Ex-WNBA Players Urge Youth to Stay in School

Former WNBA stars Dawn Staley, Carla McGee and collegiate all-star Angie Wells concluded a six day tour of Malawi Sunday, June 17 at Blantyre Youth Center.  The trio conducted a youth outreach program for both boys and girls which included basketball clinics and speaking sessions on education, HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drug abuse in Lilongwe, Kasungu, Mangochi and Blantyre.  The broader perspective of the clinics and speaking sessions was that sport can teach young people to aspire, set goals for themselves and achieve them through teamwork.

The speakers provided the youth with excellent examples of how people with difficult childhoods can manage to set goals and achieve them against odds. 

In all the tour stops the trio told their moving life stories and demonstrated basketball skills to excited young participants.  Staley spoke about her humble beginnings in the housing projects of Philadelphia and how she used her basketball talents to become the only college-educated member of her family.  She spoke about her determination to be the best in the USA despite her 5’6 height, which by WNBA standards was too short, and how she won three Olympics gold medals, and various first place finishes at international tournaments.

Staley’s catch phrase was: “Do the things that you don’t like doing in order to get what you want”.  Retired from the WNBA, Staley now coaches the Temple University’s women’s basketball team, she also heads the Dawn Staley Foundation, which gives middle-school children a positive influence in their lives by sponsoring an after-school program at the Hank Gathers Recreation Center.

Carla shared a story about her lack of sportsmanship, a bad attitude to people and how she took things for granted because of her basketball talents and her 6'1 height.  She said the turning point in her life was when she almost died in a car crash in 1987 in which she broke almost all the bones in her face, fractured her hip, and got a brain contusion and was told she would never play basketball again.  She, however, defied the odds and went on to win a gold medal with the US women's basketball team.