Sad news: The head coach of Ottawa womens basketball shed tears as two of his best players made a final decision to leave the team
Dawn Staley was a trusted member of the South Carolina senior guard team even before Brea Beal put her uniform on for the Gamecocks.
Staley’s coaching achievements, which have contributed to South Carolina’s explosive ascent in women’s basketball, weren’t the only thing that lured Beal in. Beal understood that Staley, a Black woman just like her, would be the most qualified to mentor her through life’s challenges and the pressures of playing basketball on a national platform.
“People that were telling me what this community was about, I know it’s somewhere I wanted to be,” Beal stated. “As soon as I got here, she definitely led me down a journey so I could find out who I am.”
There has been very little Black female presence in coaching and sports administration, especially in sports like basketball where Black female college athletes are most concentrated, along with track and field. The Associated Press was informed by Black female athletes that having a Black woman coach them was essential to their growth.
“Some coaches will just have all guys with no understanding that there are sometimes things that a young woman may need to talk to another woman about,” stated Kiki Barnes, the commissioner of the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference and a former jumper for New Orleans basketball.
Black women continue to fall behind the majority of other groups, despite an increase in the number of women teaching women’s sports during the past ten years. In contrast to 3,760 white women and 5,236 white men, 399 Black women coached women’s NCAA sports teams in Divisions I, II, and III during the 2021–2022 academic year.
According to the NCAA’s demographics database, Black women comprised 12% of head coaches in all levels of women’s NCAA basketball, a sport in which 30% of participants are Black. This information was obtained during the 2021–2022 season.
This past season, 14 Black women—up one from 2021—led women’s basketball teams across 65 Power Five programs. That, together with data from the 2020–21 season, makes that less than 22 than any other race in Division I.
Four Black women’s basketball coaches—including Staley, who stated she thinks it’s more common to hire a woman at “this stage of the game”—made it to the Sweet 16 for the first time in ten years.
Staley, who will coach her team into the Final Four this weekend, said, “And it’s not to say that I’m going to sit here and male bash, because we have a lot of male coaches who have been in our game for decades upon decades.” “But I will say that giving women an opportunity to coach women and helping women navigate through life like they have navigated through life will allow your student-athletes a different experience than having a male coach.”
Staley has long pushed for the appointment of more female coaches in collegiate basketball, particularly those of color. However, WNBA star Angel McCoughtry claimed that even accomplished Black female coaches like Staley are still in short supply.
“I don’t remember having a Dawn Staley to look up to when I was getting recruited in high school,” McCoughtry, a 2005–09 Louisville player, remarked.
Another example of representation in the sport mentioned by McCoughtry is Carolyn Peck, the first African American woman to lead a team to an NCAA women’s basketball title (1999, Purdue).
McCoughtry stated, “There are one or two every ten years.” “Why are we limited to ten? Every ten years, ten coaches are Caucasian.
Former first overall choice of the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA, McCoughtry became accustomed to being in the company of strangers who didn’t share her appearance or comprehension. She’s African American. Black guys were her AAU and high school coaches. White males coached her in college. In Atlanta, her first coach was a white woman named Marynell Meadors.
She has encountered annoying queries from white coaches, colleagues, and owners, such as how frequently she shampoos her hair or if her intense play is a result of her Baltimore background.
