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By Neto Baptiste
Mother and daughter basketball pair at the Eatonville High School in the USA, Deanna Andersen and Bailey Andersen, issued a warning to young athletes hoping to further their development outside of the Caribbean that coaches and schools pay keen attention to their social media activities.
Visiting from the US with former national footballer Lennie Quashie with whom she went to school, Deanna who coaches her daughter at Eatonville High School, urged players to think twice before hitting that post button as, even if deleted, some posts could comeback to hurt one’s chances of getting a scholarship.
“It’s very important because I see a lot of coaches – they go through and they look at their social media before they offer any sort of scholarships and they will not offer scholarships if you have really controversial or really ugly things on your Instagram or whatever you happen to be on. We talk about that a lot because once it’s on the Internet you can’t get rid of it, period, so you need to really double-think that and make sure that everything is positive,” she said.
The duo, accompanied by Quashie, appeared on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show on Tuesday, sharing their experiences as a mother-daughter pair in the US collegiate system.
Deanna encouraged parents and others to teach their children of the benefits and dangers of social media at an early age.
“I think it has to start when they’re five years old because all of these kids are given computers as soon as they get to school and the majority of their work is actually on computers these days and the kids are smarter than we are. They know how to get around all the safety nets before they are even up, so you have to be educated,” she said.
Bailey, point guard for the Eatonville High School girls basketball team, zeroed in on the importance of associating with the right people from a social perspective.
“I’ve seen it, yeah. Thankfully, the group that I’ve been with on our team, we’re super careful about it and we only post pictures of us with our friends and everything positive; but I’ve seen other people post and get in trouble for things,” she said.
The pair, who described the experience as warm and welcoming, is slated to leave Antigua tomorrow.
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