Cal women’s basketball team wears #BlackLivesMatter shirts

Before Saturday’s game against Long Beach, the Cal women’s basketball team took the court wearing handmade shirts featuring the names of victims of injustice.

The full statement from head coach Lindsay Gottlieb:

”I’m a basketball coach, and I’m competitive and winning is important. Our standards at Cal are high, and of course losing this game is disappointing. That said, however, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud of these players or our whole team and staff.

As student-athletes at Cal, our young women have a voice and a platform, and they chose to use it today. They want to be part of a solution, and they took the steps that were in their power today.

We can talk about X’s and O’s all day, but in reality there are bigger life issues and the moral consciousness of our players is something I’m proud of. I don’t tell them what to think, but I do encourage them to think.

Earlier this week, the captains came to me and said, as a team, they wanted to wear “I Can’t Breathe” shirt next Sunday when we play at home against Louisville. This morning, we got out of shootaround and were quickly met with images from our campus that were disturbing. These images may have been to bring awareness to injustice, or they may have been an act of cruelty; either way, they elicited strong emotions from everyone. The entire team came to me. They were compelled to act. We met for 45 minutes about how to best use our voices. As a group, they decided to wear shirts that brought attention to lives lost - recently and throughout history - and to stand and say that black lives matter; all lives matter.

I wish we had won today. It was a brutal loss, but our players wearing handmade shirts to symbolize something poignant and important is what I will remember proudly from today. I love this team and staff for who they are as people.”