For a player who called her “Coach B,” Beulah Osueke was more than just a coach.
Some saw her as a parent. As a sister, someone else. Sometimes she was their investor. Often she was disciplinary for them.
Osueke, 35, is an experience that has turned to a world of challenges for a female basketball player from West Catholic Prep, a Philadelphia high school, to anyone who needed her.
Coaching helped me understand “the magnitude of the fraud and how it appears very quickly.” “And how it prevents people from blocking their dreams, especially black people,” Osueke said.
During her eight-year tenure, Osueke built Western Catholic Lady Bar into a championship-winning program, securing six district titles in 2021, winning the school’s first basketball state title.
Osueke’s outreach shows how Sports can become a grassroots tool for empowerment And Ketla Armstrong, professor and director of sports management at the University of Michigan’s Race and Ethnicity Center for Sports, says he teaches life lessons.
As President Donald Trump, that’s more important than ever, Armstrong said. Wide range of presidential orders Dismantle the diversity, equity and inclusion programs introduced to create equal opportunities for marginalized groups – education, Sports Employment opportunities in the US are uncertain.
“We can’t rely on the system because a lot of the system is cut,” Armstrong said. “It means that resources are removed, but as you know, we have what we need to win.”
“We need a Beura revolution. We need community activists in every corner,” she said. “That’s what you’re trying to take.”
Build the foundation for success
When Osueke got a coaching job at West Catholic in 2013, she began to create a culture of structure and discipline.
“Initially, I said, ‘Yeah, these kids have a bad attitude, I have to break them,” said Osueke, who grew up in a middle-class black family outside of Houston. “But when I began to develop a relationship with them… I resonated with them.”
Osueke, who holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology, saw her own concept of preconceived notions as a sign of greater problems for black students often faced. Disparageously strict discipline At school.
“I don’t think that many people who work with inner city children, black children, would give them the luxury of being considered human,” Osueke said.
Osueke’s coaching, which was a former high school and college hoop, was shaped by the feeling that he had no advocates when he faced difficulties in college.
“We felt it was extremely necessary to create a comprehensive program,” Osueke said.
She started with the basics: arrive at practice on time, follow the dress code and behave at home and in the classroom. She designed fundraisers and team shirts to sell them to head towards some of the girls’ exercise expenses.
After moving on to 0-18 in her first season, West Catholic won the next five games. The stars blossomed under the guidance of Osueke.
Tamia Robinson, a senior guard at the University of Louisiana who performed in West Catholicism from 2017 to 2020, believes Osueke taught her accountability. Whether she completed seemingly insignificant tasks like chores, Robinson said Osueke helped her grow “in ways I didn’t need them.”
“It came a long way without me realizing it,” Robinson said. “As a young woman, as a black woman, I need to handle what I need to deal with first and basketball is coming second.”
That’s what Armstrong at the University of Michigan called it “using the power of sports.”
Osueke said, “Her girl allowed her to become a winner in the game of life, the lesson she learned to become a winner in basketball,” Armstrong said.
Leading through tragedy
In 2016, 18-year-old Akyra Murray, one of Osueke’s star athletes, was Youngest of the 49 people He was killed in a shooting at a Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, crushing both his coach and his team.
Osueke brought in a psychologist to allow players to navigate their emotions.
Some were scared. Some were angry. As the teams joined in discussing what had happened, a player broke a window in the school gym.
The 15-year-old student felt paralyzed. She had experienced 10 deaths in the past three months.
Osueke is more tragic than one could imagine suffering at that age, giving her a new perspective on what some of her players have lived.
“I didn’t know their whole world just because I shared my gender identity and racial identity with these girls,” Osueke said.
She decided to help players see what they can achieve. That included regular mental health checks and offering them in ways she could, such as buying groceries for players who don’t have food at home.
The team’s most successful year came after Osueke put all these pieces together.
They won 11 consecutive times in a row on their way out to the Philadelphia Catholic League Championship in 2020. Osueke has been named Inter-Pennsylvania Innovative Athletics Association Class 3A Coach of the Year. The 2021 Class 3A State Crown was the school’s first state title, a girl or boy.
Teach life lessons
Osueke defended her players when they were not supported at school. She also fought to ensure that they were judged fairly when they appeared to face biased officials of the court.
Osueke estimated that her team averaged between 10 and 15 foul calls than their white counterparts, and they didn’t receive those same calls when their opponents clawed, pinched or otherwise fouled.
Osueke told players not to argue with officials. She created a practice drill that played the role of a referee, “I think a better resource girl or legacy team should win.”
If anyone actually complained, she would run them or do push-ups.
“We learned how to actually go about experiencing those things,” said Daja Hosendorf, who played for Osueke from 2016 to 2019. “She was able to talk to us and correlate those things in the game, how it correlates with how our lives will be.”
Hosendorf, who currently studies at the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in the country of St. Kitz and Nevis in the Caribbean, uses that principle in her field.
“When I came across people who didn’t think I was equal, she said, ‘I learned how to get through it.’
Wideer impact
Osueke stopped coaching full-time in 2021, making it a broader community impact, but trains players when they have time.
She is the executive director of New Voice for Reproductive Justice, based in Philadelphia, and is working on the project to help women’s basketball coaches understand how races, classes and other factors affect student-athletes.
Advocacy continues to be one of her biggest goals.
“Sports is a very common presence. It’s a universal infrastructure,” says Osueke. “So, we need to use it to not only earn points, make money, get fame, but also to hand over seeds and plant them to the next generation of leaders.”
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