Cal hosts Raising the B.A.R. tournament that features Black female head coaches

Cal coach Charmin Smith had a vision four years ago of creating a tournament to lift up Black female head coaches.

So she started the Raising the B.A.R. (basketball, activism, representation) Invitational. It’s a four-team tournament that California hosts featuring teams with Black women coaches.

“In our sport, it’s a huge issue with only 17% of head coaches are women of color,” Smith said in a phone interview. “This tournament elevates the voices and stories and people in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging space as well as highlights the lack of diversity in women’s college basketball coaching.”

No. 24 Cal will face Fordham on Saturday with Temple playing Xavier in the other game. The winners of each game and losers will play on Sunday. There was a panel Friday night with all four head coaches.

It was nearly two decades ago when Smith said she learned a valuable lesson from mentor former Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer when she was an assistant under the Hall of Fame coach.

Smith wasn’t happy that people didn’t seem to care enough about the affects of Hurricane Katrina and weren’t doing enough to help. VanDerveer asked her what she was going to do about it. So Smith started a fund where every assist that year raised money for Habit for Humanity. They raised more than $18,000.

That stuck with her all these years.

There’s a new fundraising component this year to raise money for a charity of each school’s choice. Cal is raising money for People’s Programs; Fordham for Part of the Solution; Temple for the Philadelphia Youth Sports Collaborative; and Xavier for Cincinnati Stepping Stones.

Fordham coach Bridgette Mitchell was honored to have a chance to play in the tournament.

“This is really cool,” she said in a phone interview. “Representation matters. Girls look up to my players and my players look up to me. This is really unique to see and it should be celebrated what Charmin is doing.”

Mitchell said she wasn’t sure if her team would be able to play in the tournament originally as it clashed with final exams for the semester. She got approval for a few of her players to take finals earlier and some professors moved up their exams.

The new charity component also interested Mitchell. Her team spends at least one day a month doing charity work in the community.

“POTS (Part of the Solution) is really close to our campus,” she said. “Being in the Bronx, it’s one of the poorest boroughs looking at cost of living and things. POTS is basically a homeless shelter where they give out food and things.”

Smith said that this will be the last year that the tournament will be held right before Christmas. The hope is to move it to Santa Cruz next year at the G-League facility there and play it in the first or second week of the season.