Just A Minute: Alabama Athletics Quietly Made History This Week

One of the final major coaching barriers with the Crimson Tide was broken with little fanfare, which may have been the most important part of it.

Author:
Christopher Walsh
Publish date:
Dec 22, 2021 4:00 PM EST

The University of Alabama athletic department quietly made history on Monday when announcing that it had hired a new coach, Rashinda Reed, to take over the Crimson Tide volleyball program.

Originally from Fairbanks, Alaska, Reed is a 2005 graduate of the University of Georgia. She spent five seasons playing professionally overseas, and then started working her way up the coaching ranks. Her stops include Southern Indiana, Binghampton, Northeastern, UAB and Illinois.

And now her office will be located at Foster Auditorium.

Known as the site of the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, it's where Gov. George Wallace symbolically tried to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling in 1963.

Fifty years later, in 2013, the courtyard facing that door was dedicated as the Malone-Hood Plaza, along with the Lucy Clock Tower.

Last year, it was also the site of a Black Lives Matter march and ceremony, led by Crimson Tide athletes and coaches including Nick Saban.

Reed is the first black female head coach in university history, an opportunity she says she will not "take lightly."

The same should be said of her hiring.

We have no idea of how well she'll do, although athletic director Greg Byrne does have a track record of finding future standout coaches. Volleyball is the only Alabama sport that hasn't made its version of the postseason tournament to determine the national champion over the last two years.

When making the announcement Alabama didn't boast that it had hired its first black female head coach, and few people seemed to have noticed.

But that's the mark of true progress, when hardly anyone gives it a second thought.