Raegan Beers explains why she desires to satisfy with the SEC’s Greg Sankey and the Huge Ten’s Tony Petitti

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Faculty athletics have modified so much over the previous few years and the panorama is more likely to shift much more very quickly because the Home v. NCAA settlement will pave the best way for faculties to have the ability to share income immediately with athletes.

And ladies’s basketball gamers need a seat on the desk.

Based on a latest Washington Submit story, greater than 100 Division I ladies’s faculty basketball gamers have been quietly forming a gamers affiliation group of kinds over the previous a number of months. They’ve joined the United Faculty Athletes Affiliation, a nonprofit group advocating for school athletes, they usually need to be heard by the choice makers who’re going to form what the following period of school sports activities appears to be like like. Particularly, they requested for conferences with the commissioners of the Huge Ten and Southeastern Convention — the richest leagues in faculty sports activities — each of whom declined to sit down down with the gamers.

Securing that assembly and persevering with to advocate on behalf of her fellow ladies’s faculty basketball gamers was nonetheless on the thoughts of Oklahoma’s Raegan Beers after she helped her Sooners defeat Kentucky within the quarterfinals of the SEC Match final Friday. Beers, a 6-foot-4 junior middle for Oklahoma, had 20 factors and 11 rebounds within the 69-65 victory for the Sooners.

Along with being among the finest facilities within the sport, Beers can also be the SEC president of this gamers advocacy group.

“We simply actually need to have a voice,” Beers informed SB Nation. “There are choices which can be being made with out us within the room which can be about us. And so, we simply need to have a good probability to speak about these choices which can be being made on our behalf.”

SB Nation caught up with Beers after her workforce’s win over Kentucky for an unique dialog about her function within the group, what she hopes to perform, how she bought concerned and what the long run appears to be like like for girls’s faculty basketball because the Home settlement looms.

This dialog has been calmly edited for brevity and readability.

Scott Kinser-Imagn Photographs

Simply to begin off, have there been any large developments inside your group because the Washington Submit story was printed?

Beers: “That was an enormous step for us to go public. There was quite a lot of behind the scenes work with that participant group that’s been beginning — assembly on Zoom with individuals from throughout the SEC and throughout the Huge Ten. So it’s been a course of this complete yr, beginning final yr. It was an enormous step for us to go public with that data. It was an enormous step that was wanted as a result of we do require voice in ladies’s basketball. I feel it was cool that so many athletes bought to come back collectively and be part of that and have a voice.”

This feels like a Huge Ten and SEC-driven factor, however have you ever talked to any gamers within the ACC or Huge 12 about getting concerned?

Beers: “Not but. We’re desirous to develop, clearly. We don’t need to simply restrict it to the Huge Ten and SEC. We began it with the Huge Ten and the SEC, as a result of we had quite a lot of women that have been adamant about that and actually keen about it in these conferences. So, it’s simpler to type of develop it in a single convention after which soar to a different convention, clearly, and so we began in these conferences. However we need to develop as a lot as we will. This isn’t nearly ladies’s basketball within the SEC and it’s not only for ladies’s basketball within the Huge Ten. It’s for girls’s basketball throughout the nation. So we positively need to develop, for positive.”

Writer’s notice: In accordance a league supply, ladies’s basketball gamers within the ACC haven’t but requested a gathering with commissioner Jim Phillips.

Did you could have extra gamers attain out to y’all after the Washington Submit story?

Beers: “I had a pair that reached out to me that have been simply actually excited by what it was about. They have been like, ‘What is that this?’ And thankfully, you see my identify on there, you see a reputation like Charlisse Leger-Walker from UCLA or (Dominique Darius) from USC — it type of makes your ears perk just a little bit. They’re like, ‘What is that this, precisely?’ So, I do know I bought reached out to, I do know they bought reached out to. They’re all individuals simply questioning what it was, wanting extra data. That was one of many essential elements of that article, was to get extra data, get that data on the market about how we simply need a voice, and to try for that. And in order that was actually essential to us.”

Are you continue to hopeful that the commissioners will sit down with y’all?

Beers: “That’s the plan. We’re making an attempt to get after that. Commissioners clearly run so much, and so we might actually love to sit down down and discuss to them about it, and what that will seem like for us to have a voice within the room and make choices on our behalf, and never simply them making choices with out us within the room. And so, that’s going to be essential for us, and we’re hopeful that they’ll come to phrases.”

How did you become involved with this?

Beers: “Mikayla Pivec. That is again after I was nonetheless at Oregon State however I used to be within the switch portal and I used to be determining the place I needed to go. She was on the town in Corvallis and reached out to me like, ‘Hey, do you need to seize lunch?’ I used to be like, ‘After all.’ Mikayla Pivec, to begin with, is a legend at Oregon State. So, we went out and she or he’s like, ‘What are you aware concerning the cash that’s coming into the conferences?’ I didn’t know any of it. She was giving me a bunch of stats… And so, she actually bought me into it after which bought me on Zooms with different gamers, listening to their tales about how they have been pressured to play by means of issues. Listening to different tales from different gamers in different conferences was actually, actually essential. So, Mikayla actually drove that for me after which helped me join with quite a lot of gamers throughout the Huge Ten and SEC.”

Are the highest questions and considerations for y’all revolving across the Home settlement?

Beers: “Proper now that’s the most important factor, clearly, as a result of that’s what’s developing quick is that Home settlement — getting a income sharing that’s particular for girls’s basketball. That’s actually going to be essential. So, that’s positively on the high. Different issues like psychological well being is an enormous one for scholar athletes. We need to proceed to enhance that particularly in ladies’s basketball. After all, you could have issues like employees that do an important job, however we wish one thing particularly ladies’s basketball, the place we will come and be like, ‘These are the problems we’re having in ladies’s basketball, and that is how we need to handle them, and might you assist us with that?’ And in order that’s one other factor. The Home settlement and income sharing, for positive, is on the forefront of our minds.”