First-year athlete hosts “Conversations with Corinn” podcast

Despite the business of college athletics, Corinn Brewer, a first-year women’s track and field pole vaulter, finds time each week to record a new episode of her podcast.

Her podcast, “Conversations With Corinn,” includes interviews with other collegiate and professional athletes about the women’s decathlon, faith and personal stories. 

Brewer competes in decathlons over the summer. She is a 13-time All-American and broke the under-20 American women’s decathlon record this past summer for the second time.

She posted her first podcast on Instagram in early February after becoming an ambassador for “Heaven to the Yeah,” a nonprofit organization that provides resources for underrepresented sports and promotes gender equity advancement. The organization sponsors the movement to put the women’s decathlon in the Olympics.

“It’s a disservice to the younger generation of women not being able to have those athletes to look up to say, ‘I want to be like her one day,’” Brewer said.

Her podcast has become a platform to raise awareness for gender equity in sports — an extension of the work she does with Heaven to the Yeah.

Their goal is to have the women’s decathlon in the Olympics by the Los Angeles games in 2028, the exact location where women at the 1984 Olympics women competed in the marathon for the first time. 

To do so, Heaven to the Yeah has led fundraising efforts like selling wine on its website to promote the Paris Olympics. Additionally, it’s holding Series X decathlon meets once a summer until the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. 

“People like Corinn are really spearheading the initiative of, if men can do it, we could do it too,” associate coach Brooke Astor said. “That’s a great mentality. We see it in other sports of equal pay … We’re gonna show the teams and show the games and get more viewership and show people what women’s sports can really do.”

While Brewer’s podcast focuses largely on the women’s decathlon, she also discusses her Christian faith with her fellow athletes.

First-year sprinter Kasey White says Brewer encourages others to learn about faith and even convinced her to attend a Bible study.

After sustaining a back injury that has kept her from competing during her first season at Lehigh, Brewer’s faith has been an integral part of her recovery in the form of attending Church every Sunday and relying on prayer as a grounding mechanism.

“She’s been going through a lot over the past six months since she got injured in the summer, and every time I talked to her she was never down about it, and I’m sure she prayed about it,” White said. “She’s never negative about anything. She didn’t let her injury bring her down and now even at the end of the season she’s still working as hard as ever.”

She has recently begun practicing again and is slowly increasing her athletic workload to prepare for the upcoming season. 

Brewer has been involved in track and field since she was five years old, with her parents coaching her while she attended Greensburg Central Catholic High School in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. 

Her four brothers are also all involved in track and field, with the two oldest also competing in the decathlon. Brewer got an early start in combined events from her brothers and by competing in the heptathlon.

Brewer’s gymnastics background also provided her with the control, power and strength necessary to progress in the heptathlon and pole vault. However, as she progressed in these events, seeing her brothers compete in the decathlon, an event in which women cannot compete up to the same level, was frustrating.

“It sort of angers me because, why?” Brewer said. “There’s no good reason why. It’s just been a gender inequity since the heptathlon was integrated into the Olympics and before that.”

While pursuing the combined events, Brewer also competed as a Level-9 gymnast on a club team until the end of her senior year of high school while working as a gymnastics coach for children. Her passion for the sport led her to establish a gymnastics team at her high school. Now, she returns to gymnastics during the summer off-season.

Despite Brewer’s versatile involvement with podcasting, track and field and her faith, she says her fulfillment ultimately comes from the difference she can make on the people around her.

“If I can make someone smile in a day, that would be wonderful,” Brewer said. “If I can help somebody out in some way, that’s really what I think I’m put on this earth to do, and when I have the opportunity to do that, then I think it’s fulfilling to me.”