UI Hits Racial Recruiting Barrier Idaho Vandals Have Had Little Success Recruiting Black Female Athletes To Campus

In an unofficial move in the early 1980s, the University of Idaho removed the silver from its silver-and-gold color scheme and substituted it with black.

But as far as women’s athletics goes at the Moscow school, that move is just symbolic.

While the school has always had a healthy number of black athletes in men’s athletic program, black women have been poorly represented in Vandals uniforms. Just five black women have competed for Idaho in all sports in the last 10 years.

Demographics, limited recruiting funds and lack of culture for black women are all among the problems facing the University of Idaho. School officials are vowing to bring a more diverse student body to the school, and that includes athletics.

“We’ve tried the approach of, ‘Maybe you can be the leader who helps us bring in more minorities. You can set the tone and make this a nice place for other black athletes and minorities in general,”’ said Idaho women’s basketball coach Julie Holt.

However, with pressure to win firmly integrated into women’s athletics, Holt looks for talent first, signing minorities second.

“We don’t recruit in terms of black and white,” she said. “We get the best player we can get.”

While Idaho State and Boise State universities each has multiple black women on its basketball team, Idaho has one - redshirt freshman Lara Chaney.

In the past decade, basketball players Sabrina Dial, Angie Burkes and Angie Pleasant, track athlete Vanessa Lester and Chaney are the only black women to wear Idaho uniforms. And only Dial finished out her eligibility.

While the Idaho football team, which had 30 black men on its fall roster, and Vandals men’s basketball squad, who fill six of the 10 roster spots with black players, have an easier time attracting blacks to Moscow, getting their female counterparts continues to be a struggle.

“There’s not a critical mass,” said Leslie Hilbert, assistant director of new student services and minority admissions counselor at Idaho. “There are a lot of black male student athletes on campus and when a recruit comes in and visits he’s going to see there are people like him. For a female black athlete to come in, it’s hard.”

In 1986, coach Pat Dobratz, who had guided the UI basketball team to the women’s NIT title, signed three black players, Dial from Tacoma, and Pleasant and Burkes from Yakima.

Dobratz never got to coach them, resigning before the season. And no other blacks were signed for nine years until Chaney last spring.

For Dial, who still lives in Moscow, the move to the white community of the Palouse wasn’t a radical adjustment.

“I’m from a military background and it wasn’t a big concern. I’d moved around a lot, been in white society half my life,” said Dial.

But she would have liked more minorities on the team. “Athletically I had goals; outside the court, it was different. You always have questions: ‘How do I do my hair?’ It didn’t bother me, but I got tired of educating people on Afro-Americanism. If there were more, it wouldn’t have been a problem.”

Burkes had a less enjoyable experience than Dial, electing to leave the basketball program after a couple years.

“I kind of felt we were scapegoats. It was always Angie and Angie (Pleasant) were in trouble,” said Burkes. “I didn’t think it was justified.”

Burkes said one of Idaho’s biggest problems is that there are no black women role models. There are no black women coaches and just three black faculty members at Idaho, including one female.

While Dial was on her way to becoming a recognized athlete at Idaho, an all-Big Sky Conference selection, the Vandals didn’t get any bounce in recruiting blacks from her efforts.

Idaho women’s basketball team hasn’t had a winning season since 1991-92. “If they would recruit girls in the cities, they would have more talent to come in and play,” said Dial. “There has to be a reason why black people aren’t coming here, or they’re not recruiting black people. It’s a hard thing to try and pinpoint the problem.”

Idaho almost had another black player on board in freshman Stephanie Lincoln out of Portland, Ore. She signed a letter-of-intent with Idaho last spring, came in the fall, but went back home. She’s now back in school at Idaho, but not playing.

“It was personal, it had nothing to do with basketball,” Lincoln said. “I was not mentally or spiritually prepared to be here, that’s why I left. I got myself on solid ground. When I was here I couldn’t deal with it.”