Last Wednesday’s Minnesota-Alabama A&M women’s basketball game at Williams Arena was a historical one in nature. All three game officials were Black, the first time at The Barn this season.
It was the only WBB game coached by a Black woman — second-year Dawn Thornton.
“Even to hear the Negro National Anthem was something that really resonated with me,” said Thornton afterwards on the pregame routine, which started after George Floyd’s death, of playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at Gopher women’s games before the U.S. national anthem.
“I love the fact that we can go into different places and be an inspiration to all others. I think that really means a lot just for our culture and what we do as a whole. I love the game of basketball, and I had the opportunity to be doing this for 19 years.”
It also was the first time the Alabama A&M’s women’s team played in Minnesota. We learned it came about from the efforts of Gopher Associate Head Coach Aaron Horn.
“He is responsible,” boasted his father Chris Horn, who accompanied the Bulldogs WBB team to the Twin Cities. “For him to be able to bring a team from Huntsville, Alabama. where his grandmother taught for decades, his grandfather graduated from, his aunt graduated from, and about 15 cousins graduated from Alabama A&M, to bring them to Minnesota is an amazing story.
“It was an awesome opportunity to come, so it was a good trip,” Chris pointed out. “It’s tearful even talking about it.”
Mr. Horn told us that the school is finishing up its 150th-year anniversary celebration. He said Alabama A&M was founded as a land-grant university in 1875 in Normal, Alabama, a community within Huntsville, “by the hands of a slave named William Cooper Counsell. He and a few good men decided to start the university that was founded out of the Freedmen Schools in Alabama,” Chris proudly pointed out.
“It was an awesome opportunity to come, so it was a good trip. It’s tearful even talking about it.”
AAMU’s current name was adopted in 1969, and it is one of 23 established colleges and universities set up to train Blacks to teach in segregated schools. The campus also houses the National Space Science and Technology Center, a joint research venture between A&M, NASA, and six other research universities in Alabama.
Huntsville, Alabama also has Minnesota ties, continued Chris Horn.
Dred Scott once was enslaved there. He eventually filed suit to remain free and lived at Minnesota’s Fort Snelling for a time. “Dred Scott came to Minnesota out of that court case and decided he didn’t want to be a slave again. That started in Huntsville, Alabama, where he was a slave,” reiterated Horn.
The Gophers defeated the visiting Bulldogs 82-44, a contest in which Thornton said afterwards they missed two players due to injury. “We have a very young team,” she pointed out.
“I thought that right now, we should be what we should look like in conference. We have been playing some really good teams in the preseason.
“We have to do a better job making sure that we can stop the bleeding early,” continued Thornton. “We got to make adjustments. The game of basketball is a game of runs, and how you respond to runs means everything, especially going into conference [play].
“I think that we are doing a really good job identifying our identity. That is the biggest thing for us,” surmised the AAMU coach.
Finally, upon learning that she was the only Black female HC at Williams Arena this season, Thornton concluded, “I tell people and my team all the time— it’s not adversity, it’s about opportunity. So anytime we get an opportunity to show up and be our best, and do the things that God has given us the opportunity to do, we are always going to be grateful and do it with class.
“I thought that the young women, no matter what the score was, we were still able to do it with class.”
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.