THE FIRST WAVE OF MOMENTUM

“After talking to Eka (Jose) and Caira (Watson-Haynes) at WashU, Black athlete after Black athlete started reaching out to me to share similar experiences they had and asking how to go about starting a similar organization. Black UAA student-athletes from Case Western Reserve, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Rochester all inquired about creating an organization for Black student-athletes,” BLAC founder Demetrius Johnson, Jr. stated.

Rochester

In the spring of 2020, Johnson met Rochester freshman football student-athlete Antony Ramirez through a program called BLK Capital Management, Corp., which is a Black-owned and student-run nonprofit that educates its members by exposing them to the field of active investment management. They crossed paths again in the summer during their financial internships. That friendship blossomed and helped inspire Ramirez to start a Black student-athlete group at his institution, something he was already thinking about.

“I learned about the concept of BLAC from Demetrius and sought help from Black colleagues on other teams, particularly seniors Tamera Shaw from volleyball and Kailan Lee from men’s basketball. Starting BLAC at Rochester came about due to a pivotal point in society and an obvious disconnect between the Black student-athletes and the rest of the Black community on campus,” Ramirez revealed. “Once we got together, we leaned heavily on (then) assistant football coach Randi Moore to lead communication with the administration, allowing us to converse with the athletic director and relevant persons. Those conversations involved budgeting, alumni outreach, and overall support from the athletic department.”

As the leaders had positive conversations with the administration, they were also communicating with other Black student-athletes on campus. “We were trying to generate excitement about the future of the organization. We held virtual meetings (as we were still amid the pandemic) and planned to talk about future activities once everyone returned to campus,” Ramirez said.

Carnegie Mellon

Three more schools started their own BLAC organizations in spring semester of 2021, including Carnegie Mellon University, which became the first school to name the BLAC acronym Black and Latinx Athlete Coalition. With full support from their administration, senior men’s tennis student-athlete Joshua Pinckney and junior football student-athlete Obi Nnaeto co-founded and served as co-presidents of the Tartans’ original BLAC group.

“The Carnegie Mellon experience for students of color is different and challenging in ways that many of our peers don’t necessarily understand or empathize with,” Pinckney said when he co-founded the group. “As current student-athletes from underrepresented minority groups, we want to advocate for more diversity and inclusion starting with the individuals that we recruit to join our community. That may look like sharing our experiences with prospective student-athletes of color or connecting them to alumni in their hometowns that they have affinity with.”

“CMU is not a bubble, it’s not exempt from addressing these issues of inequity and racism,” Nnaeto stated at the time. “As student-athletes, we’re starting with our community within athletics as an avenue to bring change to our campus. One of our main aspirations is creating a strong sense of community for underrepresented minorities in athletics so that they do not feel as isolated as they might across all other parts of student life. Having open and consistent dialogue with coaching staffs and athletic administrators will go a long way in helping to promote this.”

Current Tartans’ men’s basketball student-athlete RJ Holmes served as vice-president for member engagement in his first year on campus and has spent all four years on the executive board, including the past two years as president after serving as CMU BLAC’s vice president in his sophomore year in 2021-22. He also spoke on the student-athlete panel at the UAA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Summit in New York City in June 2023. Football student-athlete Mason Tolliver was also a founding member and took on the role of campus ambassador.

CWRU

At CWRU, senior track and field student-athlete Corey King and senior baseball student-athlete Clarence “Tre” Armstrong took on the responsibility of co-founding CWRU’s BLAC chapter. “First, I would like to acknowledge that BLAC would not have existed without the influence of (Volleyball Head) Coach Karen Farrell and my co-founder Tre. Coach Farrell reached out to Tre and I to see if we had any interest in creating CWRU’s chapter of BLAC, after the WashU chapter was established,” he acknowledged. “Of course, Tre and I saw there was a blatant need for it at CWRU. During BLAC’s inception, the campus and the world were shaken by the events surrounding George Floyd’s murder. Black athletes all over now became the main voice on the matter of police brutality for their teams. Additionally, Tre and I had both heard stories of our Black and Brown peers feeling alienated on their respective teams, ultimately deciding to no longer pursue their passion for it. Through all of this, our main concern was supporting the underrepresented student-athletes of CWRU. With some late-night conversations, Tre and I drafted our chapter’s mission statement with our why? Then we needed to make sure we fulfilled our purpose and realized that started with assembling a team.

“The ultimate goal was to increase the minority student-athlete community at CWRU while developing an accepting athletics community that promotes the retention and recruitment of minority student-athletes,” Armstrong described. “The group’s work culminates each spring with supporting the Spartans Stronger Together 5K, which brings together the campus community to combat pertinent issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Proceeds from that event supported the Urban League of Cleveland the first year and the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition in the second year. “The planning and prep (for the 5K) were a blur. I remember painting signs, designing logos, and running around town. It was a team effort to pull everything together and make it what it ultimately became. It seemed like the entire CWRU community supported us that day,” King added.

The process of forming CWRU BLAC took nearly four months. King and Armstrong approached first-year volleyball student-athlete Jennifer Ngo and junior baseball student-athlete RJ Christie. “Luckily, they agreed to embark on this journey with us,” King recollected. Continuing to build an executive board, King and Armstrong recruited then first-year student-athletes Elise Moore from the women’s track and field team and Jad Oglesby from men’s soccer. Ngo and Christie served as co-presidents the following year. Ngo is in her second year as CWRU BLAC’s president and current vice president Moore has played a critical role on the Spartans’ executive board. The Spartans’ top two ranking executive board members share roles with Ngo focused on CWRU-specific work and Moore representing CWRU in the UAA. Moore organized the first Black student-athlete get-together at the 2022 UAA Indoor Track and Field Championships, spoke on the student-athlete panel at the UAA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Summit in New York City in June 2023, and attends UAA BLAC meetings for the CWRU chapter.

NYU

Then senior women’s basketball student-athlete Janean Cuffee of NYU began discussions about starting a BLAC chapter there in the fall of 2020. Receiving the green light from her administration, she contacted leaders of the UChicago, WashU, and Rochester chapters to learn more about how to get a group off the ground. She received mixed feedback from Black student-athletes on the NYU campus whether to name the group BLAC or BLAU (Black Latinx Athlete Union), eventually settling on BLAC.

Cuffee faced numerous challenges as NYU did not have its own athletic facility at any time during her time at the school and the athletics department was the most conservative of any UAA school in terms of COVID-19 protocols and returning to practice. Even before the Coles Sports and Recreation Center, its main facility, closed in February 2016, the NYU athletics programs were physically spread out.

“I knew there were other Black student-athletes, but there was no platform to get to know them apart from what we were trying to do with BLAC.  We ordinarily spent so much time in the gym and training room that we may just see another Black athlete long enough to make eye contact and give a head nod,” she pointed out. “Without seeing other teams very often, I didn’t realize how small the Black student-athlete population at NYU was until I started creating BLAC. Reflecting on my experience in academics and athletics, I have seen it is hard to create a massively diverse community. There were far more people of color in my classes. The university itself was more diverse than athletics.”

NYU BLAC did hold meetings in the spring of 2021 and then junior men’s basketball student-athlete Riley Demps was able to have former National Basketball Association (NBA) player and University of Connecticut standout Chukwuemeka Ndubuisi “Emeka” Okafor speak to members of the organization on a Zoom call.

MULTIPLE LEADERS DEPART

Carnegie Mellon’s Nnaeto was the only president from the original founders who was still at his school in the fall of 2021. Johnson graduated and since there was no executive board at UChicago in the first year, his teammate Rhys Bommarito-Logan became the first president of that organization. With Nnaeto and new vice president Holmes returning, Carnegie Mellon’s BLAC chapter remained active.

New presidents and co-presidents at CWRU and WashU kept their chapters moving forward with Ngo and Christie leading CWRU BLAC, and the duo of men’s basketball student-athlete Kameron Mack and women’s basketball student-athlete Samantha Weaver taking over the helm at WashU.

Unfortunately, the NYU and Rochester chapters could not withstand the loss of their leader(s). Cuffee graduated and, despite repeated efforts on her part even after she moved on, was unable to find anyone to step into her previous role. Rochester not only lost Shaw and Lee to graduation, but Ramirez transferred to Boston University for his final two years of undergraduate study. His departure left a void the chapter could not fill and like NYU’s, its BLAC group disbanded. “While that initial version of BLAC only operated for a brief time, we were able to connect and bring together Black student-athletes so that a fragmented community was able to come together. That is what really mattered,” Ramirez commented.

After finishing the 2020-21 year with six BLAC chapters, the UAA was down to four active chapters throughout 2021-22. Brandeis University and Emory University had preliminary discussions and though their administrations showed wholehearted support for such a group, no leaders stepped up to form chapters on their campuses.

NEW LEADERS EMERGE

2022-23 proved to be a crucial year for BLAC chapters in the UAA. After starting the fall with just four chapters, the spring ended with seven chapters and a leader determined for the one remaining school.

Carnegie Mellon, CWRU, and UChicago’s chapters remained strong with veterans Holmes, Ngo and Bommarito-Logan, respectively, at the helm. WashU did not have a succession plan in place, but senior men’s track and field student-athlete Abayomi Awoyomi and junior women’s track and field student-athlete Charis Riebe agreed to take over as co-presidents.

Awoyomi’s personality and success in jumps made him well-known throughout the UAA. He also spoke on the student-athlete panel at the UAA DEI Summit in June 2023. Riebe, who had established herself as a UAA leader in spring 2022, would end up taking on more Association-wide roles and aiding in the formation of another school’s first chapter.

The 2022 track and field season was a pivotal one in UAA history with the formation of the Black student-athlete get-together and was perfect timing for track and field student-athlete Geoff Point-Du-Jour to step up and make Emory the eighth school to start planning an affinity group for Black student-athletes.

Emory

It was at the track & field Black student-athlete dinner at the UAA outdoor championship hosted by WashU that Point-Du-Jour and his teammates learned firsthand that other schools had Black student-athlete organizations. He was already thinking of starting a similar organization at Emory and the event encouraged him to put that idea into motion when he returned to campus.

Fortunately for him and the Emory Black athletes, then senior men’s basketball player Dubem Nnake was simultaneously working toward the same goal. Nnake’s older brother had been part of a Black student-athlete organization at Johns Hopkins University. The timing was also fortuitous because Emory’s athletic director Keiko Price had worked on a similar project when she was at the University of Illinois following the George Floyd murder and was 100 percent behind the initiative Point-Du-Jour and Nnake were trying to get off the ground.

“Sometimes as the only, or one of the only, Black student-athletes on a team, it can be isolating at times and lead to people quitting the program or transferring to a different school,” Point-Du-Jour remarked. “Having that community establishes a common support that they may not feel they have on a team. One thing about being a student-athlete, particularly at a high-academic school, is many of us go to practice and go back home. We don’t see a lot of other student-athletes from other teams or pass each other by without taking the time to stop and talk.”

When Price chose Coordinator of Student-Athlete Success Programs and Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach Tristan Reaves to serve as staff liaison and mentor, the Emory Black Student Athlete Group (BSAG) group, which held its first general meeting on Sept. 8, 2022, benefited greatly. The involvement of liaisons has varied widely throughout the other Black student-athlete groups, but Reaves became an active mentor from the start, assisting the student-athletes in accomplishing their goals.

Brandeis

Hearing what other Black student-athlete leaders were doing on their campuses also led to the formation of the first group at Brandeis. Men’s soccer student-athlete Gabe Haithcock, who was entering his sophomore year, created the Brandeis Student Athletes of Color (SAOC) in the fall of 2022. “I had just returned from the annual UAA SAAC (Student-Athlete Advisory Committee) conference, where I had the chance to meet many leaders from other UAA schools who were also leaders of affinity groups on their respective campuses,” he recollected. “They all inquired if Brandeis had some sort of minority athlete group and asked me if I would consider creating one. I wasn’t sure about the idea at first because I didn’t know if I had the time in my schedule with classes, my fall season, etc. However, I wanted to do the idea justice and respect the wishes of the new friends I made at the SAAC conference, so I decided to give the idea some consideration. Once I came back to Waltham, I took the time to really study the campus and our student athlete population to see if this was something that we’d really need. After taking the time, I realized that a minority athlete group was very much needed and would thrive at Brandeis.”

Haithcock then reached out to then women’s basketball coach Aseem Rastogi (co-chair of the UAA Staff Mosaic Committee and later main architect of the UAA’s “Strive Together” campaign). “We got to work, introducing ourselves and our idea about starting an affinity organization to representatives from each team. We received outstanding feedback and started to grow as we gained traction on campus, attracted more people to the group, and established ourselves as true leaders of change at Brandeis,” he described.

The Brandeis collective became the first in the UAA to not focus solely on Black or Black and Latinx student-athletes. “One of the first challenges was determining if the group was going to be open to all minority groups in the Brandeis student-athlete population or make it strictly open to Black student-athletes only like some of the other UAA groups,” Haithcock explained. “The principal reason for our decision to be inclusive of all student-athletes of color was that we did not feel there were enough Black student-athletes to sustain a group and that by opening the club to all minority groups, we would create an environment that promoted constant learning and growth. No minority group has identical struggles as another, but from those differences, we believe we can learn from one another, ultimately facilitating the creation of a stronger, united community of color at Brandeis.”

Rochester

Sophomore women’s basketball student-athlete Raquel Williams, unaware that Rochester had a previous chapter, resurrected the Yellowjackets’ group, calling it the Black Student Athlete Coalition (BSAC). She and track and field classmate Deziree Garrick formed the group out of the belief that “every school needs a safe space for Black student-athletes to interact with each other and be free of outside forces, especially on a campus where they are underrepresented,” as Williams said as the chapter held its first event, a BSAC luncheon on Jan. 16, 2023.

They put together a young executive board (in addition to Williams and Garrick, four others were undergraduate student-athletes who remained on the board this year) and held regular Zoom and in-person meetings throughout the spring. “I knew there was a needed space for Black student-athletes to have a community that represented all their identities. To be able to go into a room and talk with peers who are experiencing similar challenges is one of the safest, most comfortable feelings,” Williams expressed.

Seventy-seven percent of the Black student-athletes at Rochester at the time attended the inaugural event. “It was everything I wanted it to be. The majority of Black student-athletes on campus were there talking, laughing, and getting to know each another. Many people were introduced to one another that day and I saw new friendships created because of the event,” Williams added. “It was also a chance for the Black coaches and staff to foster a relationship with Black student-athletes, contributing to the supportive environment of the space.”

The UAA now had seven active Black-led student-athlete organizations, the most at any time in its history. The summer of 2023 would lead not only to all eight schools having active chapters, but the founding of UAA BLAC, a conference-wide organization of the leaders of the campus Black student-athlete groups.