It wasn’t just the person, it was the place.
Dawn Staley earned an honorary PhD from Smith College two weeks ago. Outfitted in a distinctive black robe, a uniform radically different from that of South Carolina’s basketball coach, she stood and addressed the graduating seniors.
Staley needs no introduction to our readers, but she blazed a career as a basketball player and coach way before those jobs brought real money, and certainly not her salary of $4.25 million. She was in it for the love of the game, and has become a connection between the game’s past and the more lucrative present.
So it meant something when she said:
“There is no rivalry among women. Lifting yourself up and lifting another woman are one and the same.”
The graduates stood up and cheered for Staley - young women, nonbinary graduates and yes, men who chose an education that centers women. And so did their parents, even me, way in the back of that crowd.
And I didn’t even have to buy a ticket to see her work.
Women’s colleges haven’t always been welcoming to women of color, but since 2023, Sarah Willie-LeBreton has been Smith’s president. A day earlier, Willie-LeBreton spoke passionately about standing for Smith’s values, on the same stage where Staley was conferred her doctorate.
Smith College is currently targeted by the Department of Education for alleged Title IX violations because of the way it defines gender in admissions; as inclusively as possible. The school made a decision to admit transgender students, and they are now part of campus life at Smith.
It’s rich for the DOE to come for Smith as though it has not done right by women, in the classroom or on the playing fields. The peach basket was still a new idea for James Naismith when Smith hosted the first-ever women’s college basketball game in 1893. Smith and other traditional women’s colleges were among the first to found basketball and informal baseball teams before the turn of the 20th century.
Dawn Staley has plenty of rivals (Oh, is that you, Geno?) and college hoops is filled with them. But she’s right, there should be no rivalry among women.
Really, that’s what sports tell all of us. It’s about where to compete, and where to cooperate.
The right time and place.
Doctor Staley came to teach.
