Staley Reflects on Olympics, Looks Forward to Being Back with Gamecocks
Dawn Staley has caught her breath and is back with the Gamecocks. The South Carolina head coach has achieved nearly every conceivable honor in her basketball playing and coaching career. She recently coached the United States to a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, and she is thrilled and relieved by the experience.
“The load is a heavy load to bear when it’s representing your country on the biggest stage of any athletic event,” Staley said. “The pressure is still the same [as coaching at South Carolina], but letting down a fanbase is less hard than letting down your entire country, but the gratification and relief is all the same when you’re able to accomplish it.”
After a quick moment of reflection, Staley added with a laugh, “Our fan base is a little harsh, so they’d probably have the anger of an entire country if we lose a national championship game.”
For context, Staley played in three Final Fours as a student-athlete at Virginia. She won the National Championship in 2017 as South Carolina’s head coach, while reaching a pair of other Final Fours with the Gamecocks as well. She won three Olympic gold medals as a player and was a part of two other gold medal-winning teams as an assistant coach before leading the U.S. to another gold in Tokyo this summer, although the coaches don’t actually receive a gold medal. The pressure of leading the heavily favored American team comes with the territory, but she had several ways of dealing with it.
“It’s a pressure that just builds and builds and builds,” Staley said. “You have to unleash it somewhere, and I did it by diving into watching a lot of film. (South Carolina Associate Head) Coach (Lisa) Boyer was there, and we played a lot of gin rummy. I played a lot of solitaire.
“I wasn’t a visualizer as a player, and I find myself visualizing (as a coach) because there isn’t really anything you can do, because you just provide a game plan. It’s the players’ job to execute it. You spend a lot of time thinking about plan B, C, D, and E.”
“A’ja just had that look on her face. She had that aura around her.”
While the team had some initial struggles in a few games prior to Olympic competition, Staley was proud of the way it came together.
“The marathon is not won in the first mile,” Staley said. “We had to figure some things out. The point that I knew we were going to win was the [quarterfinal] game against Australia. Everything went to another level. Maybe we didn’t play super-well against Serbia, but it was the way we got up for the Australia game. We lost to them in [Las] Vegas the month before. It bottlenecked to that point where we knew were going to get the job done.”
In addition to being the head coach, these Olympics were especially sweet for Staley as her former player A’ja Wilson was one of the stars for the U.S. in Tokyo.
“Super proud, but not surprised,” Staley said of Wilson’s performance, which included 19 points, seven rebounds, five blocks, and five assists in the gold-medal game against Japan. “She told me throughout the Olympic Games that she wasn’t going to let me, in particular, lose. She would say, ‘I got you. I got you.’
“A’ja just had that look on her face. She had that aura around her. Seeing her in her element gave me great comfort. She has been passed the baton, like so many of the USA Basketball participants. She and Breanna Stewart are staples on Olympic teams. I’m not on the committee [that selects the National Team], but I surely wouldn’t leave the country without those two.”
After leading the team to the gold medal, Staley initially indicated she would step down as the U.S. head coach and give someone else the opportunity, but she recently said that she wouldn’t necessarily turn down her country if called upon again.
“USA Basketball has always been a big part of my life. Somebody, shortly after I said that, sort of equated it to when you ask a woman post-giving birth, does she want to have another baby, and her immediate response is no. Then you see how that baby gives you so much joy, and you start thinking about it.
“I’ve never turned USA Basketball down.”
Having been a part of USA Basketball for so long, Staley’s impact has been enormous.
“We feel really good about where we are. We have an opportunity to be who we are, and that is the number one team in the world. That’s because we’re invested in it. When you’re invested in it, we put a product on the floor that our entire country and the world respects. They may not always like the fact that we win. We do it in a fashion that makes people think that it’s easy, and it’s not. It’s not an easy task to continuously do what we’ve done over the past seven Olympic Games.”
Now she looks to continue to make an impact at the University of South Carolina, where she returns every player from last year’s Final Four team and also welcomes in the nation’s top recruiting class.
“I was counting down the days for when I had to come into the office. The closer I got, I was like, I’m not ready,” Staley said with short laugh. “Then you come in here and you prep for practice, and you go out for practice, and you see what you’ve got and immediately I said, this is where I belong!
“We’ve got a pretty darn-good team that’s committed to each other and that’s committed to playing basketball the right way. They’ve helped me rejuvenate. It’s going to be pretty fun.”
