But sitting and talking with Jasmine Coleman in her Henderson Hall office on the Wilberforce University campus the other day, you heard her say something — more than once — that made you realize it belonged in that personal prologue.
It defines her as well as — maybe, better — than what’s already there.
“I was raised by a long line of strong women,” she said. “I have a lot of great role models to look up to.”
The 26-year-old Coleman grew up in Ganado, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation reservation, a 25,000 square mile expanse that encompasses parts of New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. It’s the largest land area held by Native Americans.
Her father is African American. Her Navajo mother — Ivanna Jones — raised her and her four siblings on her own.
The lineage of strong women Jasmine — Jazz or Jazzy, to many of her friends — draws on begins with her maternal grandmother, Anna Clairmont, who she said is now in her late 70s:
“My grandma actually played college basketball at Central Arizona (Community College) down in Coolidge,” she said. “I always asked her about it. She was more like a point guard. She told me she liked to play defense and loved to shoot, too, but they didn’t have the three-point line then.
“My mom played volleyball at Yavapai College on the Yavapai Reservation in Prescott. She then coached for over 30 years on the club level and at Ganado schools.
“And my aunt (April Clairmont) was an All-American volleyball player at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. They won a national title in the late 1990s, I believe. She coached a long time, too, and now is the athletics director for the Tuba City (Arizona) schools.”
Although for many kids on the reservation, the future often comes with inward-looking limitations, Coleman said the women in her life — and her uncles, too — stressed a more expansive outlook:
“They said, ‘Home will always be home, but go out and explore the world. Keep pushing. Explore your dreams.’”
She has done that through sports, especially with basketball and volleyball.
“There’s really not a lot to do on a reservation,” she said. “There’s a lot of dirt.”
Often, there’s poverty and the social pitfalls that it fosters, but one positive pursuit that draws and uplifts people of all ages is basketball. It nurtures pride, a passion and, at the high school, it offers an escape from the daily travails while galvanizing communities.
“Basketball is one thing that keeps us going and is a way to stay out of trouble,” Coleman said. “Kids everywhere there set up basketball goals or make them themselves.” Across the vast Navajo Nation landscape, you can see makeshift hoops made of bicycle rims, garbage pails and milk crates. They’re nailed to trees and put on the sides of houses and barns and buildings.
“When I was about 10, my mom got us a hoop,” Coleman said. “All these years later, the goal still sets across from our house. The neighborhood kids play on it. The bottom had broken off, but they borrowed our tools to fix it and dug a hole and stuck it in the dirt over there.” On the Navajo Nation, the fervor for basketball tops what you find at hoops strongholds around the country – even UD Arena, the rural communities of Indiana and the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.
In Arizona, three of the top six largest crowds — all-time — for boys high school basketball games featured Native American teams from small villages.
A reservation town like Ganado — population 565 — has a high school gym that seats 5,500. Alchesay, which is about the same size, has a gym that holds 3,000. Chinle — with a population of 4,573 — has a 7,000 seat gymnasium called Wildcat Den that regularly sells out.
Town after town after town, it’s the same.
Fans often travel for several hours to line up outside gyms the night before games just to get a good seat.
“Native American fans are the best,” Coleman said. “At big games — at state tournament games — if you’re not in line at 5 a.m., you might not get a seat.
“Our game, they call it rezball.
“We run up and down. It’s fast paced and aggressive. Rezball is transition style basketball that forces tempo with assertive defense — full court presses and half-court traps — and run-and-gun offenses. The non-stop, back-and-forth, sneaker-squeaking intensity often wilts bigger, slower opponents into exhausted submission.
The best prep players are treated like rock stars in their communities and some, especially women, have gone on to the college ranks and stood out.
Ryneldi Becenti of Window Rock High in Fort Defiance, Arizona, garnered All-America honors at Arizona State, where her number is retired. She became the first Native American woman to play in the WNBA when she joined the Phoenix Mercury in 1997.
Although Coleman got off the reservation thanks to basketball — and later volleyball, too — it hasn’t been easy for her.
‘Keep pushing’
After going to elementary school at the Kin Dah Lichi’I Olta’ boarding school five miles outside of Ganado, she transferred to the hoops powerhouse, Navajo Prep High, which is 140 miles northeast of Ganado in New Mexico.
“Last month the boys team there won their first state title in 48 years,” she said. “The girls won like their ninth or 10th.”
A two-sport standout herself, she was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease — an autoimmune disorder that results in the overproduction of thyroid hormones — her senior year and missed the basketball season.
She said medication brought that under control and she went to Cochise Community College near the Mexican border and was a standout until the end of her second season when she tore her ACL and meniscus and strained her MCL.
Then she was diagnosed with lupus nephritis, which affects the kidneys. She took a year off to get that under control with medication and was offered a scholarship to Rust College, a small HBCU (Historically Black College & University) in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
“Honestly, when I went there, I had no idea what an HBCU was,” she said. “But it was great. Everybody thought I was Dominican or Puerto Rican and when I told them, no, I was Native American, they were like ‘Whaaat?’”
She was named a team captain her first season there and by the next year she’d won All-Gulf Coast Athletic Conference honors and was named to the league’s all-defensive team, too.
Once she finished her basketball eligibility, she stayed to play volleyball for a season and served as an assistant basketball coach.
At the Rust College Homecoming last year, she was approached by her coach’s dad — Eric Jackson Sr. — who is the vice president of student affairs at Wilberforce. He asked her if she’d be interested in coaching the Bulldogs’ new volleyball team which the school planned to field in the fall of 2024.
“I had been looking for a coaching job, but not at this level,” she said. “I was thinking high school. I told him I needed to think about it, and I went back home and talked to my mom.
“She said, ‘I think you should go for it. You always wanted to be a head coach and here’s an opportunity.’”
Once again, it was back to that mantra of the strong women in the family:
“Keep pushing. Go explore the world.”
Wilberforce athletics on the upswing
Coleman is a puzzle aficionado.
On her desk the other day was a large one she’d finished of two puppies at a fresh produce stand.
“I’ve got one I just finished at my house — 500 pieces — of all the Native American tribes,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of them and I’m hoping to frame some.” The most difficult puzzle she’s hoping to piece together is the formation of the new volleyball program at Wilberforce.
The school is on the upswing. Enrollment, which was below 400 last year, has nearly doubled and the goal is for 1,000 students.
There’s a new administration in place ― including a new university president and a new athletics director — and two months ago the school announced its athletic teams are joining the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, which is the only NAIA conference made up solely of HBCUs.
Currently offering six intercollegiate sports, the Bulldogs also plan to field women’s volleyball and women’s soccer teams next season.
The latter will be coached by Meagan Moran, the former Beavercreek High and Bowling Green soccer standout who has coached club soccer in the Dayton area and works in human resources at Wilberforce.
As of the other day, Coleman — who also serves as the assistant director of student activities at Wilberforce — said she had just two volleyball poles — minus the nets — for her program. But she’d just gotten word her equipment requisition had been processed and she would be getting what she needs.
She’s already put together a 25-match schedule for next season that begins with a mid-August invitational tournament at Indiana Wesleyn. On Sept. 17, the Bulldogs host next-door rival Central State.
Her biggest job is putting a team together.
She said her sales pitch to recruits includes “You can be part of history…You’ll have a chance for extensive playing time.”
She must piecemeal close to a half-dozen athletic scholarships with academic scholarship money and financial aid in hopes of landing 15 players by the end of summer. She said she already has two players committed and a few more are close to doing so.
All told, she said she’s been talking regularly to 23 players around the country and this weekend she planned to be in Las Vegas for an HBCU showcase event for athletes.
She said there’s also a group of young women on the Wilberforce campus who are working out three times a week, some of whom who hope to try out for the team.
While fully immersed in life here now, she admitted there are some things she misses from back on the reservation:
“I do miss the hills and the red dirt. And I miss the followings the teams had. Native American fans are the best.”
She thought a few seconds and then smiled:
“And I miss my grandma’s blue mush. She makes the best blue cornmeal. When I go home, I want her to make a big pot of it so I can bring some back.
“Navajo Tacos with frybread and beans and all, I miss that. And the mutton that we butcher ourselves.”
The best thing from home she’s brought with her are those lessons imparted to her by her grandmother, mom, and aunt.
“When I went to Rust, I wanted to put my foot forth and give my little siblings a sight of what is out there,” she said. “My two younger sisters — Jamika and Michelene — had never really talked of going to college, but they ended up at Rust, too, and they’re both playing volleyball and doing track.”
Along the way she has helped guide her sisters on the difficulties that occasionally crop up when you straddle two ethnicities.
“On the reservation, there’s only a handful of African American kids and I can name all of them,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a little prejudice.”
Just as some people there question if they are fully Native American, at college she said her sisters ran into a black student who questioned their participation in Black History Month.
“We’re Native American and we’re black, too,” Coleman said. “I don’t know what those people who question us are trying to say.
“The way I see it, we’re getting the best of both worlds and I love it.”
Here at Wilberforce, Coleman hopes to build a program that makes an impact:
“I’m hoping for a successful year in the GCAC. I want them to learn not only about volleyball, but I hope I can teach them a little about life, too.”
She can do that by drawing on the lessons of the line of the strong women in her own life.
She can do that by passing that same manta onto her players:
“Go out and explore the world. Keep pushing. Explore your dreams.”
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