Virginia Tech's Kenny Brooks says Black men belong in women's basketball coaching, too

Days after he was hired at Virginia Tech, Kenny Brooks made a proclamation he later worried might have doubled as him sticking his foot in his mouth.

“If Syracuse can go to to the Final Four, why not us?” he cried to applause.

His point was if Syracuse, not known as a women’s basketball power, could reach the promised land, so could Virginia Tech.

Brooks wasn’t talking about his race. But that parallel couldn’t be denied, either. In 2016, then-Syracuse coach Quentin Hillsman became the first Black man to lead a women’s team to the Final Four since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1994.

Until now. Brooks, in his seventh year at Virginia Tech, is part of that elite company, too. His No. 1 seeded Hokies beat Ohio State 84-74 on Monday to clinch their ticket to the Final Four, a first for the program based in Blacksburg, Virginia. They play third-seeded LSU in the first national semifinal Friday at 6 p.m. ET.

The significance of the moment is not lost on Brooks, the only Black male head coach in the Power Five. (When Houston moves to the Big 12 in July, Ronald Hughey will become the second.)

“Obviously it’s a topic I don’t shy away from,” Brooks said. “I know that when I was trying (to) make a name for myself, there wasn’t very many people that were doing it or advocated for people that looked like me.”

Last year at the Final Four, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, the face of women’s basketball, said she wanted to use her platform to lift up other Black coaches.

She specifically called out Black male coaches because “they don’t get opportunity” the way white coaches and even Black women do.

“When Dawn said that, it was everything,” Brooks said. “There's some rhetoric out there that men don't belong. There's actually some prominent people saying they would never hire a male. That breaks my heart because this is all family, and families need mothers and they need fathers, and I think that so many Black males, males in general, can be father figures.”

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Brooks was referring, in part, to a 2019 story where then-Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said she would not hire a male assistant ever again. Other major programs like Stanford have also employed women-only staffs.

“We fought so hard to get to this point where we're not talking about race, we're not talking about gender, and when people won't give you an opportunity because of your race, I don't think that we've gotten where we need to get to,” Brooks said.

'His success opens up the door'

Brooks’ achievement has been noticed by other coaches around the country who look like him.

Before their teams tipped off in the Seattle Regional final on Monday night, Ohio State assistant Wesley Brooks (no relation) said he’s always pulling for Kenny Brooks.

“His sustained success is incredible,” Wesley Brooks said. “He’s not getting McDonald’s All-Americans, per se, but he really coaches kids and develops them. He’s a great recruiter, but he’s a great Xs and Os guy too. Sometimes as Black men, we get labeled as just recruiters. So his success opens up the door for people like me. Maybe it’ll put it on an athletic director’s mind, ‘Hey maybe I should give this other (Black) guy a try.’”

Wesley Brooks pointed out that anytime he walks into a gym to recruit, he sees dozens of Black men coaching girls club teams. But for whatever reason, those numbers haven’t translated to college coaching ranks.

“There’s a ton of white male head coaches and tons of women,” Wesley Brooks said. “And there should be a lot of women because it’s a women’s sport, don’t get me wrong. But if there’s 65 Power Five head jobs, I think five of them should be Black males.”

Brooks rooted in Virginia

Kenny Brooks came to Virginia Tech after 14 years at James Madison, his alma mater. Despite a run of unprecedented success — over an 11-year stretch his teams won an average of 26.3 games and five conference titles — he said he got no calls from major local programs when they had job openings. (The University of Virginia, for example, hired a new head coach before the 2011, 2018 and 2022 seasons.)

Brooks, 54, is deeply connected throughout Virginia’s basketball community. He’s close friends with Ralph Sampson and Dell Curry, two of the state's most famous hoops alums. He joked that he has “almost 30 years in the Virginia retirement system because everywhere I’ve worked, it’s been within a two-hour radius.”

Curry followed the Hokies' season closely, DVR'ing games when he couldn't watch them live. Watching them win Monday was "wonderful."

"Virginia is a big state but a small, family-like community," Curry told USA TODAY Sports. "Having somebody who grew up there have this kind of success at a state school, it feels like family is winning, like we're all winning."

When Virginia Tech called in 2016 he wasn’t sure it was the right move. But then someone pointed out his 60-3 record in CAA play over the previous three seasons. Brooks realized “it was time to see if I could test my wits against the best.”

A teacher on and off the floor

Brooks understands his role is that of a teacher.

During Virginia Tech’s game against Ohio State, the Buckeyes’ put on their vaunted press in the first half. Visibly rattled, the Hokies turned the ball over. Books called a timeout and met point guard Georgia Amoore at midcourt. But instead of drawing something on his white board, he walked her through gaps in the press. As she finished nodding her understanding, they joined the huddle.

“This man is so fit,” Amorre said after finishing with 24 points. “We have individual (workouts) and he does the move and I copy it exactly.” She said as a visual learner, playing for a former point guard works to her advantage. Brooks shows her what to do, and she copies it exactly.

He teaches off the court, too.

In the summer of 2020 with protests breaking out across the country and a nationwide racial reckoning taking place in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Brooks gathered his team, a melting pot of backgrounds, and got vulnerable. He was frank in discussing life as a Black man in America, a conversation he said brought his team closer together.

But Brooks isn’t all business by any means. He has fun, too, particularly when he can work his favorite movie, Jurassic Park, into a conversation. (He’s so obsessed with the film, he drives a Ford F150 Raptor.)

While Amoore freaked out about meeting Sue Bird in Seattle, Brooks had his own “fan boy” moment when Magic Johnson tweeted his congrats to Brooks and the Hokies on Monday night. This whole journey has been somewhat surreal, he acknowledged. He doesn't want it to end.

And no, he said, he does not have a piece of the net that Staley, who’s on the opposite side of the bracket, sent out to coaches across the country last spring.

“I gotta go get my own,” he said, a playful smile stretching across his face. “Maybe I’ll send her a piece of that one.”

Follow sports enterprise reporter Lindsay Schnell on Twitter @Lindsay_Schnell

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Virginia Tech women's basketball coach says Black men belong in sport