UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — For Penn State alumnus and professional volleyball player Jalen Penrose, family means everything. He even has a tattoo that says, "Family keeps me blessed," and is a mantra for him.
From Penrose's mother coaching him throughout his youth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to finding his Penn State family and now having played professionally in two different countries, family has been at the epicenter for all his endeavors. Now adding onto a list of families, Penrose is on the Racial Equity Council for the EIVA, along with alumnus Eric Houston, to create a community for people to be heard.
"Families helped me get through so much stuff," said Penrose, who currently plays professionally in Germany. "But more often than not, they make me realize that I'm blessed and that I have a great family and I have a lot of wonderful opportunities in front of me."
The EIVA's Racial Equity Council was founded in July 2020 and is the first of its kind in men's volleyball. According to the EIVA website, the council was founded to, "to help mentor current student-athletes, advise coaches in ways to engage and activate on the campus level, assist in the identification of potential student-athletes in minority communities, increase educational and athletic development opportunities for youths in those communities, retain athletic engagement, increase academic performance of student athletes while addressing the potential challenges of those from minority communities, and ensure leadership and coaching pathways for student-athletes of color."
Penrose and one of the co-chairs of the Racial Equity Council, Ehidiamen (Junior) Oboh, met when they both competed against each other in the EIVA while Oboh was playing for Princeton. Penrose joining Oboh has established this council for athletes of color and minorities to have an outlet to turn to just like the two of them did for each other.
"It was nice to have someone to relate to," Penrose said. "We're all pretty similar and just how we acted and how we talked. That's how we kind of clicked and we talked about everything. We talked about the game, we talked about experiences, just anything you could think of. It was good and cool to just be able to relate to somebody who was in the same boat. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing but it would be nice if there were more Black guys, or just any race, honestly in men's volleyball."
"You look at most of the teams, like he was the only Black guy on his team," Penrose added. "My team until my last two years, I was the only Black guy and then we had an Asian guy on our team. It was nice to be able to talk to him about this stuff. We want to promote that for kids of color and minorities period."
Having heard about the council from Oboh and getting a call from head coach Mark Pavlik about the council across the conference, Penrose knew he wanted to continue to be a part of the change of showing that there are other routes for minority athletes besides the football or basketball route.
"For me, growing up I played basketball and wasn't a huge football guy," Penrose said. "I was like, 'I want to take a different route than going to play basketball in college.' I took that volleyball opportunity, especially because I had more [experience]. I guess the biggest thing that I realized was, yeah, volleyball is a predominantly white sport, and I would love to show kids of color and minorities that there are other opportunities out there than just basketball and football. Even if someone were to play golf, you know, I salute them and say, 'Hey, keep grinding, keep working. Do your thing.'"
Following a series of racist incidents within the Ball State program, Penrose was even more motivated to be a part of the council.
"We shouldn't be doing that kind of stuff. I'm not so knowledgable on it, but I just know what I've read a little bit about it, so that kind of frustrates me," Penrose said. "That's part of the reason why I want to be a part of this. I think the leadership council here is to just give some kind of guidance and to limit these kinds of things that happen that not everyone knows about, or is aware of."
The goal of the council is to provide another aspect of the volleyball brotherhood and have it be a safe place for minorities and people of color.
"Just be like an outlet, you know, kind of like a big brother type figure to them," Penrose said about the council's plans on helping the younger generations of players. "That's the kind of thing that we're doing with the Leadership Council right now is being supportive and being kind of like an outlet for them to talk to whether it's really personal stuff or just typical outlying factors of failing just out of sort, whatever it may be."
Penrose used the word unity to describe the council, and when sharing experiences with alumnus Eric Houston, Penrose could see that change is happening by reflecting on his experience since Houston graduated in 2001. He saw the progress being made.
"When he was talking and just sharing my experiences and his, it seemed from his words that my experience was a bit better than his, which is good because it's showing progress that he had to deal with whatever he dealt with," Penrose said. "Just me speaking on my experience, he was like, 'That sounds a lot better than what I went through.' So it's going forward, and that's good."
"There's a couple words that I could use to describe like unity," Penrose added. "I guess that would probably be the best one to use right now because that is kind of the goal. We want to come together. We want to be able to just be prosperous, in all aspects of volleyball. Being good teammates, being a good support system for each other. Everything that you would want in a healthy lifestyle in a healthy team environment"
As the council continues to develop over the years, the impact Penrose sees in the future that it will have on the culture of volleyball is tough to say. He hopes that one day the tough conversations will one day no longer be had, and it will be a place for all ethnicities and backgrounds to take up their own deserved space.
"I'm hoping that there comes a point where we don't have to really have these tough kind of discussions," Penrose said. "I mean it's tough to say because like, you don't ever want to not look at what progress has been made, where you've come from, or not necessarily you but what, the goal, or I guess the best way to say it's like the work and in motion has transpired over time. It would be nice to at some point in time if we don't have to have these talks and have to just be better people. We want to keep making progress and obviously over time there's going to come a point where there's not much progress to make but we don't want to acknowledge everything that has happened, I guess I don't know. It's tough to explain right now, to be honest."
With this new opportunity ahead, Penrose continues to carry with him another mantra that he holds close to his heart: the Golden Rule. Bringing the lessons from his youth and college beside the two mantras he lives by, change is on the way.
"It's such a human nature to kind of judge before you really get to know people, but that's something that I'm always dealing with every day and not necessarily in a bad way," Penrose said.
"That's kind of what high school taught me, that's kind of what college taught me, is to not really judge immediately because we always look and without really speaking to someone or getting to know them we have this presumption of them, like, 'Oh, they're going to be mean,' or they're going to be whatever it may be. So that's something that I try to continue to do every day."
