For Haywoode Workman, the thought started forming in his thoughts when listening to his fellow referees.
“In my expertise transitioning from enjoying to being an NBA official, I didn’t see HBCUs on the Maui Invitational,” Workman stated by telephone this week.
Commercial
Workman, now 59, was a grinder, each as a degree guard who performed for 5 groups in eight seasons from 1989 to 2000 and as an NBA referee for 13 seasons. He was considered one of only a handful of former gamers — Leon Wooden, the tenth decide of the 1984 NBA Draft, and Bernie Fryer, who performed elements of two NBA seasons within the Seventies, additionally did so — to cross over into officiating. Amongst his most memorable moments as a ref was working Kobe Bryant’s final recreation.
However as his subsequent act started, Workman needed to be extra intentional in serving to out traditionally Black faculties and universities.
He performed basketball and soccer for one season at Winston-Salem State College in North Carolina earlier than transferring to Oral Roberts College in Tulsa, Okla. However he was profoundly impacted by his 12 months at Winston-Salem.
“I’m coming in touch with quite a lot of faculty referees, and so they talked about faculty ball,” he stated. “However while you have a look at the issues that have been being supplied for the PWIs (predominantly White establishments), there simply wasn’t (a premier match) for the HBCUs. As soon as I received off the courtroom, I stated that’s what I’m going to do. I didn’t understand how; I knew I wanted to place a crew collectively.
Commercial
“However that’s what my imaginative and prescient was: to do an unique HBCU basketball match on the similar degree because the Maui Invitational.”
The imaginative and prescient of Workman and his spouse, Monique Rocchild, will come to fruition this weekend with the inaugural HBCU Hoops Invitational, which will likely be held on the State Farm Discipline Home positioned on the ESPN Huge World of Sports activities Advanced at Walt Disney World Resort beginning Friday. Eight faculties, in males’s and girls’s divisions, will participate, together with all 4 HBCU establishments within the state of Florida: Florida A&M College, Bethune-Cookman College, Florida Memorial College and Edward Waters College. Tuskegee College, Hampton College, Livingstone School and Barber-Scotia School are additionally within the bracket. Semifinal video games will happen Friday, and the third-place and championship video games will likely be performed Saturday.
The profitable males’s head coach will obtain the Clarence “Massive Home” Gaines Award, named after the legendary, Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Famer who coached for greater than 4 a long time at Winston-Salem. Gaines gained 828 video games in 47 seasons there and coached the likes of Earl Monroe and Cleo Hill. His 1967 crew grew to become the primary HBCU crew to win an NCAA nationwide championship, capturing the Division II title.
The profitable girls’s head coach will obtain the Vivian Stringer Award, named after the Corridor of Fame coach whose storied profession, which spanned 50 seasons, started at Cheney State College in 1972. Stringer, who went on to educate at Iowa and Rutgers, is fourth all-time in girls’s faculty teaching historical past in victories with 1,055. She additionally was the primary Black head coach, male or feminine, to win greater than 1,000 faculty video games.
Commercial
The NBA has centered HBCUs throughout its All-Star Weekend since 2022 with its NBA HBCU Traditional. Hampton and North Carolina A&T State College are scheduled to play Feb. 13 in Los Angeles, the Friday earlier than Sunday’s All-Star Sport.
And simply as with the NBA’s HBCU activations, the video games at State Farm Discipline Home are the tentpole occasion for the weekend’s underpinnings: offering each the student-athletes collaborating within the match and different college students within the Orlando space alternatives to community and meet enterprise professionals who will help them after they’re achieved with faculty. A job honest will run concurrently with the video games, together with an Honors and Recognition Presidents’ reception, in addition to a symposium particularly for the gamers, concentrating on monetary literacy and wellness, bodily and psychological well being and wellness, offering them a blueprint for his or her post-playing careers.
Corridor of Fame heart Alonzo Mourning will obtain the inaugural Dr. Robert “Bob” Lee Billingslea Legacy Award for Enterprise and Neighborhood Influence. Billingslea, who died in 2017, was a longtime government at Disney who was instrumental in main the corporate’s efforts to extend its range and outreach to the local people. He additionally grew to become a longtime trustee at Bethune-Cookman.
The hashtag for the weekend’s occasions, reflecting a 360-degree view of Black college students’ educational potential — whether or not they play sports activities or not — as they enter the pipeline to school is #SeeWhatWeSee.
Commercial
“It was essential to us to be sure that we included the youth as effectively, center and highschool college students, to show them not solely to basketball, as a result of they already know basketball,” Rocchild stated. “We have been fairly stunned that there have been many inside our group that didn’t actually learn about HBCUs. Possibly (they) had a small consciousness. A few of them truly didn’t have an consciousness about HBCUs, which shocked us.
“(We need to) expose college students not solely to basketball, and what it might do for you and careers, however to show them to HBCUs, expose them to different companions throughout the workforce and all through the group.”
The occasion’s board and advisory council is seeking to increase $180,000, towards its stretch aim of $250,000, earlier than the tip of the calendar 12 months. That cash is not going to solely assist with the weekend’s actions, however help as much as 1,500 college students seeking to attend the match and job honest that don’t have the monetary means to attend.
Ensuring Florida’s 4 HBCUs have been part of the inaugural occasion was essential. Specifically, getting Florida A&M, with its massive alumni base within the Orlando space and all through the state, was desired.
Commercial
“Haywoode, we competed towards one another, and I’ve been figuring out him for some time,” stated Charlie Ward, the 1993 Heisman Trophy winner at Florida State and longtime NBA guard, largely for the New York Knicks, who’s in his first season as head coach of Florida A&M.
“He and his spouse reached out and had this concept, and so they needed to incorporate FAMU as one of many HBCUs for the invitational. “So, that is the primary 12 months for them and me, and figuring out Haywoode, we simply made it occur when it got here right down to it. We needed to proceed to work to get what we wanted, however the expertise for us, being within the match and our model, FAMU’s model in Orlando, is effectively obtained.
“Now we have fairly just a few alums down there, so it’ll be expertise for our college, our gamers, to be in that atmosphere and being in a match. It’s getting us ready for creating these habits as soon as we will get to the SWAC Match, and the aim is to win the match. We’re wanting ahead to that chance.”
The off-court actions on the Invitational aren’t designed to crush the ring desires of the gamers, however to supply them with further details about alternate options.
Commercial
“We’re not saying you gained’t play skilled basketball, however the odds are that you’ll not,” stated Anthony Stepney, the match’s chief growth officer. “What’s so essential is that we assist college students in addition to employers perceive the facility of the ability set and the management qualities that you just develop being an athlete, and how one can switch them into entrepreneurship, into company house, into the army, in trades.
“I’m in tech. We’re actually, actually specializing in expertise and serving to younger folks perceive that expertise is every thing. It doesn’t matter what space you resolve to enter … expertise is a really actual side of it, now and particularly into the long run. Not simply being a coder, however understanding what it means to be an engineer.”
Every faculty will get an allotment of tickets for the weekend, with local people teams just like the Boys & Women Golf equipment, fraternities and sororities receiving invites to attend. An area YMCA, Stepney stated, would possibly spend $6,000 or extra to ship their scholar members to a equally sized job honest or symposium.
“Our program is holistic in its method,” Ward stated. “Any alternative now we have to do one thing off the courtroom that’s going to assist profit our younger males, and even coaches, construct relationships, perceive what’s subsequent for them, that’s our aim. That is proper down our alley relating to the symposiums, having the ability to achieve some info. However extra importantly, construct relationships with folks that may probably assist us — not simply speaking about FAMU, however assist us individually, develop our model, no matter our model is.
Commercial
“We’re simply enthusiastic about these alternatives. Not everybody’s going to go and play skilled basketball, no matter wherever that skilled basketball is, however we’re going to be professional in one thing after we graduate.”
Workman’s experiences on the courtroom, whether or not orchestrating an offense or blowing his whistle towards a protection, gave him a novel viewpoint on the sport. He discovered how a crew got here collectively in a locker room and the place followers ought to evacuate from an enviornment if one thing catastrophic occurred throughout a recreation.
He’s hoping the Invitational and the weekend’s occasions will present that sort of detailed information about all of the totally different alternatives across the recreation to others.
“It’s all the time been in my soul to offer again to HBCUs, but in addition give again to basketball, which has been so beneficiant and type to me,” Workman stated. “I do know there are quite a lot of up-and-coming Haywoode Workmans on the market. How can I attain the plenty? I believe (it’s by) getting their consideration by one thing that we will all relate to, basketball … to assist them recover from their pace bumps and hurdles to assist them out.
Commercial
“The data I’ve isn’t for me to maintain, so I need to move it on.”
This text initially appeared in The Athletic.
Hampton Pirates, Bethune-Cookman Wildcats, Florida A&M Rattlers, Bethune-Cookman Wildcats, Hampton Girl Pirates, Florida A&M Girl Rattlers, NBA, Males’s School Basketball, Sports activities Enterprise, Girls’s School Basketball, Tradition
2025 The Athletic Media Firm
