By Jere Longman | New York Times
STORRS, Connecticut—When Connecticut won its 11th NCAA women’s basketball title last spring—its fourth in a row—President Barack Obama joked that he would keep a room with a cot waiting for Coach Geno Auriemma on the Huskies’ regular visit to the White House.
“He does seem to spend an awful lot of time here,” Obama said.
A trip to the White House, with the ceremonial awarding of a jersey to the president, has long been an affirmation for champion teams. But ire over the election of President Donald J. Trump has spurred activism by athletes, coaches and officials perhaps not seen since the civil-rights movement and the war in Vietnam.
Breanna Stewart, the former UConn star who helped lead her team to the last four national titles, joined a protest at Los Angeles International Airport against Trump’s temporary ban on visitors from seven predominantly Muslim nations, a policy since rebuffed in federal court. Six members of the New England Patriots, who recently won their fifth Super Bowl, have said they will skip the team’s White House trip, which has not yet been scheduled.
And now Auriemma is being asked a question he hadn’t faced since his teams began winning titles in 1995, during the first term of the Clinton administration: Would any or all of the Huskies decline to meet the president should they win a 12th championship in April?
“The fact that in all the 11 championships I’ve never been asked this question says something about where we are” as a country, Auriemma said. “Forget the answer. The fact that I’ve never been asked means there’s something going on that isn’t normal.”
UConn has won 100 consecutive games since 2014. And while the Huskies are not a lock to win a 12th title, they are favored again to cut down the nets in triumph at the Final Four in Dallas. Now coaches, current players and the team’s former stars are wrestling with the issue of whether UConn should visit the White House in celebration.
The Huskies’ players are amateurs, some still teenagers, not professionals with agents, union protection and multimillion-dollar contracts. They have kept up with the political situation, and the responses by other athletes, through social media and classroom discussions. Their own reactions were nuanced and considered.
Even before Trump was elected, UConn players jokingly told one another, “We’re not going if he wins,” sophomore forward Napheesa Collier said. “Now that it’s actually happened, if we win, I don’t know what everyone’s going to do.”
Stewart and Maya Moore, another former UConn star, said they expected that whatever decision the team made, it would be done collectively. Gabby Williams, a junior forward, agreed.
“That’s just what we’ve built here,” Williams, the team’s most complete player, said. “We don’t have guys that do their own thing. Whatever we do, it’ll be a unified decision.”
If some players did not want to attend a White House celebration, Collier said, “I really don’t know what I would do in that position; I guess we have to get there first.”
Auriemma, who will turn 63 during the NCAA tournament, said the dilemma for him was reconciling respect for the office of the presidency with the possibility that some players might object to meeting Trump, feeling unwelcome at the White House because of the president’s statements and positions on women, minorities, immigrants and Muslims.
“If we’re fortunate enough to win it, and your players walk in and go, ‘Listen, I’m not going,’ we’ve never had to deal with that before,” Auriemma said.
“What are you going to do as a coach?” he continued. “It’s not like I can look it up and go, ‘What did other people do?’ We’re in a world that very few of us could have conceived five years ago.”
What would he do?
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s a good question.”
There is no pressing need for an answer now, he understands, no need to cross a point of no return. The national championship game is not until April 2, and there is no guarantee that UConn will be playing or winning.
“I’m not crossing the Rubicon,” Auriemma said. “That’s Caesar. Once your army crosses that river, you are an enemy of the state.”
Auriemma is no supporter of Trump. He made that clear last summer in Rio de Janeiro while coaching the US women’s team to a second consecutive Olympic gold medal under him and sixth in a row overall. Asked whether dominance by the United States was good for women’s basketball, he told reporters, “We live in that Trumpian era where it’s OK to be sexist and degrade people that are good, just because they’re the opposite sex.”
He later expressed shock that Trump had been elected president.