Growing up playing basketball Tajay Ashmeade watched a lot of her favorite athletes speak to the press. As a post player at Seton Hall University, from which she graduated in 2012, Ashmeade also gave her fair share of interviews. Disappointed by the run-of-the-mill questions she often heard, she decided to develop a space where she asked athletes to reveal more of themselves.
“I’m trying to get the realness of these athletes and coaches. I feel that’s missing in sports today,” said Ashmeade, 27, who oversees her own website and YouTube channel titled SixFootSports. She shares her interviews with sports figures and others with a connection to sports, such as Patrick Ewing, Robin Roberts and Charlamagne Tha God. She also does a lot of motivational speaking, often addressing her own experiences with special education.
“I’m passionate about informing people about learning disabilities and ADD,” she said. “Telling kids there are major challenges, but you can overcome them. I have.”
After Seton Hall, 6-foot-3 Ashmeade played international hoops for four years, spending time in Italy, Spain, France, Colombia and Ecuador as well as playing with the Jamaican national team. With an eye toward the future, she used downtime overseas to earn a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Phoenix.
“I’m forever grateful for the opportunities,” said Ashmeade, who was born in Jamaica, West Indies, and grew up in the Bronx, where she still lives. “I want to write a book about playing abroad.”
Ashmeade, a graduate of the Frederick Douglass Academy, said she’s been hustling and grinding as she develops her own brand. She’s open to a broadcasting job, but her long-term dream is building SixFootSports into a hub for meaningful and insightful sports interviews that includes topics often unexplored, such as what it’s really like to be a student-athlete and how non-starters feel in the pros.
“I want a safe haven for athletes to be able to express themselves,” she explained. “I want something that relates to millennials. SixFootSports is trying to bring the deeper side of sports—the realness, authenticity and genuine aspects.”
She added, “People are tired of hearing the politically correct answers that athletes give. You want to hear what they’ve been through and how they got to where they are. I want to know the truth from these athletes in a comfortable setting.”
