The way that you were created is so unique and beautiful, and there are so many strengths to who you are

And to remind yourself, and this is something I tell myself, you have greatness inside of you

Hey everybody, Emily Abadi here. You are listening to Hurtle a wellness focus podcast reconnect with everyone from your favorite athletes to top experts and

Industry CEOs about their highest highs toughest moments and everything in between we all go through hurdles in life and my goal through these discussions is to empower you to better navigate yours and move with intention so that you can stride towards your own big potential and of course have some fun along the way for this weeks episode at number

239 I am chatting with Jordan Thompson. She is a pro volleyball player and an Olympic gold medalist and if there's one thing I can say right off the bat, it's that Jordan is she is wise well beyond her years so many of the things that she was saying as I was sitting here listening to her

I was just like shaking my head and thinking wow her strong growth mindset she attributes to her time playing with the US woman's national volleyball team and today she tells us how she got there how she landed herself a spot on the team after working her way up in the sport playing at Cincinnati and now overseas

for a team that she has been dreaming of playing on for some time now Jordan talks to us about how pro volleyball works similar to basketball why so many of the best players from the United States go abroad to play and gain experience she also chats about one of her big hurdle moments navigating an injury that had her

re-evaluating what it meant to be a team player Jordan and I also chat about what it's like for her to be one of the few black women in her sport and her hopes for the sport moving forward plus the high value she puts on the relationship that she has with her teammates

and how lucky she feels to have some of the best of the best as her mentors including Jordan Larson who have had on the show I'm going to link her episode in the show notes

super happy that we were able to find the time to have this convo a huge thanks to the good folks at under armor for connecting us and on that note if there is someone you want to hear from on the show I am all ears feel free to shoot us a DM over at hurdle podcast or email me over at hello at hurdle dot US last but not least I'm putting a call out I would love your listener questions for an upcoming listener questions episodes

so whatever you got it can be about sports it can be about life health work career whatever the link to leave me one is in the show notes and with that let's get to it let's get to hurtling

today I am sitting down with Jordan Thompson she's a pro volleyball player she's also an Olympic gold medalist how are you doing today I'm great how are you I'm great I'm we kind of wrapped about this a little bit before this formally started but honestly I'm just a little bit jealous that you are sitting in Italy and I am sitting in Brooklyn

yeah no it's it's a great place to be it's a great place to work definitely far from home but it's fun a little bit far from home so right now you are over in Italy playing with a series a one team talk to us a little bit about what that's like for you

yeah it's really exciting Italy has one of the strongest leagues in the world for volleyball and so I'm playing with a team called Vera Bali Milan formally known as Vera Bali Monsa and so this is a team that I've been trying to get on for a few years now and so I'm just really excited to be here

and it's been really cool just a lot of strong competition and it's exciting because I feel like things are kind of falling into place for me in terms of my career and just feeling like I'm finally building again so I'm really excited to be here

and when you say trying to get on for a few years now what does that look like?

yeah so it's kind of interesting there are when you think about like the volleyball world there are different leagues in different countries all around the world and there are specific countries that have stronger leagues and then within those leagues there are stronger teams and so as an opposite which is my position you have like one starter one starting opposite on each team

and so there aren't many really big jobs out there that are on a really high level team where you are going to make good money and it's going to be like a really great situation and so I knew that this was a club where it had all those things I was going to be playing high level volleyball

have a great coach just a great living situation and be able to play in a really strongly and so this was somewhere that I've been wanting to come to for a while now and it's sort of difficult because the job just hadn't really opened up in the way that I kind of needed it to

and then I had signed other contracts to play other places so we were just kind of missing each other for a while

right like ships passing in the night so being there now how does it feel?

it's awesome it's I don't even know how to describe it honestly because I had kind of a few rough seasons overseas and I was like listen if this is how professional volleyball is I cannot do this as a career like maybe I've just not cut out for it like maybe I'm not tough enough to do this job

...