USD Magazine Summer 2021

TORERO ATHLETICS USD MAGAZINE

C O U R T E S Y O F U S D A T H L E T I C S

[ v e r a c i t y ]

t USD, as it did across the country and around the globe, George Floyd’s UNFAILINGLY GENEROUS A Fund named for legendary basketball coach Bernie Bickerstaff by Karen Gross

private fundraising effort that has been supported by approximately 70 donors. And fittingly, it’s named for the university’s first Black head coach — a man so revered in the USD community he “belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of USD greats,” McGillis says. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider Bickerstaff’s biography. Born and raised in tiny Benham in southeastern Kentucky, his father and grandfather were both coal miners who spent years toil- ing underground. Bickerstaff’s high school basketball team was forced to travel 44 miles round

sion Fund, whose monies will be used to enhance and expand di- versity and inclusion education and training for staff, administra- tors and students, and to seed ini- tiatives and programs developed to support USD scholar-athletes. The fund has raised more than $60,000 to date through a

need to enhance the experience of our Black scholar-athletes, in large part, because they shared their perspective with us immedi- ately,” says Associate Vice Presi- dent and Executive Director of Athletics Bill McGillis. And so emerged the Bernie Bickerstaff Diversity and Inclu-

tragic death sparked a critical conversation, prompting a key question: How could USD — and the athletics department in particular — do better? “We recognized there was a

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