Sedona Prince Partners with UNINTERRUPTED, Champs Sports & Eastbay for "More Than An Athlete" Content Series, Apparel Line
Few student athletes at the University of Oregon have embraced what it means to be "more than an athlete" more than women's basketball forward Sedona Prince. Now, she gets to embody that mantra on a new stage.
UNINTERRUPTED has teamed up with Champs Sports and Eastbay to create a content series and apparel line both focusing on UNINTERRPUTED's core "More Than An Athlete" message.
The content series, titled "More Than An Athlete Hotline: Varsity Edition," will be hosted by Prince as well as YouTuber and former college football kicker Donald De La Haye, also known as Deestroying. The nine-episode series will launch on UNINTERRUPTED's YouTube channel on Monday, Nov. 22, and new episodes will be released on a monthly basis. Check out a sneak peak of the series in the video player above.
The "More Than An Athlete" exclusive apparel line — in partnership with the two sports retailers and UNINTERRUPTED, the brand that is part of LeBron James' and Maverick Carter's SpringHill Company — will include a combination of products for both performance and lifestyle. The collection will launch on Wednesday, Dec. 1 at select Champs Sports locations as well as ChampsSports.com and Eastbay.com. Future collections will celebrate basketball, baseball and football that will be released throughout 2022.
Prince and De La Haye showed off the new "More Than An Athlete" merchandise.
Ducks Digest spoke with Prince about co-hosting the series, which allows athlete mentors to inspire, motivate and share their experiences with high school athletes.
"I get to allow them to tell their story, ask them questions, chat with them, learn about them and learn from them," Prince said. "It's really a place for athletes to come and talk, come and learn.
"I'm lucky that a Duck gets to represent it, especially since I'm the only college athlete. The fact that they picked me... I'm very lucky. It's a blast."
The series covers a variety of topics, including what it means to be "more than an athlete," the NIL era, overcoming adversity, and more. On the first episode, Prince and De La Haye discuss the NIL era in college sports along with UCLA guard Johnny Juzang and Sierra Canyon High School guard Amari Bailey.
Other guests that will appear in the series include Ohio State tight end Gee Scott Jr., Norman High School guard and Florida commit Myka Perry, professional softball player Paige Halstead, and first African-American Spelling Bee champion and basketball phenom Zaila Avant-garde.
Prince already gets to share her journey through her collegiate career with millions of people on social media, including her 2.8 million followers on TikTok. But now she can meet with other student athletes who have endured similar experiences on a platform for student athletes around the world to see.
"Being a voice for others has really been my main passion and main goal in college," Prince told Ducks Digest. "And the fact that I now get to do that with this opportunity just to really be a leader for others and use my platform for other people's message that need to be told, not just mine, it's more of a blessing than anything. I wake up every day and I'm just grateful that I get to have people supporting me and following my journey and have other athletes look up to me."
Prince, a 6-foot-7 forward beginning her second season on the court for Oregon after transferring from Texas prior to the 2018-19 season, has had a unique journey to becoming one of the faces of college basketball. A former McDonald's All American coming out of high school, Prince was a highly-touted recruit when she enrolled at Texas as a freshman. However, she suffered a near career-ending leg injury while playing for the U.S. national team in the 2018 FIBA U-18 Americas Women's Championship in Mexico City.
Her leg had failed to properly heal as her trainers had her rehabbing dangerously soon after her major surgery. She left Texas after her freshman season and transferred to Oregon, but she was denied immediate eligibility by the NCAA.
Prince finally returned to the court in the 2020-21 season and played a big role in helping Oregon advance to the Sweet 16 for the fourth consecutive season. She posted 10.4 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, shooting 54.5% from the field.
She was impressive on the court, but where she really made a name for herself nationally was during the 2021 NCAA Tournament when she posted a video on TikTok and Twitter displaying the disparity between the men's and women's facilities and amenities. The post was viewed and shared millions of times and landed Prince a number of spots on national television and brought in a wave of new fans to watch the tournament. It also led to the NCAA improving the women's facilities in San Antonio, proving how much change can occur with just a simple post to social media.
"Without social media, no one would have really understood what was going on," Prince said. "No one would have really called attention to the NCAA and what they were doing. It's a true testament to how powerful social media can be because within one night of tweeting that video, I woke up the next morning and it had over 100,000 retweets and had made national news."
In a sense, athletes like Prince and De La Haye were a nightmare come true for the NCAA because of their bringing awareness to their situations and gaining a passionate base of supporters backing their stories and fellow student athletes speaking up, as well as forcing the multi-billion-dollar organization to reconsider some of its policies and decisions.
De La Haye, Prince's co-host for the series, was a placekicker and punter at the University of Central Florida and was told by the NCAA that he had to demonetize or delete his YouTube videos to stay on the football team. He chose to keep making videos at the expense of his NCAA eligibility and scholarship. "Deestroying" now has nearly four million subscribers on YouTube and 1.5 million followers on Instagram.
Ducks Digest also sat down with De La Haye to discuss the series and the opportunity to share his story that ignited the conversation about the NCAA's policies on NIL.
"It's been amazing," De La Haye said. "I've gotten to know a lot of great people. I've heard a lot of great stories, and I've gotten to share my story as well. It's been an awesome experience."
The two co-hosts have enjoyed getting to know one another and learn a lot along the way.
"Talking to her, it's instant chemistry," De La Haye said of Prince. "She's an amazing basketball player, but just an amazing person as well. She's funny, charismatic, smart."
"I love him a lot," Prince said of her co-host. "We became close. We clicked as soon as we met. I'm really glad they chose two chill people that can get along really well because it kind of makes the show flow. We get to tell jokes and we make fun of each other because he's much shorter than me so we kind of go back and forth."
Prince and De La Haye bonded over an experience that not a lot of student athletes go through — going head-to-head with the NCAA itself, and not only that, but gaining national attention for speaking out about the injustices created by the organization.
Social media has provided a voice for student athletes who may have felt voiceless when battling a major organization that can ultimately decide whether they keep their eligibility and scholarship or not. But due to the rise of social media and content like "More Than An Athlete Hotline: Varsity Edition," athletes can call to action and ignite positive change.
"Anything that I say or other student athletes say, now it's proven that it's gonna get blown up and people are gonna listen and support us," Prince told Ducks Digest. "I think it's really important when athletes call to action of the power of the NCAA. The fact that I'm able to and other student athletes are able to speak up and talk about these things and everyone listens and they tune in, it just really shows how we can make a change."
Prince knows all about taking on the NCAA and challenging its policies. In June 2020, she was one of two plaintiffs named in a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA challenging the association to allow student athletes to be able to profit off of their names, images and likenesses and that it was violating antitrust law by prohibiting them to do so.
The following summer, the NCAA adopted a temporary rule change that allows student athletes to be compensated for their NIL while in school. Both De La Haye and Prince can be thanked for their efforts in raising awareness for the issue.
"I felt like at the time, for me to step up against the NCAA was David going against Goliath, and I don't think it was a fight that David was gonna win," De La Haye told Ducks Digest. "I didn't really take that chance. But it's good that [Prince] is standing up and trying to get things changed not only for herself, but for student athletes in the past, future and present."
Kelly Graves, Prince's head coach at Oregon, dubbed her the "poster child for the NIL." Prince shrugged it off, saying "he always says that all the time. I don't know what he means by that." With the impact that she's had on not just the push for NIL legislation, but also equality for men's and women's sports as well, it's easy to see what Graves means. Prince is the perfect role model for student athletes to look up to — an energetic and dazzling basketball player as well as an intelligent and courageous advocate who isn't shy when it comes to fighting for the rights of her fellow student athletes.
The path that she, De La Haye, and other student athletes from the past and present have paved has foreshadowed the next generation of student athletes who will make great change. Prince and De La Haye aren't finished yet though, as this collaboration with UNINTERRUPTED, Champs Sports, and Eastbay has given them another opportunity to empower student athletes to be more than an athlete.
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