Journey regarding Coale and program is only beginning
Sherri Coale issued an apology and Joe Castiglione vowed to listen in a pair of written statements released over the weekend. Those were good steps. They can't be the last ones. On Friday after images of the OU football team marching for racial justice began circulating on social media, several members of the OU women's basketball team responded with concerns about racial insensitivity during their time as Sooners. Gioya Carter was the first, tweeting she wished she had a head coach during her days at OU who would've stood with her like Lincoln Riley stood with his football players.
Carter, who played for Coale and the Sooners from 2013-17, said she instead heard comments like, “You guys act like it happened to you” and “If y'all's long braids hits one of my players in the face … ”
“As if the people in braids weren't her players,” Carter tweeted.
Other Black players responded with their own experiences.
None were positive. It wasn't until Sunday that a couple former Sooners came to Coale's defense on social media; both are white and one is married to Coale's son. That doesn't invalidate what they said, but similarly, their positive experiences don't invalidate what many Black players say they have experienced.
OU must take a serious and in-depth look at these issues.
Castiglione hinted at such things Sunday evening in his statement.
“Though we were unaware of the reported concerns of insensitivity in the women's basketball program prior to the comments that were posted in the last few days,” the OU athletic director said, “we are committed to listening.” That is a must.
It is clear many Black players have felt like they were lesser than. The outsiders. The others.
And lest you want to lob out the stick-to-sports trope, players being made to feel like they aren't part of the team is absolutely about sports. How can sports-related things not be affected by that? Recruiting? Chemistry? Unity?
There may be no bigger proponent of team unity than Coale. She has talked for years about her guys playing for each other. She has long espoused stuff like “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” and “share the journey” as program pillars.
How, then, could alienating an entire group of players NOT impact her teams and her program? This is about sports. It just so happens to be about human decency, too.
There's evidence that suggests every Black player didn't have a bad experience at OU. Courtney Paris, the greatest Sooner of them all, decided earlier this year to return to the program as an assistant coach.
If she had been made to feel lesser than, it's hard to imagine she would've returned to Norman to work full-time in the program and go recruit around the country in its name.
But good experiences for some don't erase the bad ones for others.
I'm reminded of what happened earlier this summer at OSU with Mike Gundy and the football team, Chuba Hubbard, who chose to return to Stillwater instead of going to the NFL, led the charge only a few months later for change. He wouldn't have decided to return if everything was all bad, but he wouldn't have stepped out and challenged his head coach if everything was all good.
These are complex situations.
But what is fairly cut and dried is the pain, the anger, the disgust many former OU women's basketball players have voiced over the past few days.
“You keep asking us, `What happened?'” former Sooner guard Shaina Pellington wrote in a lengthy message Sunday on Twitter. “You ask us publicly but most of you privately. Some of us are brave enough to share our stories, and when we do, you fail to LISTEN.”
That's what Castiglione and others in the administration have to do now — they must listen to these players. What they hear won't always be comfortable and may not always jive with their experiences with Coale and her program. But just because Coale has been to Final Fours and won Big 12 championships and built a program where one literally didn't exist for a time before her doesn't mean she's infallible.
“It's hard to believe that your favorite coaches and institutions would be capable of such horrendous things, right?” Pellington wrote. “Well, news flash, IT'S VERY POSSIBLE.”
In the same way OSU took a deep dive on Gundy and the football program over the summer, OU must do the same now with Coale and women's basketball. What changes should be made remain to be seen because we don't know what a thorough, confidential review will find.
Good steps have been made.
The journey can't end here.