I heard you Mom and offered ideas to solution for the situation. I haven't seen any follow up/ideas offered. Seems people want to have a crop of oranges before they make sure the climate and soil are right for orange trees to grow the oranges.
We have successfully recruited Native players, like Malia Kipp, and we should continue to do so. Robin Selvig successfully Native girls. The primary difference is these Native girls were also from Montana, the Black girls we recruit probably won't be--they will be new to Montana.
And to properly credit the late, great Coach Don Haskins, he started showing up in the kitchens of Black families in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, etc.in 1963 and '64, over 60 years ago during the height of The Civil Rights era and The Jim Crow South, and he and his players, both Black and White, had a lot of both moral and physical courage enduring racial epithets, death threats, and not being able to stay at most hotels and eat in most restaurants in The Jim Crow South !!!
Nate on the Portal: We don't expect to lose anyone.
lol must be nice. The men are already down 1.
You keep saying "we". Who is we?
I want to be clear I'm not disagreeing with you that we could use more diversity in MT. But I think it's important to look at the high school sports of all that you're talking about. Football and men's basketball are both played in widespread and diverse areas of both race and socioeconomic status. Guys are playing basketball in the parks of inner cities and in the country clubs of Florida. Football is the same and though both are sports that are helped by camps and such, they aren't dependent on them. Women's sports are different. I would submit there are less African American women's basketball players than FB and MBB. And it's qlot about money. As unfortunate as it is, in order to be successful in WBB for the most part you need to spend all your off time in AAU travel clubs and camps. All of that takes money. For the membership. For the travel. For the hotels for your family to follow you around. Show me anyone on either Cat or griz WBB team that did not play AAU. Even Kobe's daughter played AAU. And I know alot of men did play AAU as youth but you can be an inner city boys basketball player on football player and find your way to college without it. And spend so much time playing that you overcome the lack of being on a travel team. I just don't know that's the case in girls basketball. So as much as diversity would be nice I just don't know that there as many Black women's athletes to choose from. Off the top of my head I can think of one in the Big Sky that is a potential first teamer and that's Jordan from Idaho State. She makes some pretty fade aways. I'm probably missing some. And again I'm not trying to make a case for not have more diversity I'm just saying that it doesn't seem to me we have as many Black female athletes that have made the choice to play college basketball.
There are many affluent black as well as Hispanic ( Josh Vasquez) and Asian families in the Pacific NW ( Seattle-Tacoma, Portland-Vancouver) and California ( SanFrancisco-Oakland, San Jose , LA ) that can afford to send their girls to compete in AAU, as well as some inner-city families that cannot, but they can play and do play on their high-school teams without requiring a lot of money, right ? And did all of the Native girls from Montana that Robin Selvig recruited play AAU ball ?
Maybe you have a point--millions of young Black women attend college--a few at UM, hundreds play college basketball across the country, several talented Black girls have played already @ The University of Montana, we've played women's college basketball for about 50 years, and recruited hundreds of young women, but I guess we no longer understand young women and should no longer recruit them--we now have a bad case of dumb and while over a hundred other colleges and universities across the country successfully recruit young, Black women basketball players, we just simply can't @ The University of Montana because we don't understand anything about young women. Hundreds of other schools across the country recruit star young Black women basketball players, but we can't and shouldn't even try--it's simply impossible @ UM !!!
You keep missing the point. I never said it was impossible, neither did anyone else who has been discussing this with you. We've all just been saying that it's not as simple as you keep trying to make it out to be.
Bullshit. No one here advocating for recruiting more minority women ever claimed it would be simple, rather that it is a worthwhile endeavor if we truly want to raise the talent level of the program.
All it takes is a black coach. But in all seriousness, do people think they have purposely neglected to consider black players? It is also apparent that people think recruiting a black male athlete is the same as recruiting a black female athlete.
We used to be able to recruit a very few star Black and more Native girl's basketball players, but I guess we forgot how ? Where did I say recruiting Black girls' basketball players would be " simple ?" For the record, I don't think recruiting any student-athletes, Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic is simple.
And reinforcing what '75 stated:
, 2018-25.
