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Dawn Staley left the Temple University in its native Philadelphia after the 2007-08 season and was appointed chief coach of the South Carolina Women’s Basketball team.
In more than a decade and a half since then, Staley has taken the Gamecocks program to unprecedented heights, which leads to South Carolina to three national titles during his mandate.
In his new book, “Helto Poyo”, Staley revealed that another SEC school expressed interest in her in 2005.
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Dawn Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks against the Iowa Hawkeyes during the National Championship game in Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on April 7, 2024 in Cleveland. (Photos of Ben Solomon/NCAA through Getty Images)
“Alabama came after me first in 2005,” Staley wrote.
He was training in Temple at the time Alabama approached him. The OWLS finished the 2004-05 season with a 28-4 record and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament.
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While Staley landed at the same conference as The Crimson Tide, he believed that South Carolina was the best option for her family and career.
“I visited the campus. I liked the athletic director. But I could not see myself living in Alabama,” he said.
Chief coach Dawn Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks reacts against Texas’s Longhorns during a Final Four game in Amalie Arena on April 4, 2025 in Tampa, Florida. (Photos of Ben Solomon/NCAA through Getty Images)
While Staley did not care about the idea of moving to Alabama, he said that the move to South Carolina meant that she would still join a league in which several coaches had built legendary races.
“I was attracted to the fact that USC was part of the SEC and its historical legacy in female basketball,” Staley wrote. “Pat Summitt was in this league, Andy Landers, Melanie Balcomb, all these legendary coaches. I was looking to refine my skills, to compete with the best. The cherry on top was that my parents were originally from South Carolina.”
Staley was also anxious for a meeting with her mother, Estelle, and her brothers.
The chief coach of the University of South Carolina, Dawn Staley, celebrates winning the regional Albany and advancing to the Final Four after cutting a piece of the network in MVP Arena in Albany, New York, on March 31, 2024. (Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune News Service through Getty Images)
According to all reports, Staley has become a loved figure in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina and the home of the Gamecocks. The city recently presented a statue at the Campus in honor of Staley.
Staley reflected on a state that hugged her given her complicated story with her family. Estelle left South Carolina decades due to racism and discrimination.
Staley described the return home as a “complete circle moment.”
“Time is a curious thing, right? What do I am thriving in the same state that took my mother into exile is an irony that I never forgot,” Staley wrote. “That he could return home, his place of belonging, when he came to work in South Carolina, it was a full circle possible for social progress, the movement of civil rights, the innumerable changes seismic and small, but also, in large part, by faith.”
