Assistants join Coaches for Action
The first order of business was to come up with a title, and Dwyane Killings wanted to make sure “action” was a part of it.
“We didn’t want it to be something where we’re just creating awareness,” the Marquette University associate head men’s basketball coach said. “We wanted to create impact in our communities and with our kids.”
Both Killings and fellow MU assistant Justin Gainey have joined several other assistants in the Big East Conference as “Coaches For Action,” a group that seeks to weed out prejudice and discrimination impacting student-athletes and others in Big East communities.
With 21 assistants and representation from every Big East team on board, the group has developed a three-pronged approach to action, including a push for a “Black Lives Matter” patch on home and away uniforms for all Big East men’s basketball teams this season.
The other two components of the project include educating Big East communities on the importance of voting, including the organization of a voter registration drive in early October. CFA also aims to create a scholarship fund to assist first-generation minority students with at least a 3.0 GPA attending a Big East school. Each CFA member has kicked in to the fund and will lobby their head coaches and program donors to do the same.
Killings said Big East commissioner Val Ackerman and senior associate commissioner Stu Jackson already have given their blessing to the plan. The Big East would be the first American sports league to have Black Lives Matter uniform patches.
It was Killings who spearheaded the initiative, although the group intends to function without a true “director.” Killings first reached out to Villanova assistant Kyle Neptune and Connecticut assistant Kimani
Young, and from there.
“They’re two of my best friends,” Killings said. “A lot of people are downloading what’s going on in the world, processing it, and collectively, we thought we needed to do something to have a deeper conversation how we can impact the people we interact with in our lives.
“We got everybody on a Zoom call, all the minority coaches, to see what would happen. We had representation from every program, and you found there were guys who were passionate and wanted to talk, wanted to act.”
Killings said the nature of the assistant coach’s job, to recruit the athletes and carry the program’s messages, makes this subset of the coaching community uniquely positioned to lead the charge.
“We wanted to make sure that we had our voice and didn’t want our voice to get muted,” he said. “Each assistant coach had to engage with their head coach and AD and let them know what we’re trying to do. Then, we had a meeting with all the ADs to talk about our
it snowballed initiatives. It was warmly accepted. The goal now is to make sure the warm acceptance makes it a reality also.”
Killings said each school will adopt the undertaking of a voting initiative differently, but the expectation is to build something sustainable. He said Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski pledged full support but said, “Whatever you guys put your word on, make sure you live up to it. You owe it to yourselves.” Killings said Wojciechowski’s own public support of Black Lives Matter and associated causes has helped set the tone.
“He’s a leader of our program ... People watching him, it gives us courage to do our own thing,” Killings said.
Coaches for Action already has a web presence at CoachesForAction.org in addition to Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Killings and other coaches were slated to participate in The Upside podcast at 5 p.m. CST Monday, hosted by ESPN’s Adam Finkelstein.