Why top WBB recruit McKenna Woliczko says South Carolina visit was an ‘eye opener’
Five-star women’s basketball recruit McKenna Woliczko took an official visit to South Carolina last week.
Woliczko is the No. 6 recruit in the Class of 2026, according to espnW’s Top 100 recruiting rankings. Listed at 6-foot-2, Woliczko is from California and plays at Archbishop Mitty in San Jose.
Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks are currently finalists in Woliczko’s recruiting. She spoke with The State and went in-depth about her visit to Columbia and where South Carolina stands in her recruitment.
Woliczko visit details
Woliczko was accompanied by her mother and father on her visit to South Carolina. The visit was from July 1-3.
Some of the highlights included watching a WNBA game on the jumbotron at Williams-Brice Stadium and a block party with the South Carolina volleyball team at Staley’s house. Woliczko also did the standard things recruits do on visits: She watched the team work out and met with staff members, trainers, nutritionist, strength and conditioning coordinators, and academics personnel.
Woliczko has been around the Gamecocks’ program before but never for more than a day. Coming into this visit, Woliczko said she wanted to get a feel for the real Columbia, and she felt she accomplished just that.
“That was something that was pretty nice about going to South Carolina. It wasn’t like they’re going to all these fancy steakhouses every single night,” Woliczko said. “It was just like the real what it’s gonna look like if I were to go to South Carolina. We went to some fancier restaurants, had some fancy dishes. But also, we went to Waffle House one of the mornings.”
That visit to the Waffle House in Five Points came at the end of a morning walk for Woliczko and Staley.
“I thought it was really nice,” Woliczko said of Columbia in general. “It would definitely be somewhere I’d consider going to school. I think that I’m really happy that I was able to go out there and check it out, because I’ve gone on visits where you visit the area and you’re just like, ‘No, this isn’t going to work for me.’ So I was happy to get that feel with Columbia, that I could live here.”
Staley pulled out all the stops while Woliczko was in town, including enlisting South Carolina head football coach Shane Beamer. Beamer met with Staley and Woliczko’s family and broke down film of her younger brother, Patrick.
“We took a tour of the football facility, and then we got to meet with (Beamer) in his office,” Woliczko said. “My brother, he’s 10 and he plays football. It’s pretty cool because they ended up putting on highlights of my brother’s game on the TV. They were saying that they were going to recruit him — it was pretty funny, something that my brother would definitely enjoy. When he’s able to come on the visits, he likes to learn about the football programs.”
Dawn Staley’s pitch
Staley and her staff have been recruiting Woliczko since her freshman year of high school, she said. The two have a good relationship and stay in touch, and Woliczko appreciated being able to be in-person with Staley for a change.
“We keep updated. ... I talk to Coach Staley, I talk to the other coaches every once in a while, so it’s pretty great,” Woliczko said of her relationship with Staley. “Being able to hang out with her in person, it’s really nice to see her not as just like a celebrity and her being this all-time coach. It’s nice to see you as a person, in-person.”
Staley’s pitch to Woliczko was essentially that she has the skills to find an opportunity to play at South Carolina. That was a confidence booster for Woliczko, she said.
“They were saying — which made me feel better and have more confidence in myself as well — that I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t think I could play at South Carolina,” Woliczko said. “... For me, I feel like I’ve got two big things: a relationship with the girls and the coaches, and then, where do they see me fitting on the team? Am I going to play? How is that going to work? The fact that (Staley) said that I had the opportunity to play as a freshman and stuff like that definitely gave me more confidence in myself and at the possibility of going to South Carolina.”
Where South Carolina stands; recruiting timeline
Woliczko narrowed her recruitment down to her top four schools in June. Those schools are South Carolina, Iowa, Ohio State and Southern Cal. With last week’s stop in Columbia, Woliczko has already taken a visit to Ohio State and South Carolina. She told The State she plans to take a visit to Iowa in late August.
She hasn’t picked a specific date for her commitment but is aiming for sometime in the early fall.
“I’m hoping to be committed in, like, September,” Woliczko said.
When asked where South Carolina stands in her top four after her recruitment Woliczko kept her cards close to her chest.
“It’s hard to say. I still have visits to go on, so I honestly don’t have an answer,” Woliczko said. “This visit (to South Carolina) definitely made it more confusing, to be honest, in my mind. Now it’s like, wow, these are really great schools that I could go to and not one answer is going to be a wrong answer. I’ll make the best of it no matter what school I go to. But it’s definitely cool to see this, going to South Carolina, and definitely being able to consider it as a top four.”
In all, Woliczko said the visit to South Carolina was an “eye opener,” and it seems like the Gamecocks are in a good position.
“Once I hung out with the girls a ton, and just talking to (Staley) about things basketball-wise, and what I could do to get better and stuff, I think it was definitely just an eye opener,” Woliczko said. “I felt like, ‘OK, South Carolina is, for sure, a consideration.’ So it was just nice to see that I’m not just gonna be done with them right after this visit, unlike other visits I’ve had.”
This story was originally published July 7, 2025 at 4:18 PM.
