By Dylan Pescatore and Kaneyl Carpenter, Cronkite PR Lab
By celebrating Black History Month, February is a month where we can look back on Black Americans who have made a difference in the world as we know it today. As Black History Month comes to a close next week, our Sun Devil coaches shared their thoughts about the month and their own memories about being Black in America.
Within the 24 men’s and women’s sports offered at Arizona State University, there are almost 20 African American coaches. Representation has increased over time; however, there is more work to do across collegiate athletics. As an example, throughout the NCAA, as of January 2024, only 15 out of 133 NCAA FBS Football head coaches are African American. This represents only 11.28% of all available head coach positions.
At ASU, James Williams, first-year assistant coach of the Sun Devil Gymnastics team says that he’s seen representation within coaching increase.
“Eventually it'll trickle out into the bigger programs or the bigger conferences. I think with time, it is going in the right direction,” he said.
Williams is always looking to lead the change. He has coached at San Jose State and Yale prior to coming to Arizona State. Williams hopes to become a head coach in the future and sees a path forward for coaches in all sports.
“I think just getting more representation matters,” Williams said. “I think as those coaches get more tenure and more experience, (it will) make you know that they can lead a team.”
Williams had a moment when coaching at Yale that stuck with him when asked about a time in his career that he made an impact on someone's life.
He was out recruiting when a woman came up to him. He recognized her as the mother of a girl he coached in the past. She let Williams know just how much he meant to her daughter.
“You were the first Black coach she ever had. She still talks about you to this day and you only worked with her five or six times,” she said.
It might have happened over six years ago, but it is something that Williams will never forget. He is so grateful for affecting someone’s life in a positive way like he did, and it’s happened multiple times.
“This is just one of many moments throughout the years that has happened,” he said.
Camille Collier, Sun Devil Women’s Basketball assistant coach, is another African American coach at the university. When asked about Black History Month, it all goes back to her family.
“(Black History Month) reminds me a lot of my grandparents, their struggles and triumphs,” Collier said.
Collier has gone through many hardships throughout her life due to being African American. She recalls one specific incident in middle school. While playing on an all-Black soccer team, Collier said the games weren’t officiated fairly due to their skin color.
“We were playing and the refs wouldn’t call things our way,” Collier said. “Other teams definitely had an edge about them because they didn’t think we belonged.”
She remembered this story clearly, showing the impact that it had on her as a young girl and even now as an adult.
Women’s Basketball Head Coach Natasha Adair recruited Collier when she was in high school to Wake Forest. That process not only brought the two together on the court, but also gave Collier someone she immediately was inspired by.
“She was somebody that I wanted to emulate and be like,” Collier said.
Collier thinks Black History Month is important for many reasons, but especially the conversations that are had about being African American in the United States.
“I’m Black and that's never going to change,” Collier said. “So 365 days a year, I get an opportunity to represent what it means to be a Black woman.”
Jermaine Kimbrough is an associate head coach for the men’s basketball team in his third season.
A Cleveland native, Kimbrough has seen first-hand how the sport of basketball has brought people together. What does Black History Month mean to him? In a word: everything.
“The future, the past and the present. Every day we are building those experiences to bring an awareness of what African Americans have created and done to make this world a better place,” Kimbrough said.
Kimbrough grew up in one of the oldest cities in America, learning about history and culture from a young age. One moment that changed his life was when he was a freshman in high school. When walking out of an open gym session in Cleveland Heights with his high school head coach, an older African American man approached them. That man was John McLendon.
McLendon worked at the University of Kansas with James Naismith, the man who invented the game of basketball. When McLendon was working under Naismith, he went swimming one afternoon with his white classmates, who immediately exited the pool. The pool was then drained and cleaned due to McLendon being in it. This caused a lot of frustration and McLendon told Naismith about the incident. Naismith walked into the school principal’s office and threatened to resign if it happened again.
That story resonates with Kimbrough to this day. He takes his role as an African American in his community very seriously. As a coach, he realizes that he has an impact on every one of his players, but that is not where it stops for Kimbrough.
“I want to help everyone, not just basketball players, not just people in my community or around me. I want to impact the whole world,” he shared.
Kimbrough believes the acknowledgements that comprise Black History Month should be an everyday occurrence, because the hardships and struggles that African Americans go through still happen every single day. He continues to work hard in his community to have them take more action.
“We have to stop just recognizing it. We need to take action,” Kimbrough said. “We want to make the African American communities better – (demonstrate) what it means to vote more African American people into government to make decisions.”
With his wife, Tameka, he continues to give back to his community in many ways.
“We spend time in sports. We try to give back to our community. We adopted children, we fostered children. There’s so many other people who don't have the resources to do what they love to do. I want to give back to my community,” he said.
Among the three viewpoints of the Sun Devil coaches about Black History Month, each one has a story and a path for how they want to continue to bring about change in our country. There were multiple lessons shared in each conversation, but one defining message resonated clearly and succinctly with each coach. Black history deserves more than a day or a month to reflect, celebrate and remember – it needs to be an every day opportunity to learn, grow and change.