Corey King is a senior on the track & field team at Case Western Reserve University, where he also played football. He is majoring in aerospace engineering and has been named to the UAA All-Academic Team a total of seven times in football and track & field. King has taken a leadership role in beginning the Spartans’ student-athlete of color group.
The UAA “Conversations About Race and Racism” series seeks to lift the voices of people of color and recognize the challenges faced in both athletics and academics at the collegiate level. By sharing personal stories, we hope to elevate the conversation about race to raise awareness and bring about change.
Mix of School Experiences
“I have been blessed with different experiences and have always been a part of accelerated classes. What that meant racially didn’t stick out to me at a majority Black high school, but it did beyond that. I was surrounded by only white kids in upper-level classes and that opened my eyes to the inequity. I questioned why the majority at my school were not in the best classes,” he reflected. “I started playing football my sophomore year of high school. I also took International Baccalaureate classes all day with peers who were white. Then I went to practice where we had a majority Black team. I didn’t think my white teammates were any smarter than my Black teammates.”
This differentiation between classes and football challenged King and led to him to question why they were so different. “I was wondering how to meld those two worlds together while still being myself. How can I change this for Black males? It was important to me to be more than an athlete, to do well in school by excelling in my classes. I transferred to Louisiana School for Math, Science & the Arts, which was a totally different experience for me. The school is a PWI (primarily white institution) at its finest and didn’t have a football team,” he stated. “I had options where to play and ended up playing for a private school that went to the state championship. Things could have been a lot different if I stayed at my old school or played at a public school.”
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