Staley was gifted the ball when she was teaching at Temple College, earlier than she coached USA Basketball. The truth is, when Staley started transitioning from a participant to a coach, she thought all she needed to do was win. She quickly found basketball nonetheless had a lot left for her.
Under that basketball is a mountain of trophies. As a younger participant rising up in Philadelphia, Staley had two targets: turn out to be a nationwide champion and an Olympic gold medalist. She now owns six Olympic gold medals — three as a participant (1996, 2000, 2004) and three as a coach (2008, 2016, 2021) — and coached the South Carolina nationwide championship crew in 2017.
Staley can also be a two-time NCAA participant of the 12 months (1991, 1992) and a six-time WNBA All-Star. After successful the distinction in 2020, Staley is as soon as once more a finalist for the Naismith Coach of the 12 months Award alongside LSU’s Kim Mulkey, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and North Carolina State’s Wes Moore.
Teaching on the first March Insanity for girls’s basketball
On Friday at 7 p.m. ET, Staley will attempt to get one step nearer to a different nationwide championship when she coaches her No. 1 seeded South Carolina crew by means of their Candy Sixteen recreation towards No. 5 North Carolina. The Gamecocks dominated within the first two rounds of the match, beating Howard 79-21 and Miami 49-33. Nonetheless, as soon as once more, Staley acknowledges this match is about extra than simply successful.
San Antonio’s College of the Incarnate Phrase made its first NCAA match look this 12 months as one of many first-four groups. They performed in South Carolina’s Colonial Life Area the place they had been toppled by Howard, 55-53. After the sport, Staley led her crew into the tunnel to provide Incarnate Phrase handshakes and high-fives, congratulating them on a terrific season.
Later that night, one of many Incarnate Phrase gamers took to social media, saying she was unhappy she did not get an image with Staley. Staley shortly responded and, at 8:45 a.m. the subsequent day, she met the Incarnate Phrase crew and head coach Jeff Dow to take footage earlier than they returned to Texas.
“These younger women — I noticed on social media of their press convention — they’re like: ‘You understand, we’re completely satisfied to be right here. That is the place Daybreak Staley coaches. That is the place they play their precise video games.’
“I need the sport to develop, however I do not actually view us that approach and different individuals view us as just like the Mecca of ladies’s basketball. And to listen to that, to listen to it, I needed to make it possible for I met them,” Staley defined.
That is the primary 12 months that the ladies’s match has 68 groups and play-in video games; with out the growth, Incarnate Phrase would not have been capable of make their historic match run. Realizing that, Staley simply needed to make their NCAA match expertise that a lot better.
“If we’re asking different individuals — the choice makers of our recreation — to provide us no matter it’s, make it equitable, give us what we deserve; we ourselves, we’ve to guard that. We’ve to guard one another, that is within the recreation.”
Rising the sport past the NCAA match
After successful the 2017 nationwide championship, Columbia, South Carolina’s mayor named a road close to the Colonial Life Area ‘Daybreak Staley Approach.’ In January 2021, the college put in a statue of A’ja Wilson for her accomplishments with that championship crew.
Simply 9 months later, on October 15, 2021, the College of South Carolina Board of Trustees accredited a seven-year, $22.4 million contract extension, making Staley the best paid Black coach in ladies’s basketball and one of many highest paid within the nation.
“After we’re internet hosting the NCAA match, once more, it is these lives which can be being impacted in a optimistic approach, that have of being someplace the place ladies are placed on a pedestal,” stated Staley. “So I hope it is a place the place individuals will come and say: ‘That is the place ladies get handled properly.'”
Staley feels that South Carolina has grown the sport and ladies’s sport as an entire, particularly relating to equal pay. She desires to see the remainder of the nation make the identical dedication to ladies’s basketball that South Carolina has. Staley believes the eagerness for girls’s basketball is already there; gamers, coaches and followers are all locked into the sport, the one factor that is lacking is funding.
“We’re ladies like, for those who make us really feel good, we will make you are feeling higher. We’re that sort of beings, the place simply deal with us good and we are going to deal with you higher. We will deal with the sport higher,” stated Staley.
“I simply suppose ladies’s basketball is at a spot the place we may be income producing. I do not know if it is going to be on the magnitude of what March Insanity is for the boys, however I do know one factor, they invested in it, and I do know the numbers continue to grow and rising and rising and rising.”
Turning her gamers into excessive impression group members
For now, whereas she waits for others to put money into ladies’s basketball, Staley invests in her gamers and helps them attain their very own aspirations. The targets gamers set for themselves are far and past what Staley imagined at their age; she even heard one participant say she desires to be a millionaire by the point she graduates school.
“I need them to get the whole lot they will get out of the game,” she stated. “I’ve launched my total crew to brokers everywhere in the nation to allow them to get their manufacturers so as, to allow them to get the wealth that they deserve.”
“I do that as a result of I am keen about my sport. I see little ladies who grew up like me. They’ve a future on this and the extra they apply themselves, the extra they’ll get out of it.”
Staley additionally seems to be past her sport and into native communities. In 2013, she co-founded Innersole, a non-profit that gives sneakers to homeless kids and youngsters in want that exhibit excellence within the classroom in Columbia. The WNBA Neighborhood Management Award is known as after Staley and focuses completely on the offseason actions of gamers who put money into their communities.
Staley desires to generate the identical native change by means of her groups too. When recruiting, Staley seems to be at a participant’s potential for impression each on and off the courtroom.
“I do know my impression in Philly. I do know my impression right here in South Carolina. I am starting to seek out myself and my impression throughout the nation as a result of I hear it from different individuals,” Staley stated.
“So I select individuals due to the impression they will make of their neighborhoods. If these neighborhoods can get fastened due to somebody that got here again they usually’re giving again they usually’re pouring into them, we will have higher neighborhoods.”
Wanting again to North Philly
Staley recruits these high-impact gamers as a result of that is additionally her story. After successful her first Olympic gold in 1996, she got here again to her hometown of Philadelphia and established the Daybreak Staley Basis: a non-profit meant to assist at-risk youngsters with afterschool packages, mentoring and a summer season basketball league.
Rising up within the tasks of North Philadelphia, Staley stated she realized so many classes and would not commerce her childhood for an additional in suburbia: “North Philly raised me, and I take it in all places I’m going.”
Her mom, Estelle Staley, was a disciplinarian and Staley freely admits she was frightened of her mother, however the best way she raised Staley and her siblings was integral to all her accomplishments in basketball. As time goes on, Staley sees increasingly of her mom in herself. She stated she’s her mom’s baby by means of and thru, in the best way she coaches, mentors and treats these round her.
“She raised my siblings and I, in a approach that we may solely achieve success. There was no room moreover for us to achieve success,” defined Staley. “There was an ideal peace about my mom that she instilled in us, there is a sure battle that she instilled in us, there is a work ethic. Like we solely know easy methods to work laborious.”
Whereas she seems to be over all her awards, glittering of their glass instances, and her beloved Olympic basketball, Staley is not eager about what her profession has amounted to up to now however the place it began: North Philly.
“Actually, I simply wish to be often called an odds-beater. Like simply merely beat the chances as a result of nobody from North Philly — nobody from the tasks in North Philly — gave me a shot at any of this, like actually none of this.
“I had a praying mom. She made certain we went to church, and all of that is divine intervention since you couldn’t have dreamt of this occurring to only one particular person.”
