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Daybreak Staley left Temple College in her native Philadelphia after the 2007-08 season and was named head coach of the South Carolina women’s basketball group.
In additional than a decade and a half since, Staley has taken the Gamecocks program to unprecedented heights, main South Carolina to 3 national titles throughout her tenure.
In her new guide, “Unusual Favor,” Staley revealed one other SEC college expressed curiosity in her in 2005.
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Daybreak Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks in opposition to the Iowa Hawkeyes throughout the nationwide championship sport at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse April 7, 2024, in Cleveland. (Ben Solomon/NCAA Images by way of Getty Photographs)
“Alabama got here after me first in 2005,” Staley wrote.
She was teaching at Temple on the time she was approached by Alabama. The Owls completed the 2004-05 season with a 28–4 file and superior to the second spherical of the NCAA Event.
Whereas Staley landed in the identical convention because the Crimson Tide, she believed South Carolina was the perfect match for her household and profession.
“I visited the campus. I favored the athletic director. However I could not see myself residing in Alabama,” she famous.
Head coach Daybreak Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks reacts in opposition to the Texas Longhorns throughout a Remaining 4 sport at Amalie Area April 4, 2025, in Tampa, Florida. (Ben Solomon/NCAA Images by way of Getty Photographs)
Whereas Staley did not take care of the thought of transferring to Alabama, she stated the transfer to South Carolina meant she would nonetheless be becoming a member of a league by which a number of coaches had constructed legendary careers.
“I used to be drawn to the truth that USC was a part of the SEC and its storied legacy in ladies’s basketball,” Staley wrote. “Pat Summitt was on this league, Andy Landers, Melanie Balcomb, all these legendary coaches. I used to be trying to refine my expertise, rise to compete with the perfect. The cherry on prime was that my dad and mom have been initially from South Carolina.”
Staley was additionally longing for a reunion together with her mom, Estelle, and her siblings.
College of South Carolina head coach Daybreak Staley celebrates profitable the Albany regional and advancing to the Remaining 4 after chopping a bit of the online at MVP Area in Albany, N.Y., March 31, 2024. (Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune Information Service by way of Getty Photographs)
By all accounts, Staley has grow to be a beloved determine in Columbia, South Carolina’s capital metropolis and the house of the Gamecocks. Town just lately unveiled an on-campus statue in honor of Staley.
Staley mirrored on a state embracing her given her difficult historical past together with her household. Estelle left South Carolina many years in the past resulting from racism and discrimination.
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Staley described the homecoming as a “full-circle second.”
“Time is a humorous factor, is not it? That I discover myself thriving within the very state that drove my mom into exile is an irony I always remember,” Staley wrote. “That she was capable of return to her residence, her place of belonging, after I got here to work at South Carolina was a full-circle second made attainable by social progress, the civil rights motion, myriad adjustments seismic and small, but additionally, largely, by religion.”
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