NY1 Sports: PRIYA DESAI

Priya Desai is modest about admitting what sets her apart from her peers in sports journalism, even though she’s a certifiable trailblazer in her industry as the first South Asian female sports broadcaster. From a small town outside of St. Louis called Edwardsville, Priya traces her love of sports, particularly football, to the “very Friday Night Lights” community. She attended Indiana University, one of the Big 10 schools where she became an aspiring sports professional. As a journalism major, Priya worked on the IU newspaper, covering the drama when legendary coach Bobby Knight was fired, and then the excitement the following year when the basketball team went to the championship game. She began her career at the bottom and tenaciously worked her way up, scoring an internship in NYC at College Sports Television (CSTV), where her boss suggested she pursue a position at big-time local news station, NY1, “And the rest,” she jokes, “is sports history.”

Now a sports broadcaster at NY1, Priya contributes to breaking all sorts of glass ceilings in a male-dominated industry, and keeps climbing the ladder by playing to her strengths and by being just plain... awesome.
Photo credit: Chad Heird

Squash Champion: BASET CHAUDHRY

Baset Chaudhry, captain and top-ranked player of the reigning Trinity Bantam squash champions, posesses a modest attitude and determined work ethic that have kept him on top of his game throughout his college squash career. Peers, teammates, coaches, and teachers alike look up to Baset for his academic, professional, and athletic achievements, but also because he stands at an impressive 6'5". Native to Lahore, Pakistan, Baset came to the US on the path of a student-athlete, and has brought unique experience to the courts that has carried the Trinity Squash legacy of success. After graduation this spring from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, Baset will be hitting Wall Street to join the ever-growing romance between investment bankers and squash.

Baset is an example of an athlete who has internalized the pressures of high-level competition and, as far as we can see, he will most definitely apply them in the next phase of his life. Welcome to NYC.