Glass ceiling crashes down
Women starting to coach boys basketball teams
Mansa El’s voice fills up the Cypress Springs gym during warm-ups ahead of a Tuesday basketball game.
On this night, El — the freshman boys basketball coach — and the Panthers host Langham Creek in search of a 12th win.
It doesn’t start well, and El isn’t shy about letting the players know. “Show up or sit down” can be heard from the home bench.
Cypress Springs leads by one point entering the fourth quarter when El addresses the players during the break.
“This game is yours to lose,” El said.
The Cypress Springs freshmen win by 10 points. El tells them they could have won by more.
The coach can’t be too upset after a win, though, as the team breaks the huddle with the battle cry “Man up.”
“She’s the real deal,” Cypress Springs varsity boys basketball coach Sam Benitez said.
The first female boys’ basketball coach in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD history is proving just that with each passing day. El doubles as the varsity assistant.
Some opposing coaches greet her as a state champion, remembering her time on the 2008 CyFair girls basketball title team.
El has been through the recruiting process a few times over, going from North Texas to Tallahassee Community College and South Alabama.
She has been through four surgeries on her knees and foot. El actually had to choose between a combine for a spot overseas and a much-needed surgery once her South Alabama career was done. She chose the latter, which propelled her into coaching.
All that rehab gave her time to become an expert at scouting.
El’s first coaching job was as an assistant for the women’s team at West Virginia Wesleyan. She moved to a graduate-assistant spot at the University of Houston with women’s coach Ronald Hughey. It meant she had to pursue her master’s degree.
El was thrust into an assistantcoaching role at UH in her second year. She laughs at the memory of scouting for an upcoming Rice game during the week of a final, which she failed. But UH won.
She moved to an assistant coaching job at Canisius College in Buffalo before landing back home, where a random meeting with her high school coach, Ann Roubique, at a nail salon led to encouragement to apply for a high school job in CFISD.
El has lived a thousand different lives in the name of basketball.
She was an English teacher at Cypress Springs when the boys program needed a head coach for the freshman team.
Benitez brought her in for an interview and her résumé spoke for itself. He even sent his players her highlight film.
“That was really fun to me,” freshman guard Anas Rombok said. “Seeing how she played in college, she was really productive. That stood out to me. Obviously, we all want to be at that level.”
It has been a copacetic relationship from day one.
“A coach is a coach,” said guard Cristian Green, reciting what his parents said. “It really doesn’t matter what gender they are.”
Sharee Griffin believes that’s how it should be.
Griffin has been at Dawson since 2010, where she is the junior varsity boys coach and a varsity assistant. This is the same campus home to Claire Jeffress, a female kicker on the varsity football team.
Griffin and El know each other.
Their experiences are similar. There is some close-mindedness and some awkward moments, especially outside their respective areas. El often gets mistaken for a trainer. It’s Team Mom for Griffin. A referee once told Griffin he had never been corrected by a woman in basketball before.
That doesn’t outweigh the support, though. Griffin says her four daughters think it’s cool.
“They’re like ,‘You coach boys? How’d you do that? That’s so cool?’ ” Griffin said. “Just showing them they can do anything. You don’t have to be a boy to coach boys. If you really believe in yourself and believe in what you can do, you can do whatever you want to do.”
Griffin and El aren’t hung up on making history as much as they are about simply doing what they love.
The best compliment the two could receive is no compliment at all. They just want women in roles traditionally reserved for men to be seen as normal.
El used to watch Becky Hammon play growing up. With the San Antonio Spurs in 2014, Hammon became the first full-time female assistant coach in any of the four major professional sports leagues.
Benitez said another coach who is thinking of adding a woman to the staff reached out to him to gauge his experience.
Dawson varsity coach Mark Barre believes Griffin can be a head boys basketball coach one day. Both Griffin and El believe it’ll happen one day.
Even if she wants it to only be about basketball, El knows it’s bigger than her.
“It’s crazy to think that it’s me,” she said. “But it’s a huge thing for us to be shattering that ceiling.”