Meet the experts Dawn Staley says ‘brought our team together’ for Final Four run
Something was slightly off for South Carolina women’s basketball, and Dawn Staley knew just who to call.
The Gamecocks had just lost to Texas A&M in the regular-season finale on Feb. 28, missing out on the chance to claim the SEC regular-season title. Staley’s team had endured a trying month, going 5-3 in February, and it had less than a week to prepare for the conference tournament.
“I brought in Felicia and Johnny Allen,” Staley wrote in her season diary published by The Undefeated. “We’ve worked with this couple, who are skills coaches and motivational speakers, for the past probably 10 years.”
Since that call, Carolina has won seven games in a row, claiming the SEC tournament championship and advancing to the NCAA tournament Final Four. On Friday, the Gamecocks have the chance to take down No. 1 overall seed Stanford and advance to the national championship game. And Staley gives a lot of the credit for the transformation to Felicia and Johnny Allen.
“They just brought our team together,” Staley told reporters after the Elite Eight. “They shared things that they don’t share in everyday life. It takes people who are experts in it. Felicia and Johnny are experts in life skills, experts in getting teams to work as a collective unit.”
Staley would know — she and the Allens actually go back far beyond the 10 years or so they’ve worked with her at South Carolina. Felicia and Staley actually first met around 1997, when Staley was still playing and Allen was with Nike women’s sports marketing department. A basketball player herself at Iowa under the legendary C. Vivian Stringer, Allen later became an executive with the WNBA’s Charlotte Sting, where Staley played under her.
The Allens have spent years in the Carolinas, and when Staley came to Columbia, it didn’t take long for her to call the couple up. It was 2010, and Kelsey Bone, a McDonald’s All-American and former top-five recruit, had just announced her decision to transfer South Carolina.
It was a pivotal moment early in Staley’s tenure, before any success or postseason accolades. It was also the Allens’ anniversary weekend, which they normally take off. But Staley promised to buy them dinner if they came to Columbia, and they agreed to help.
“It was during the period where she was really trying to establish the culture that she wanted to have for her program,” Felicia Allen said. “She wanted to make sure that we created a safe space for her team to weigh in so they could buy in to the shared vision of success, and create a shared vision of success — her vision was their vision, that was the shared vision of success that we started to cultivate way back then.”
‘A safe space’
That’s at the heart of the Allens’ business, Felicia Hall Allen & Associates. In addition to motivational speaking, consulting and representing coaches, they run team-building seminars. And as part of those seminars, they act as outside voices brought in to help reinforce and build up the culture of the coach.
So when they receive calls from coaches across the country at different points in the season, they tailor their presentations and exercises to each team. That starts with talking to the head coach, the assistant coaches, the support staff and the team captains. From each conversation, they’re able to gain insight into what the team wants, what it needs and where it might be struggling at the moment.
“The main thing that we do is we create a safe space for them to be vulnerable, for them to be honest, for them to be transparent and for them to come together around one common goal,” Felicia Allen said. “And in doing so, we focus on … how to function as a team.”
Because each session is confidential and customized, the Allens couldn’t say much about what went into the actual sessions they had with this year’s Gamecock squad. What they can say is there are activities, videos and presentations, followed by reflection led by the players
“That was the set up for them to have the real conversations based on trusting each other, not having a fear of conflict, being committed to the process, holding each other accountable and focusing on the team results. ... All we could is tee it up,” Johnny Allen said. “But they gotta be willing to have the hard conversations with each other.”
Those kinds of hard conversations echo much of what Staley has said this year about the Gamecocks re-finding their chemistry after last year’s 32-1 run with seniors Tyasha Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan.
“Inside of this team, there’s always been a oneness, and we didn’t always play that way, but deep inside of them, they just want to win,” Staley said. “Throughout the year, they just didn’t know how to win utilizing everybody around them, because they always bet on themselves. They always had to bet on themselves in high school, and then coming to college, the collective group of talent that blessed us coming to South Carolina, some days you’re going to have great days, some days you’re going to have to sacrifice.”
Last year to this year
Attentive South Carolina fans have seen Felicia and Johnny before — they made an appearance in “For The Culture,” the SEC Network documentary about the Gamecocks’ 2019-20 season that included a run of 26 consecutive wins and a No. 1 ranking before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the NCAA tournament.
As part of their work with the team last season, the Allens said in the documentary, they noticed how the team especially looked to Harris, the senior point guard, for leadership.
This year, they saw a team that needed leaders to grow, even as the dynamic completely changed with Harris’ graduation and departure to the WNBA.
“I think that every year, you have a new team, because the team dynamics are different based on who’s there, but also based on their growth and their maturity,” Felicia Allen said.
Added Johnny: “What I’ve seen happen and the world has seen happen, as a young team who lost their leadership and lost the fire, we saw this team grow in their leadership.”
When the losses started to mount in February, though, that dynamic was challenged once more. Staley has repeatedly praised her players’ competitiveness and hatred of losing, and the Allens noted that as well. But when losses did occur, it presented a test to the team’s cohesion.
“As with any team when you’re not successful in a game or so, you begin to take more weight and responsibility on yourself, and it can come across as selfish,” Johnny said. “But we know that was just the desire that they had to win.”
That’s why Staley brought in the Allens. She wanted to remind her players that they couldn’t win if each person tried to do too much. Knowing roles has been a repeated emphasis of Staley’s all year, but she wanted them to hear it from an outside voice.
“We shared a couple things around what the best teams do. We know that the best teams are mentally stronger, and shared that the best tap into a power greater than themselves,” Johnny said. “... We emphasized that they were recruited to add value to the USC family and the legacy. And so we encouraged them to just let go of the disappointment, to let go of the pride, let go of the pain or the anxiety of being on that stage, and help them acknowledge that they got to tap into a power that’s greater than themselves. And they cannot do it alone. They gotta do it for each other.”
They had one session before the SEC tournament to share that message, then another after it but before the NCAA tournament to ensure it got through and encourage self-reflection on whether the players had put it into action.
The answer to that is in their travel plans — the Allens are headed to San Antonio this weekend to watch the Gamecocks play in the Final Four.
“Once we lost to Texas A&M in the regular season, this team took on a different personality,” Staley said. “This team just gave it up. They peeled away all the layers, and they just came together as one. I do think our timing was impeccable to bring in this couple.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
