Transformative Experience
February 27, 2018 | General News, Andy Baggot
Attending recent Black Student-Athlete Summit ‘very powerful’ for Badgers
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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — It was an assignment that Madison Cone welcomed, but didn't quite know how to prepare for.
A true freshman cornerback for the Wisconsin football team, Cone had been among those at UW chosen to attend the Black Student-Athlete Summit in Austin, Texas, last month.
Cone joined classmate Izayah Green-May, an outside linebacker; teammate Paul Jackson III, a redshirt junior wide receiver; Carmyn Hayes, a member of the women's soccer team; and Tionna Williams, a junior middle blocker for the volleyball team.
The fourth annual event, held on Jan. 17 to 19 and hosted by the University of Texas Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, attracted more than 250 prominent scholars, athletes and sports industry professionals to discuss the power of race in college athletics.
Topics covered at the conference included a focus on health and wellness, student-athletes as campus leaders, athlete activism, media & the black student-athlete, and the shaping of the holistic student-athlete outside of their respective playing fields.
Cone, from Kernersville, North Carolina, went into the event unsure of its benefits other than an entry on his resume and a potential personal connection or two.
"I kind of figured it would be a lecture-style of thing where we'd sit and people would talk to us," he said, volunteering that he wasn't thrilled with the idea that he'd "sit and listen to someone talk for three hours."
That was not the outcome.
"It was very powerful," Cone said.
I highly recommend the #BlackStudentAthleteSummit I had a great time and met some great people! ??
— Madison Cone (@Coney21Island) January 20, 2018
Among the keynote speakers was Caylin Moore, a former football player at Texas Christian University whose rise from violence and poverty to a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University is a story with many transformative layers.
According to a story on ESPN.com, he's the son of a convicted murderer and a sexual assault survivor. He spent part of his childhood living in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood in a house without hot water, sharing a bed with his mother and two siblings.
Moore persevered, found his way to the TCU campus in Fort Worth where he graduated with a degree in economics in 2017 and moved onto Oxford, but not before he worked part-time as a custodian at TCU.
"You have to dream dreams that are too big," Moore told summit participants.
Cone said Moore thought his goals had a ceiling and Moore urged a different tack from student-athletes in the audience.
"He inspired (us) to take that ceiling off and dream bigger and go higher," Cone said.
The Wisconsin contingent at the summit was unique. It was the only Big Ten Conference school to bring student-athletes to Texas and one of two conference institutions — Purdue was the other — with any representation at all. This is the second year that Wisconsin has provided student-athletes the opportunity to engage in this experience.
In all, an estimated 50 student-athletes were on hand to hear speakers like Moore, Sanya Richards Ross, an Olympic gold medalist, Imani McGee-Stafford, a WNBA player, and Tommie Harris, a former NFL linebacker.
Green-May, from Bolingbrook, Illinois, said the presenters made it a worthwhile, if not memorable, experience.
What message resonated with him?
"To strive bigger than the people I was listening to," Green-May said. "They said, 'You have to have bigger goals than what we're doing. You have to strive bigger.' That was a big takeaway for me. It was very motivating."
"Allow yourself to get outside of your comfort zone and set yourself up to win." Look back at highlights from the 2018 #BlackStudentAthleteSummit http://utex.as/2n5pPRu
— UT Austin (@UTAustin) January 23, 2018
Sheridan Blanford is six months into her role as the coordinator for the inclusion and engagement department for UW Athletics. The former NCAA Division III basketball player at St. Olaf (Minnesota) College has a Master's degree from the University of Washington's Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership program.
A recent visit to Blanford's fourth-floor office at the Bennett Student-Athlete Performance Center found Cone and Green-May there by chance. She wore a constant smile listening to them answer questions about the summit.
"It's really cool for me," she said.
"The most impactful thing for me was watching them get something out of it. It makes me really, really happy to hear that they had this experience and are now are a lot more capable of doing more than they are sometimes told.
"What's really unique about our department is we're here to take those under-represented groups out — whether that's racial, whether that's gender, whether that's ability, whether that's someone from a different country — and show them who they are as a person outside of their sport."
Blanford, who previously served as assistant director of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference before coming to Madison, is an integral part of the inclusion and engagement team with Jenn Hunter, the director of diversity and inclusion for UW Athletics, and newly hired Alando Tucker, who oversees student-athlete engagement.
Together, the three coordinate efforts to promote inclusion within the department and on campus, as well as working to help personally develop student-athletes as they grow into young men and women.
"It's a really cool and unique place to be in because we get to provide these opportunities and talk about it," Blanford said.
Williams was on the road for a volleyball match, sitting down to a team meal, when she got a text from Bridget Woodruff, Director of the UW's Office of Student-Athlete Development, suggesting she attend the summit. It turned out to be more than Williams bargained for.
"It was probably one of my favorite things I've done in college so far," she said. "It's been a huge eye-opener."
Williams, from Fort Wayne, Indiana, said the conversations she had with her fellow student-athletes — at UW and elsewhere — were enlightening and empowering.
"Being a student-athlete on any campus, you sort of fall into that athlete mode where you're just about your sport and people know that," she said. "Sometimes you forget you have a voice and that your voice does carry.
"Going to this conference I feel like I definitely found more of my voice and gained more confidence, especially being around so many student-athletes who are in the same position I am."
Williams said she had discussions with her fellow UW student-athletes, as well as other summit participants, throughout the conference.
"We are just building each other up," Williams said. "Having so much support around us just makes us more confident to speak up on issues that might be affecting us or concerning us.
"We especially reflected afterwards about how we do have a voice and we don't have to be quiet because we're athletes."
Williams noted the protest model with NFL players last season — taking a knee during the National Anthem to highlight social and racial inequities — was effective because so many prominent athletes used their platforms for a noteworthy cause.
"They used their voices and we shouldn't be afraid to use our voice to make a change," she said. "If we really want to make a change, it starts with us and we can't be afraid to speak up about something."
Blanford asked Cone and Green-May for specific takeaways leaving the summit as black student-athletes.
"I definitely left feeling more powerful than when I went," Cone said.
"I understand that you're told you can be anything you want to be. For African-Americans, it's definitely harder sometimes than it is for others, so just seeing all those people represented, it was like, 'Wow, he's really doing this and she's really doing this.' It really just opened your eyes. It gave me a lot more confidence to just really looking into things and seeing that all these things are possible."
Green-May came away with a heightened sense of awareness.
"Mainly just reevaluating my goals. Just taking a full day and writing down everything I want to achieve is definitely something I need to do."
Blanford said the summit's format brought all participants together in a unique way.
"We've all been to conferences where usually you're with a specific group," she said. "With this, you had student-athletes, staff, faculty, senior-level administrators, professional athletes all in one room.
"I spoke with our student-athletes following the conference and they shared with me that the conference not only provides a unique opportunity for personal development, but also allows them to evaluate where they would like to go from a professional standpoint as well."
Cone had such a meaningful experience that he's reached out to friends at Virginia Tech and Clemson and implored them to attend in 2019.
"I felt it was that beneficial that I want my friends at other places to experience that weekend," he said.
