Dawn Staley, national champion Gamecocks invited to White House

In celebration of its 2024 national championship, South Carolina women’s basketball has been invited to visit the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 10.

The White House public relations team announced the invite Thursday morning, and The State confirmed that the team has accepted the invitation. The event is scheduled for 11 a.m. that day.

The Gamecocks finished the 2023-24 season 38-0, completing the first undefeated season in Division I basketball since the UConn Huskies in 2016.

This will be USC’s first White House visit, as its previous national championship teams (2017 and 2022) were not able to make the trip. The 2017 squad received an invite, coach Dawn Staley said in November of that year, but chose not to attend.

“We did hear from the White House about attending (the) event, but we will not be able to attend,” she said in a statement. “As I’ve been saying since our practices for this season started, all of our focus is on the season ahead. The only invitation we are thinking about is to the 2018 NCAA Tournament.”

Congressman James Clyburn said USC was invited to the White House during the 2022 national championship parade in Columbia, adding that he’d “leave the date up to you all to work out.” But the visit never happened. In February of 2023, Staley said someone had mentioned March as a possible time frame, but at that point USC was in the throes of an undefeated season with eyes on the Final Four in Dallas.

This January, Vice President Kamala Harris visited with the Gamecocks ahead of their home game versus Kentucky while in town for Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations. Since then, Staley has publicly supported President Joe Biden’s decision to not run for reelection and Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign alongside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Staley also attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.

“I am inspired by the passion, drive, and competitive edge of the South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team,” Harris wrote in an X post after visiting USC women’s basketball in January. “Thank you for welcoming me to campus today.”

“I was shocked,” forward Ashlyn Watkins said after the Kentucky game of meeting Harris. “She’s beautiful, I’m not gonna lie. It was so many people that came with her. It was like she was the president. But it was really fun. She talked to us. I liked it. It was very motivational.”

Staley lauded Harris’ trailblazer status as the first woman and first person of color to serve as vice president and confessed to feeling starstruck. The head coach also said she hoped her team would be inspired by the vice president’s strength.

“When you’re the first, you get it all,” Staley said in her postgame press conference. “You get the good, the bad, the ugly, and you have to embrace it. And I do think that her strength is very evident. And I need our players to see the strength of that kind of woman.”