This occasional series will highlight Black coaches at all levels of sport.
This week: USC Women’s Assistant Coach Wendale Farrow.
Los Angeles, CA — This is Wendale Farrow’s first season coaching in the Big Ten and his fourth season as assistant coach for the USC women’s basketball program. We got the chance to watch him during a practice before the Trojans played Minnesota last Thursday.
“Every day each coach has a voice, and I try to make mine as enthusiastic as possible,” said Farrow afterwards. He is the only Black male — and only male period — on the otherwise all-female coaching staff.
Farrow credits Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb, who hired him four years ago, for allowing him and the other staff members to be more than human statues as she coaches. “One of the biggest benefits of working at SC is that we all are allowed to do all things — recruiting, basketball coaching, game planning and preparation, relationship building,” he pointed out.
The Sacramento, Ca. native, who attended and played for Eastern Michigan where he graduated in 2009, was also a graduate manager there (2010-12). He later worked as an academic mentor at Michigan while he completed his master’s degree in educational leadership student affairs from EMU.
Farrow admitted he didn’t envision coaching. “I think the coaches that I had really modeled what it was like to be a professional basketball [coach],” he recalled. “I know if I could have the same impact on young people that they had on me, I want to give that a try.”
“When I was in grad school,” he continued, “I worked with both [men’s and women’s] programs. I grew a liking to both sides of the game. My first opportunity to coach women, I already had relationships and what it takes to be in this business. It worked out pretty well.”
In total, Farrow has six years of coaching experience — five at Cal, including three seasons with Gottlieb when she was HC where his focus was on the guards, and one at Vanderbilt. He also assumed a variety of roles in two seasons as an assistant coach at UCLA, including video coordinator, community service liaison, and interim recruiting coach.
At USC, he is now working with such players as sophomore JuJu Watkins, a generational talent. “We are fortunate that the person that is JuJu allows us to coach her as a player,” said Farrow.
“She’s a very humble, kind hearted, giving person, wants to listen and learn, and wants to get better beside her teammates. I never had been able to coach a player like that, and found different ways to communicate with her, to motivate her, and try to teach her the best way I can.
“I’ve been trying to learn from other people who had great players. She is like nobody else,” said the assistant coach on Watkins.
Being a Black coach should not be a pigeonholed position, stressed Farrow. “Sometimes we get targeted by being a recruiter, but it’s only one function of basketball,” he pointed out.
“Relationship building is huge of course, but you have to game plan and pregame and have to organize the day-to-day things that go into compliance, academics, health, and all the things that make sure our players are operating at a high level.”
As a result, Farrow primarily sees his role as a coach more as a servant leader. “To serve others and provide value, the same that I do in life,” he surmised. “Whatever I can do to help my head coach run a better program, a better team to perform well in games, I am willing to do with energy, enthusiasm and effort.”
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.