from that that will shape you
into the person you're supposed to be.
So I would definitely say that, yeah,
the biggest lessons I learned were from my time playing
football and made me to be tougher in life,
to realize that I've been through tough
and physically tough things.
Obviously there's some things that are still difficult,
but yeah, they help me to push forward
and to realize that there's a big picture in all of this.
Yeah, that was a good question.
And I definitely agree.
I think that in life, it's the difficulties,
the adversaries that truly help shape our identities.
And our next question is from Ken.
He asks, how does one stay committed throughout that journey
without burning out or quitting?
Yeah, it's not an easy,
I don't know if that's the easy answer
because when you're in the middle of a difficult season
or just something that you feel like
that you'll never see the end of,
I think it's important, number one,
to just remember the big picture.
I mean, for most of you guys,
all of you guys are in school, right?
So some of you will go to the university where you study
and in that process you'll get a job
of your choice at some point, right?
And so when you go to college,
I think it's a pretty normal rule
that it's not supposed to be easy.
And you'd have to study and you have to put in hours
and hours of studying and go to classes.
But I think that through that,
through that it's shaping our identity,
through that it's making an effort.
But when you're in the midst of the most difficult times,
I think it's important to take a step back
and to change your perspective.
It's like sometimes we don't see the beauty
of what's around us because we can't see it
from a higher view, right?
So it's like when you go to the woods or whatever,
like when I was in Germany,
there's one of my favorite spots in our city.
It's in the middle of a forest.
But when you go onto this tower,
there's a big tower,
and when you go up to the top of it,
you can see the entire city.
But not only that, you see the trees,
you see the city over in the distance.
And I could see things when I went up there the first time,
I could see things that I didn't even know were there.
I didn't know there was a city up there.
I didn't know there was a hill over there.
I didn't know how beautiful the landscape was.
What I'm trying to say, to last story short,
is that a lot of times we see life like this,
and when we see our difficulties like this,
it's necessary for us to take the blinders off.
Sometimes that's asking somebody to help us.
But other times it's just looking at,
what is the goal that I'm trying to get out of this?
What do I really want out of this?
Why am I doing this?
And that'll help us to understand where we are
in that present time.
And our next question is from Bea.
She asks, who or what was your inspiration
for starting football?
Oh, I think you guys know that.
My brother was my inspiration for starting football.
I just wanted to be like him.
And because my dad played as well,
I kind of felt like it was in my blood.
Yeah, where I'm from, kids play football.
Boys play football, so.
All right, and now our final audience question
comes from Camden.
She asks, how did you deal with people
who only wanted to be your friend
because you played sports and made a professional team?
I didn't actually deal with that a lot.
I think it's important as an athlete,
but also in any stage of life that you're in,
to use discernment to see who's around you
and why.
A lot of people want to be your friend
only for what they can get out of you.
And you should use wisdom in that moment to see,
okay, are these people around me
when I'm in my most difficult times
or are they just around me when things are good?
Are these people accountable?
Can I reach out to them when I'm having
a tough time and they're ready and able to help me?
Are they true friends?
I think all of us can use that wisdom to learn that.
I didn't have a lot of people who were around me
because I was a football player.
I tended at that time to try to allow only people
who were around me, not necessarily only allow people
around me, but I tended to choose close friends
more selectively.
And I think that's what I've seen to do.
You can't just let anybody be near close circle.
Our Students Incorporated team likes to ask our guests
for advice before they end our shows.
So what advice would you give to young people?
It can be about anything you feel we should know
as we move to the future.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think the advice that I would give is from
one of my favorite quotes,
and let not the wise men boast of his wisdom,
or the strong men boast of his strength,
or the rich man boasts of his riches,
but let him who boasts, boast about this
that he understands and knows me.
This is God talking and he says that I'm the Lord
who practices love, justice, and righteousness on earth
for these things I delight.
So the reason why that's important to me is,
he says in the beginning, many of us want to,
we want to learn knowledge for the sake of our knowledge,
but one day knowledge is gonna run out.
One day we're all gonna die.
Some of us live to be rich,
and so we want to acquire as much wealth as we can
in the time that we have on earth
to live a comfortable, rich life.
And some of us want to be strong.
Some of us want to have impressive bodies.
We want to maintain our youth.
We want to, yeah, have physical power, right?
But these things are fleeting.
These things will all one day go away.
We're all gonna get older.
And so what I think the message in that is that
don't invest all of yourself
in these things that will fail you.
Invest in the thing or in the one who will never fail you.
And what I found in my personal life
is that God has never failed me,
and he will never fail me.
But I think the key to that verse
is that the person who is really wise,
the person who is really strong, the person really rich,
it's not based on his physical strength
or his physical wealth or his knowledge.
It's based on the knowledge of who God is.
So what we should all understand
is that we are all created for a purpose.
If we don't understand that, we need to learn
who our creator is.
In order to really understand
the great meaning of how he designed us and created us.
So if I could encourage you in any way,
I'd say seek God with all of your heart,
allowing him to give you the wisdom for life,
for a future, to help you understand
how to navigate what life is meant to be.
Thank you so much for that great advice, Asa.
And that ends our interview with Mr. Asa Watson.
On behalf of the Students Incorporated team
and the entire student body,
we'd like to thank you for taking time
to tell us a little bit about your story
and for answering so many of our questions.
So thank you for that.
As we end this episode, I hope you were inspired and encouraged by our interview today with
Mr. Asa Watson.
We are all reminded to always put forth our best effort regardless of the outcome,
and to love and respect not only what we do,
but to love and respect each other.
Thanks for listening and participating in our live recorded show today.
You can find today's show as well as all of our other shows
on the streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
As always, this podcast would not be possible without the hard work
and support of our international student production team.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com,
a vibrant community of creatives sharing copyright-free images, videos, and music.
And we're signing off until next time.
We are students incorporated, because your voice matters.
Thank you, everyone, for participating.
But before you're dismissed, and while we have Mr. Aysel on the wall,
I just want to remind you that I would like to present you with a gift.
Mr. Aysel, I understand you have a one box, or a one box for your friends.