The Black Coaches Association held its Final Four Sports Summit in Phoenix last week. Prior to the summit, the BCA released a report titled “From the NFL to College Campuses, Black Women Coaches Lead at Every Level,” which recognizes a lineage of Black women who have shaped coaching through discipline, expertise and sustained performance. The report states their work “establishes a foundation that continues to influence how the game is taught, played and led.”
The MSR this week features Tyra Perry and Yolett McPhee-McCuin, who are among 42 active coaches the BCA listed in honor of Women’s History Month.
The annual Final Four is also the site of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association convention, coaches’ meet-and-greets and a marketplace for current and unemployed coaches seeking job opportunities.
Ole Miss Women’s Basketball Coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin held a Zoom session last week for current assistant college coaches and others.
“Coach Yo is about developing not just players, but coaches… Especially young coaches,” said Christal Caldwell, an Atlanta-based girls basketball coach. “It was encouraging to hear how she values growth, genuine relationships and staying prepared for opportunities.”
“That perspective is something that I’ll carry with me as I continue growing, navigating my coaching journey, and preparing for future opportunities,” Caldwell said.
It’s not easy being a college coach these days, and definitely not as a Black coach. But McPhee-McCuin is a proven winner wherever she goes.
“As far as me being a Black coach, I don’t shy away from that. I’m proud of that,” McPhee-McCuin told reporters, including the MSR, after her team’s 65-63 loss to Minnesota in the NCAA second round in Minneapolis on March 22.
Before Ole Miss hired her as the school’s first Black female head women’s basketball coach in 2016, McPhee-McCuin guided a Jacksonville program that had won 20 or more games only twice in its history and built it into a perennial power in the Atlantic Sun Conference from 2013 to 2018. She also held assistant roles at Clemson, Pittsburgh, Portland, Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Frank Phillips College. She has served as Bahamas National Team head coach since 2013. McPhee-McCuin was born in Freeport, The Bahamas, and played college ball at Miami Dade Community College and the University of Rhode Island, where she earned a business management degree in 2004 and later a master’s in secondary school physical education from Arkansas-Pine Bluff in 2007.
“I’m in this space and now that I understand my platform,” she said, “I know it’s important to use it for things that will help move the sport ahead.”
“Dawn [Staley] has been at South Carolina [for] 18 years. I’ve only been here eight. But I do understand that I have a platform, and we do have to fight.”
McPhee-McCuin has elevated the Ole Miss program into the national spotlight since her arrival in Oxford. The team played in its fifth straight NCAA tournament, and she is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished coaches in the country.
“I know what Pat [Summitt] and Vivian Stringer and Geno [Auriemma], and Dawn and people have done for me,” she said.
FINALLY…
An annual reminder: Cheyney State was the first and remains the only HBCU to play for a Division I women’s basketball national title. The 1982 squad was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024.
“I reflect on our historic run in 1982,” said Deb Walker, a native Detroiter and one of nine All-Americans on that squad. “C. Vivian Stringer and our coaching staff provided all the tools that we needed to be successful. We were taught that it’s bigger than basketball. That day we came up short on the scoreboard, but we won in the game of life.”
“We will always be champions and second to none,” Walker concluded.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses at challman@spokesman-recorder.com.