‘Truly a celebration’: USC coach Dawn Staley honored with statue in Columbia
The long-awaited statue of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley was unveiled Wednesday afternoon near downtown Columbia.
The statue, which is 14 feet tall, made of bronze and weighs nearly 2,000 pounds, depicts a smiling Staley on a ladder holding a basketball net, as if she’d just cut it down after winning a national championship.
Staley’s statue will stand at the intersection of Senate and Lincoln streets in the city’s Vista district, right next to the University of South Carolina’s Pastides Alumni Center and near the Columbia Convention Center.
“Not only is it a tribute to the coach and what she’s done, but also I think it’s really a tribute to the fans who have rallied, who have really elevated the sport,” Columbia mayor Daniel Rickenmann told The State before the ceremony. “It’s a testimony to all the hard work and it elevates us as a city. So for me, at the end of the day, that’s what today is about. This is really, truly a celebration.”
Staley’s decorated career
Staley’s certainly had a statue-worthy career during her time at South Carolina.
USC has won three national championships (2017, 2022 and 2024), made seven Final Four appearances and won nine SEC tournament championships under Staley. She’s turned South Carolina into a perennial powerhouse during her 17 years with the Gamecocks, amassing a 457-110 record in that time. The Gamecocks have recorded 10 or more losses in a season only five times since Staley, 54, took over.
“This statue is a tribute, but it really doesn’t encompass what she’s delivered for us as a community, what she’s done for women’s sports, what she’s done for young people, especially young women, giving them a role model to look at, but also life lessons,” Rickenmann said. “She’s been an incredible ambassador.”
Staley’s name is synonymous with women’s basketball and women’s sports in general. The Hall of Famer made waves as a player at Virginia and in the WNBA before taking her talents to coaching, where she’s become a four-time national coach of the year and a voice for the sport.
The power of representation
Only 6% of statues in the United States depict women, according to UW-La Crosse art professor Sierra Rooney, and even fewer depict Black women. Of statues dedicated to sports figures, just 1% are of women, Rickenmann said.
Now Columbia will be the home to two statues of women in sports: Staley and Gamecock legend A’ja Wilson, whose statue stands outside of Colonial Life Arena.
Staley said she initially was opposed to the idea of having a statue in her honor and said it “wasn’t necessary.” But after being shown the aforementioned statistics and the work of Statues for Equality, the artists who created the statue, she was convinced and agreed for the sake of representation.
“I agreed to the statue not for me, but for the girl who will walk by one day and wonder who I was,” Staley said. “Maybe she’ll look me up. She’ll see that I did some things in basketball of course, but I hope she sees much more.
“I hope she sees that I was a champion for equity and equality. That in my own way, I pushed for change. That I stood proudly in the space God called me to inhabit, not as someone perfect or extraordinary, but as a regular girl who used her gifts to open doors so other girls wouldn’t have to knock as hard.”
Location change
The statue’s location is a few blocks from where the statue was initially planned to stand.
When the monument was announced in February 2023, it was supposed to be located on the corner of Main and Gervais streets across from the South Carolina State House. Staley was adamant the statue not be at Colonial Life Arena, home of USC, because she wants that honor reserved for players, Rickenmann said.
Staley’s one request was that the SC State House was in view from behind the statue, Payton Lang, a spokeswoman for the mayor, told The State on Monday.
“I really wanted it to be somewhere prominent in the city,” Rickenmann said. “Originally, we were trying to figure out how to put it on Main Street and just could not figure out a way to do it. But we also wanted it to be prominent.”
Rickenmann continued: “I think it’s kind of at a good, balanced place. You look at one side, you can look down the street and you can see (Colonial Life Arena) and the Alumni Center. Then over the top of the statue, you see the State House. Behind it is the 911 Memorial. So I think it’s in a pretty unique spot now.”
Although it is a city statue, not a single city dollar was spent funding the statue, per the mayor’s office. The project’s projected cost was $140,000. The funding was provided by a $80,000 grant from Statues for Equality as well as 22 local business partners. Statues for Equality submitted the application in 2022, the project was announced in early 2023 and the statue arrived in Columbia last summer.
The fact that so many organizations would partner to make the statue happen is more proof of Staley’s impact, Rickenmann said.
“When you see that kind of support across the board, it tells you something about the person,” he said.
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 5:13 PM.
