Philadelphia needs a Dawn Staley statue

Nineteen years ago, I found myself sitting in a folding chair on the floor at the Liacouras Center. Seated across from me was the fifth-year coach of the Temple women’s basketball team, a North Philadelphia native. She told me she needed to upgrade the goals for her resurgent program.

“It’s time for us to take that next step,” Dawn Staley said. “We want to take huge steps. We’re greedy.”

She was smiling as she said that, but I could also tell she was not joking. She was someone for me to keep tabs on. Three years later, after she led the Owls to the NCAA Tournament in six of her eight years as coach, she was hired to coach women’s basketball at the University of South Carolina — a big promotion.

Staley, 53, who was later a Hall of Fame player, has had a magnificent tenure at South Carolina. Most of the attention at the NCAA Women’s Final Four went to Iowa’s fantastic Caitlin Clark, as it should have, but South Carolina won its third national championship in eight years under Staley with an 87-75 victory Sunday over Iowa.

Staley, a two-time national coach of the year, is a champion for Philadelphia sports, often wearing Eagles jerseys on the sidelines. She has carried a “Made in North Philly” screensaver on her cell phone. And yet, somewhat inexplicably, her beloved hometown has fallen behind in marking her place. This needs to be fixed. It would not cost much.

Staley, a bona fide civic treasure, needs a statue in Philadelphia, ideally in her old neighborhood.

Fierce but emotional, indefatigable but so classy, she has done everything as a player, coach, and social influencer, as women’s basketball has gained national prominence. Staley’s career is nowhere near finished, but Philadelphia needs her likeness in bronze.

Two years ago, a University of Pennsylvania student, Harrison Selznick, put together a “Sports Monuments in Philadelphia” tour, which listed about 70 sports-related statues, murals, and historical markers. Nothing honoring Staley was on the list — or, quite shamefully, any other specific female athlete.

Because Kate Smith became a Flyers’ good-luck charm by belting out “God Bless America” before big games 50 years ago, a statue of her at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex was removed in 2019 after a controversy over questionable song choices.

I am not here to relitigate that. And it is not as if Staley has not been honored by her hometown. More than 25 years ago, a nine-story tall, Nike-sponsored mural of Staley, playing ball in a U.S. Olympic uniform, adorned a building at Eighth and Market Streets, with the caption: “Born in Philadelphia. Grew up at 25th and Diamond.” But the mural was only temporary.

A segment of Diamond Street near her childhood home was renamed “Dawn Staley Lane” in 2017, and a small mural of Staley was installed behind the indoor court at the Hank Gathers Youth Access Center, where Staley played basketball, mostly against boys, as a girl.

A large, bright mural on the side of the building pays homage to Gathers, a contemporary of Staley’s at Dobbins Technical High School who suffered from a heart-muscle disorder and died in 1990, at age 23, while playing basketball for Loyola Marymount University, near Los Angeles.

Not that Staley would complain, but Gathers also has a mural inside the building that is on the wall of a stage behind the court. Though Staley is driving to the basket in her mural, I found it kind of hard to tell that it is actually Staley. An outdoor court carries a Staley quote, but only in small letters: “The disciplined person can do anything.”

A project sponsored by Mural Arts Philadelphia is underway for a Staley-focused mural. Kate Jacobi, the senior project manager for community murals and restorations for the organization, told me last week: “We are in design mode right now but cannot share many other details at this time. We hope to have something to share publicly later this spring around May or June, but for now are keeping details under wraps.”

All good. When Mural Arts announced a project for Staley last July, it said that the mural would appear on the facade of Benjamin Franklin High School on North Broad Street. Staley played at Dobbins Tech, but a mural at Franklin would be seen by many more people.

The mural of Staley inside the Hank Gathers recreation center is one of the few murals dedicated to a specific female athlete in Philadelphia. (Others, like the Philadelphia Marathon mural in Manayunk and a rowers mural next to the Schuylkill, honor anonymous women.)

Murals fade or are painted over. Statues last. A statue of Staley, perhaps in front of Dobbins Tech, across West Lehigh Avenue from the site where Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium stood, seems like an ideal site. Temple, a mile away from home, would be another. (William Dick School, where Staley went to elementary school, has closed.)

Of course, Staley sounds like she still has much more to accomplish. Along her quarter-century route as a coach, which included leading the U.S. team to an Olympic gold medal in 2020, the once-shy Staley has become a champion for women’s sports, and for African American athletes, in particular.

“I’m a Black coach and I’ve got a predominantly Black team,” she told the New York Times last year. “For the viewers to tune in to that, it means that we’re opening doors that were closed to a program like us.”

Even though she played collegiately at the University of Virginia, and only briefly played as a professional here (with the Philadelphia Rage of the defunct American Basketball League), Staley has done this city proud in a truly distinctive, honorable, and lasting way.

Actually, plans are underway to erect a bronze statue of Staley — but it will be on Main Street in Columbia, S.C., across from the South Carolina state House and near the University of South Carolina campus, where her team continues to play to capacity crowds.

The latest rendering of Staley for that statue shows her on a stepladder, smiling, a “Champions” cap on her head, holding aloft a net that she trimmed down after a championship celebration. The position of the statue — estimated cost: $140,000 — is of significance because a Confederate flag flew at the state House until 2015.

I’d like to see a statue of Staley in Philadelphia of her as a teenager, fire in her eyes, dribbling hard and with skill to the basket, determined and unstoppable. Other athletes have come to Philadelphia to become icons, but Staley is one of us. She was a star before she left, and somehow — with one huge and greedy step after another — she continues to burnish her legend.

Dave Caldwell, who graduated from Temple University, worked for The Inquirer, and lives in Manayunk, has written about sports topics for more than 40 years.