Analysis Of Glory Road By Don Haskins

The novel I chose to read was Glory Road because I enjoy sports and the story of Don Haskins intrigued me. I also felt there were a lot of great examples in this book of what we learned this semester during this class. Don Haskins started as a high school girls’ basketball coach in 1965 before taking over Texas Westerns basketball program in 1966. Haskins back in the 1960’s was one of the only, if not the only coach in the NCAA that went and recruited players based off of their skill rather than their race. Texas Western was a primarily dominant all-white school so it was a big shock to see these African Americans coming into the school program. Throughout this paper, I will talk about the novel, providing a summary, the transitions these

The first situation was when the team was staying at a hotel during one of their away games. When they came back to their hotel rooms, the black players had blood all over their walls and their clothes along with racial slurs written on the walls with blood. This scene really opened up the team’s eyes and made it clear that this was more than just a basketball season for them. The second situation that dealt with racism and hate crimes is when one of the African American players got jumped in the bathroom. He was beat up by three white guys in a small town café only because he was black. They knew this team was getting major publicity which made everyone feel

They needed to have each other’s backs, support, and work as a whole. From then on, it wasn’t only about winning, it was now about pride and proving to people that African Americans could beat the “white player” if trained and coached well. In the book, Haskins stated, “If we didn’t figure out a way to stop him, then we were never going to get a chance to play for “racial honors” or whatever the hell sports illustrated was talking about.” (Haskins 174). This quote was saying none of what they did or have accomplished with “playing the black player” will mean anything if they don’t have a great season and win the National Championship for college basketball.

Additionally, with all this pressure, the Texas Western basketball team went against all odds stacked against them, they marched through the NCAA tournament beating many big schools that would have never let them play at their school because they were black. After winning a very close game against Kansas, in overtime, the Miners were scheduled to play Kentucky for the National Championship. Back in these days, as I’ve said before, black players were a very small percentage of the