Dawn Michelle Staley born May 4, [ 1 ] is an American basketball coach and former player who is the head coach for the South Carolina Gamecocks women's basketball team. Staley also played on the United States women's national basketball team , winning three gold medals at the Olympic Games from to , and was the head coach of the team that won an Olympic gold medal in Staley spent most of her WNBA career simultaneously serving as the head coach of the Temple Owls women's basketball team from to , leading them to six NCAA tournaments, three regular-season conference championships, and four conference tournament titles.
After becoming South Carolina's head coach in , Staley rebuilt the Gamecocks into one of the top women's basketball programs. During her 16 seasons, she has led South Carolina to eight SEC regular season championships, eight SEC tournament championships, eight Sweet Sixteens , five Final Fours , and three NCAA women's basketball national championships , including the school's first in and a perfect season in They married young and in moved into a three-bedroom, single-bath row house in the Raymond Rosen Homes housing project.
Together, Clarence, a part-time carpenter, and Estelle, a homemaker, raised five childrenβthree boys, Lawrence, Anthony and Eric, and two girls, Tracey and Dawn.
You're good. You live a happy life". Staley was named the national high school player of the year during her final season at Murrell Dobbins Vocational High School in Philadelphia. She was named the ACC female athlete of the year and the national player of the year in and Staley finished her college career with 2, points and held the NCAA record for career steals with which has since been broken by current record holder, Natalie White.
Her number 24 is retired at UVA. The team followed that loss with a victory against Zaire, but dropped its final game to Spain, again by three points. Staley averaged The Americans finished the tournament in seventh place. While the American team had won gold in , they finished with the silver in , in fifth place in , and did not field a team in The team was coached by Tara VanDerveer of Stanford. There they faced Spain, who had won all seven of their previous tournament games.
