Teen Contender
Sixteen-year-old Claressa Shields has a dream, to be at the 2012 Olympic finals and hear the announcer call out, "The first woman Olympian boxer at 165 pounds - Claressa Shields!"
Best Documentary: Gold2012 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition2012 / Joe Richman / Samara Freemark / Sue Jaye Johnson / NPR's All Things Considered, USA
Sixteen-year-old Claressa Shields has a dream, to be at the 2012 Olympic finals and hear the announcer call out, "The first woman Olympian boxer at 165 pounds - Claressa Shields!"
But first, Shields, a high school student and middleweight boxer from Flint, Michigan, has to qualify for the team. At the Olympic trials, Shields boxes against women who are almost a decade older and much more experienced. But Shields has beaten the odds before.
Teen Contender won the Best Documentary: Gold Award in the 2012 Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. The story was produced by Joe Richman, Sue Jaye Johnson and Samara Freemark, with narrator Claressa Shields, and edited by Deborah George and Ben Shapiro, for Radio Diaries and NPR's All Things Considered.
Claressa's story is featured in a one-hour radio special about women's boxing, co-hosted by Rosie Perez and WNYC's Marianne McCune.
produced by
Joe Richman (@RadioDiaries) is a Peabody Award-winning producer and reporter, and the founder of Radio Diaries.
Samara Freemark (@sfreemark) is the Co-Creator and Senior Producer of APM Reports’ investigative podcast In the Dark.
Sue Jaye Johnson is an award-winning independent journalist and producer.
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