Virginia Tech’s women’s basketball head coach Kenny Brooks, made history with their Elite 8 win over Ohio State, making him just the third Black male coach to lead a team to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.
Brooks joins the ranks of Quentin Hillsman and Winthrop “Windy” McGriff who respectively accomplished this feat with Syracuse in 2016 and Cheyney in 1984.
This is the First Final Four appearance for the Virginia Tech’s women’s basketball team, where the Hokies will play the LSU Tigers on Friday.
This is yet another feather in Brooks’ cap after he “became the first Black head coach to win the ACC women’s basketball tournament crown…when his 3-seed Hokies defeated the 4-seed Louisville Cardinals.”
Over the course of this historic season, Brooks has reflected on his journey to becoming the Power 5 level’s first and only Black male head coach, telling ESPN “This honor, I didn’t know it until they told me after the game. If you’d asked me about five, 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have embraced it as much. Honestly, being a Black head coach in a women’s sport, it is tough. It really is…I think that there are coaches out there that are definitely worthy of an opportunity. So for me, I’ve embraced that role. I’ve embraced it when people come up to me, other coaches, when they text me, when they DM me.”
Ascending to the role just before the 2016 season, Brooks is aware of his unique position within the sport, especially during the racial reckoning our country experienced after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. He strove to “bring together” the Black and white players on the team, saying “I had to open myself up and I was very vulnerable…They looked at me for a long time as the leader and they don’t understand that I had to go through struggles. I’ve been called bad…
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