The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
JEFF JACOBS
On UConn women: ‘Inspiring words build a healthy dialogue’
ALBANY, N.Y. — Any time players and coaches are run through the press conference cycle during an NCAA Tournament weekend, absolutes will emerge. And with defending national champion South Carolina facing a UConn program that already has amassed double-digit national titles this century, absolutes Sunday were in high demand.
Which team has the most pressure on it heading into the Elite Eight matchup?
“We do,” said Gabby Williams of the No. 1 and undefeated Huskies. “That just goes with the 30 years of history that this program has.”
And those folks who said because the Gamecocks didn’t beat UConn, the 2017 title didn’t mean as much?
“I just laughed,” A’ja Wilson said. “You can’t take my banner away from me. You can’t take my ring away from me.”
Yes, when you go through the media ringer, personal narratives also emerge that everyone can embrace. Don’t ask me what the scandal-ridden NCAA did to deserve Sister Jean of Loyola-Chicago, but the 98-year-old nun has done more to heal college sports than 150 spin doctors ever could. So when Wilson, who coach Dawn Staley has called Superwoman, decided to tell her personal story of dyslexia
this weekend in The Players’ Tribune, there was no denying its poignance.
“It’s a great feeling for people to now understand that it’s real,” Wilson said. “It’s real, such as mental illness, such as a learning disability ... It’s good to know that you are not alone.”
When you put multiple coaches and players together, unexpected, unresolved narratives also emerge. Sometimes there are no easy, absolute answers. There absolutely is room for healthy dialogue.
Coach Felisha LegetteJack, who took Buffalo on a ride to the Sweet Sixteen before falling to South Carolina, seized the moment Saturday. She talked about African-American women coaches who got head coaching jobs, were fired and have so much trouble finding another.
“It took an African American woman to notice me when I lost my job [after six years] at Indiana,” Legette-Jack said. “Had she not, [former Buffalo AD] Danny White would have never known about me. I hope my colleagues don’t get frustrated and never come back.”
Legette-Jack talked about Jolette Law, who has worked as an assistant at Tennessee and South Carolina, after being fired as head coach at Illinois. She talked about former UConn player and assistant coach Jamelle Elliott who had to play in a high school gym at Cincinnati, was fired last week and set Geno Auriemma afire with criticism of Cincinnati.
“I’m saddened by it,” Legette-Jack said. “I understand the problem. I know that the majority of women basketball players look like me. I think that these young women, if we really care about them, that they will have role models that look like them. Because they are going to play four years for whomever and get an opportunity to go in this world, and they are not going to find anybody that looks like them and they are going to have to figure out how to navigate at a different level.
“I hope that these coaches that see me … get encouraged and understand the fight isn’t going to be easy. It’s necessary. It’s necessary not for you and your sadness and you and your woe-is-me. The fight is for the next young lady that needs a person who looks like her to rise above and to be coached up and create a foundation so she can become the COO, the CFO of something very big. It’s important that they stay in the race and keep fighting.”
Powerful words that caught fire on social media.
“She nailed it,” Staley said.
Auriemma, who recruited Legette-Jack before she decided on Syracuse, said he has watched trends come and go over three decades.
“Athletic directors and presidents, they look for the flavor of the month,” Auriemma said. “What can I do that’s going to make me look good?”
Auriemma said he has gotten calls from ADs asking him to recommend coaches. He gives them names. Their response?
“My president told me I have to hire this,” Auriemma said. “Even before going in, they have already made a decision. Not I want to hire the best coach, someone who can help us win, build a program. I almost never get that.
“They are put in situations where they can’t win. Five years later they are fired, and [people] go, ‘See, I told you.’ Well, they had no chance from the beginning, so nobody wants to give them a second chance. It’s stupid.”
From Auriemma’s view, this holds true regardless of race or gender.
“I got the job at the Connecticut in ‘85, they just wanted to make sure I had five guys on the court and that was going to be a W,” he said. “If you take a job today in a big BCS school, the demands are huge in some places. You take a job at other places like that, they don’t care. It’s listen, I’ve got a head football coach and a head men’s basketball coach who are a pain in my ass … just leave me alone.”
Auriemma joked after he won his first Big East championship, he asked for cheerleaders, five guys who played the flute or even one drummer and initially was denied. His point, he said, was it’s best to go to a place if you screw up early, it’s not going to destroy you. If you have growing support, you grow with the opportunity. He said Staley, a longtime star player, was given such an opportunity at Temple. Staley agrees she was fortunate in that regard.
“Still you have to perform,” Auriemma said.
As a national champion coach, as the next Olympic coach, as someone who has performed, Staley said she hopes she is seen as a beacon of hope.
“I do think any time you’re in this profession as an African-American woman, man, you have to be successful out the gate,” Staley said. “It takes a while to get a program off the ground, especially a dormant program and people want you to be great from the start. It takes an AD that has that patience. When I got the job at South Carolina, Eric Hyman was like, ‘It’s going to take you at least three years.’
Staley said she didn’t believe him. He was right.
“If you looked at all the coaches, both black, white, any ethnic group, they failed at some point. They probably have gotten opportunities. Those things don’t happen a lot for African American coaches. Felisha is probably the poster child for that, and I’m glad that she was given an opportunity to right the wrong, because nothing worse than losing a challenge and not being able to regroup and win that challenge.”