“My heart led me to the University of South Carolina. I (didn’t) know why, but as I continue to live in this community, now I know why,” Dawn Staley said. “My purpose was more than coming down here and winning national championships, and I didn’t know what that was until it unveiled itself.”
Twitter has always been a part of the Dawn Staley experience at South Carolina. She joined in January 2009, midway through her first season in Columbia. It’s doubtful many people noticed. Twitter was less than three years old, and there were only a couple thousand people who cared about Gamecock women’s basketball (probably half of whom were on Twitter). Initially, Staley used Twitter to build fan support. She made a point to like and retweet every tweet directed her way, and respond to as many as she could.
That was a long time ago. Now Staley’s account is an institution. The Free Times named her Columbia’s best tweeter. Like the rest of us, she tweets pictures of her dog, Champ, but unlike the rest of us, she turns Champ into a national celebrity. Her tweets launch letter-writing campaigns, fundraisers, cooking critiques, and the occasional fan twitter war. Her tweets also launch controversy.
“I consider myself a non-confrontational person. If you look at my tweets the last couple of weeks you probably think otherwise. If I tweet something it’s truly coming from my heart,” she said. “If I say something a little bit confrontational, that's coming from my heart. I do think about what I’m saying and I put it out there using my 280 characters. I have responsibility to know there could be some resistance and it could be some ugliness. But I’ve got thick skin, and I’m willing to put myself out there to hear it, to see it, to block, to mute, all of those things. You really see it. Our country is divided, incredibly divided.”
These days everything is controversial. The “stick to sports” ship has sailed (only the “shut up and sing” ship is further out to sea). Three days after Staley’s Zoom press conference, the Gamecock football team will hold its own press conference to talk about racial injustice, a player-led event done with the support of Will Muschamp. Yet, on Thursday, when Staley tweeted “Please Vote,” the replies turned into an argument.
“I tweeted out, ‘Please vote,’” Staley said. “I didn’t say, vote Republican, I didn’t say, vote Democratic, I didn’t say vote independent. I didn’t say any of that, but people took it upon themselves to say I’m voting for this person or that person.”
Staley isn’t worried about being an instigator. She wouldn’t put a timeline to it, but since being named Team USA’s head coach and then winning the national championship in 2017, Staley has increasingly become comfortable tackling issues inside and outside basketball. That has included racial equality.
It’s an issue that has long simmered for Staley, but she hasn’t always been this vocal. When the Confederate flag on the grounds of the State House prevented the Gamecocks from hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, she occasionally complained, mostly privately, about the competitive disadvantage, but that was it. Even when it was removed, she was vague when she said the removal helped her program.
“I’ve always been comfortable speaking my mind, but I didn’t do it because my heart didn’t tell me to,” she said. “Now my heart is speaking to me a lot more these days because of things that are happening. I’m a coach of 11 young ladies. Nine of them are black. Two are white. We have to co-exist. Fortunately for us, we’re all of one accord. We’ve got the synergy going.”
Circumstances have changed too. Despite being only 50, Staley is the third-longest tenured coach in the SEC. When you consider her playing and coaching careers together, she is also the most accomplished coach (Gary Blair is the only other coach with a national title). She would deny it, calling herself an introvert, but Staley is one of the leaders of a new generation of women’s coaches: they played for (and sometimes coached under) the icons of the game like Pat Summitt, they played in the WNBA, some even coached in the NBA. They tend to be women, and many are Black. Six of the coaches in the SEC this season will be Black women. But Staley is more worried about standing up for her players.
Staley attended a peaceful rally in late May, following the killing of George Floyd, posting a picture of herself with Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott. Players Destiny Littleton and Olivia Thompson were also there. Littleton also attended a march last week. Laeticia Amihere has arranged on-campus discussions of race, and has promoted voter registration drives. Staley tries not to push her views on her players. She waited until Friday night for a Zoom meeting to talk about everything that happened last night (although Staley admitted she probably waited too long). She has supported a movement led by current and former Gamecock athletes to rename the Strom Thurmond Center (“Anything that represents racial divide shouldn’t be on a college campus,” she said).
“I’m going to get people in and around our community on Zoom calls from here on out just so they can help us navigate. I don’t have all the answers. But surely I can cast a large web with people in this community that can help us grow and learn and try to move the needle in a way that they can be young and they don’t have to spend half their lives protesting stuff that they virtually have no control over,” Staley said. “We have some leaders on our team of social justice. Laeticia Amihere has been tireless. She’s probably the person that has stayed with it. She’s up on it. She reads, she’s in the community, she talks, she’s on committees. If nobody else, I have to be of service to her if that’s how she chooses to exercise her freedom of speech. You never know, she could be the Prime Minister of Canada.”
Staley’s voice matters. On Monday, before anything happened, she tweeted support for the player strike that swept the sports world Wednesday. She tweeted support on Wednesday. As she so often points out on Twitter when someone complains about her tweets, YOU are reading and responding to HER tweets, not the other way around. She was reminded of that following a recent twitter storm involving ESPN’s Maria Taylor, who is also Black.
“If you are getting a response from someone, then they hear you,” Staley said. “They may not like it, but they hear you. Hopefully who’s hearing it, maybe not that person who responded, but maybe somebody else, might think hmm, this is not right, and change their views. One person at a time.”
There is a section of the fan base that agrees with Staley. There is also a section that disagrees, and to varying degrees (one person recently suggested that college coaches should have to waive their constitutional rights as part of their contract, which seems a little extreme), and she understands that. She will still welcome those people, but she won’t abandon her purpose.
“It’s frustrating. It’s tiresome. It’s unnecessary, but I don’t know how many more we’re all going to have to witness to move past this. We have to have stamina. That’s everybody that’s against whatever we want to call what’s happening out here in our world. Some see it as racism, some see it as a need to comply, some see it as a lot of things. I see it as wrong. No matter how you look at it, it’s wrong,” Staley said. “It’s like a disease. It’s another pandemic that’s been happening for 400 years. We have yet to find the vaccine for it, but we shouldn’t stop.”
