N.C.A.A. Final Four Live: Stanford Beats South Carolina

“I saw that she had something special, and had the opportunity to be the next one,” Peck said. A couple years later, Staley became the second Black head coach to win a title, and pulled that piece of net out of her wallet to show reporters at the postgame news conference.

As of this week, seven Black coaches have led teams to the women’s Final Four. Two of those seven, Staley and Arizona Coach Adia Barnes, are in this Final Four. It will be the first time that two Black head coaches will compete in the same year in the national semifinals.

“Our history here in women’s basketball is filled with so many Black bodies that for me, for this to happen in 2021 is long overdue,” Staley said after her team beat No. 6 seed Texas on Tuesday.

According to the 2019-2020 edition of the Race and Gender Report Card, an annual demographic survey of athletes and coaches conducted by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, 19.3 percent of head coaches were Black or African-American. “This data stands in stark contrast to the 41.9 percent of student-athletes playing Division I women’s basketball who were Black or African-American,” the report said.

Nearly 78 percent of the coaches in Division I women’s basketball were white, the report said.

“If you look around the country at the Power 5 head coaching jobs, there is no representation,” Barnes said. “Two years ago, I was the only Black coach in the Pac-12 on the men’s or women’s side. And then Charmin Smith came into the league and there were two of us — and our sport’s predominantly Black,” she added, referring to the University of California, Berkeley head coach.

Both Barnes and Peck said Black coaches who would like to coach are often not given opportunities to develop as assistants, sufficient support for their own teams or leeway if they make a mistake.

“The advice from people that cared about me was ‘Don’t take that job, because you won’t get another chance,’” Barnes said. “But white men get the opportunities again, all the time.”

She said she has had several mentors within the game, including Staley, who she said texts her regularly. “She’s been a tremendous supporter of me and what I do,” Barnes said. “Like she’s across the country, but we want each other to be successful. I think we don’t have enough of that.”

Staley eventually gave Peck back the net piece from the 1999 championship. Peck said that when Staley returned the piece, she said: “Now, we have to decide who we’ll give the next ones to.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/02/sports/stanford-south-carolina-uconn-arizona/