Dawn Staley Explains Decision to Cancel Series With BYU

Dawn Staley Explains Decision to Cancel Home and Home Series With BYU

An incident of racism at a sporting event that took place at BYU (Brigham Young University) factored into South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley‘s decision to cancel the home-and-home series that was scheduled with BYU. She goes on record to express why she did so.

“As a head coach, my job is to do what’s best for my players and staff. The incident at BYU has led me to reevaluate our home-and-home, and I don’t feel that this is the right time for us to engage in this series.” – @dawnstaley https://t.co/sEdC2ApkIW pic.twitter.com/LZqpOGRrl9

— South Carolina Women’s Basketball (@GamecockWBB) September 2, 2022

According to ESPN, the NCAA championship coach did not want to place her basketball players in front of potential abuse by BYU fans who may verbally abuse them based on their race. This comes on the heels of a recent incident at a BYU volleyball game. Duke University volleyball player Rachel Richardson reportedly heard someone in the BYU stands utter a racial slur to her. After hearing about that, Staley “did not want to put her players in that situation.”

Richardson, who is the only Black starter on Duke’s volleyball team, had been called a racial slur approximately two weeks ago while playing during the school’s competition against Brigham Young University. Due to the occurrence, the next day’s game was altered as BYU banned the guilty party from attending any more events at the school’s athletic buildings.

After going over the situation, she stated, “I slept on it a few nights, I woke up with the same gut feeling I should not put our players in that situation,” as she made the decision.

The Gamecocks, who won this past season’s championship in April were supposed to start the upcoming season with a home game against BYU on Nov. 7. The next game was going to be at BYU’s campus in Utah to complete the home and home series. Now since that has been scrapped, Staley stated she is discussing alternate plans with other schools to fill that void in their schedule.

She did mention that this decision was all hers as she never discussed it with her players.

“This was a selfish decision,” she said. “I was only thinking about South Carolina women’s basketball.”

BYU did offer a response to Staley’s decision.

We are extremely disappointed in South Carolina’s decision to cancel our series and ask for patience with the on-going investigation. We believe the solution is to work together to root out racism and not to separate from one another. #LoveOneAnother

🔗 https://t.co/gWka5vuPIj

— BYU Women’s Hoops (@byuwbb) September 3, 2022