South Carolina introduced Friday that Dawn Staley has obtained a contract extension by means of the 2029-30 season that can make her the highest-paid coach in girls’s basketball.
The contract, authorised by the college’s board of trustees, begins with an annual wage of $4 million, features a $500,00 signing bonus and has an annual $250,000 escalator, bringing the whole worth to roughly $25.25 million.
“Dawn Staley is a once-in-a-generation coach who has made an incredible influence on the University of South Carolina,” athletic director Jeremiah Donati stated. “She has elevated the game of girls’s basketball on the nationwide degree and right here on campus, and I’m excited that she will probably be representing our University for a few years to return.”
Staley has received three nationwide championships since taking up this system in 2008, together with final season’s 38-0 title staff. Going again to the 2013-14 season, the Gamecocks are 165-15 in SEC regular-season play. They have received or tied for the league regular-season title eight occasions in that stretch, and received eight SEC event titles.
Staley was making $3.2 million this season earlier than the extension went into impact. UConn’s Geno Auriemma, who has received 11 NCAA titles with the Huskies, is making $3.34 million this season. LSU’s Kim Mulkey, who received three NCAA titles at Baylor after which led LSU to its first in 2023, is making $3.25 million this season.
Staley, Auriemma and Mulkey and Maryland’s Brenda Frese, who led the Terrapins to the NCAA title in 2006, are the one energetic head coaches who’ve received the nationwide championship in girls’s basketball.
Staley additionally guided to the United States girls’s basketball staff to the gold medal within the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
South Carolina’s solely loss this season got here in November to UCLA. The No. 2 Gamecocks are 17-1 total and 5-0 within the SEC, and so they host No. 13 Oklahoma on Sunday (ESPN, 3 p.m. ET).
“I’m proud to signify the University of South Carolina and of its funding in girls’s basketball,” Staley stated. “What we have been in a position to accomplish on the courtroom is a testomony to what can occur whenever you carry collectively the fitting individuals from a staff perspective but additionally have the fitting dedication from the college, the athletics division and the group to offering that staff with all the pieces it must be profitable.”
According to the Charleston Post and Courier, if Staley terminates the contract earlier than its finish, she would owe the varsity the total quantity of the remaining contract, with one exception: if she takes a head teaching or assistant job within the WNBA or NBA.
