COMMERCIAL BREAK: DEJA MCCLENDON RESETS AT HOME FOR ATHLETES UNLIMITED
I first met Deja McClendon when she was a freshman in high school. I was a junior in the same media arts program, she was already a head and shoulders taller than me and possessed a certainty of self that I still envy all these years later.
Our high school is one of those rare places that is technically a public school but has a competitive application process that can go toe-to-toe with most colleges. I’ve never liked how elitist that feels. Everyone should have the high school experience that Deja and I had because it bonded us in a way that eventually led back to our alma mater’s gymnasium to make this piece over a decade after we graduated.
GOING PRO
duPont Manual High School is tucked among rows of Victorian homes and overgrown trees that serve as a reminder that history is still being made in small ways in Old Louisville. It was in this gym that the hints about Deja’s future became apparent to anyone who saw her play volleyball.
There is only one collegiate volleyball program in the country that has appeared in every single NCAA tournament since its inception: Penn State. And even in this storied program, Deja was a force to be reckoned with helping Penn State earn 2 more national championship titles while catching the eye of international recruiters.
After college, Deja’s strong arm and sense of self would carry her to professional volleyball courts all over the world from Poland to Italy to Brazil.
Meanwhile, back in Louisville, I was buying a home and starting a business within walking distance of our high school.
I ran into her again by chance in the spring of 2020. We had a product photography job outdoors for the first time in over a month since quarantine had started and upon arrival at the location, the art director said, “We actually found a model. She plays professional volleyball and is back in town for the first time in a while. Her name is Deja.”
Sure enough, it was the same Deja. In between sets, we swapped stories through cloth masks about where our lives had taken us in the decade since we had last seen each other. She told me that she was finally back to stay, in a certain way. There was a new pro sports league for women coming to America called Athletes Unlimited.
Deja McClendon for Radio Wellness, Marquee Louisville 2020
HOMECOURT ADVANTAGE
Marquee Louisville Co-Founder Taylor Cochran (L) and Deja McClendon (R) in the courtyard of duPont Manual High School, October 2020
Learning about the game changing introduction of Athlete’s Unlimited to the landscape of American pro sports sparked an idea. We’d been looking for ways to expand our portfolio into more diverse industries and focusing on athletics was towards the top of our list. This story checked all the boxes.
We worked with Deja to dive more deeply into her story and how she got here. She had developed alopecia in the years since we had last seen each other and lost her trademark mass of curly hair, which only served to highlight her beaming face in my opinion. But, it’s never easy to relearn your own reflection in the mirror. She also dealt with crushing, racist comments from volleyball fans abroad. All of this slowly chipped away at her confidence leaving room for a new, stronger sense of self to develop.
We wrote a script, planned a shotlist and then secured the location: our old high school gym where it all started. Her career, our friendship, my early years of photography - all of it. We were going home together, in a sense, to introduce this resilient adult version of Deja to the country she had left so many years ago.
We shot on a weekday in October of 2020. The school we had once known as one of the most vibrant places in the city was empty. We heard our old class bells ringing through the hollow halls as we worked through the shotlist before the basketball team arrived in masks for practice, a respite from months of remote learning during their most formative years.
Deja’s arm is powerful. Like, we’re talking concussion level force if you happened to be standing in the wrong place. She called in her younger sister, Maya, to serve the ball from behind the camera. She had followed in Deja’s footsteps and taken up volleyball making her, quite frankly, the only person who could have come in and made the action look real. When Maya left, Mike stood on a crate to serve Deja directly over the net and, thankfully, none of the unathletic members of the Marquee crew were injured in the making of this ad.
Learn more about Athletes Unlimited including the upcoming schedules for volleyball, softball and lacrosse leagues at auprosports.com