Unity by Design

Tar Heel head coaches are accustomed to being in control. But for a very meaningful part of the 2020-21 athletics year, they've chosen to pass the authority to their players.

The process began in the fall, when Tomon Fox designed a patch worn by the football team. Once the NCAA granted approval for teams to wear a patch, teammates and coaches knew Fox, an accomplished artist, was the right designer.His work sparked a series of designs on patches and shirts worn by other Tar Heel teams this year. Courtney Banghart made it clear to her women's basketball team that she didn't want to speak for them by suggesting a patch design. She split the team into smaller groups so they could discuss what was important to them.

"It made a huge difference that Coach wanted the ideas to come from us," says junior Jaelynn Murray. "We know that sometimes student-athletes on a team at a big university don't get that privilege."

It also forced the players to talk directly about complicated issues.

"Those were tough conversations," says Murray. "Before we talked, Meg (Williams-Banx, the women's basketball director of operations) and Tori (Niemann, the team's director of outreach) helped guide the discussion. We talked about what rules we wanted to have in place to everyone could say what they wanted to say and it could be a safe space for everyone."

Murray had the same academic advisor as Fox, so she already knew of his art prowess. She and senior Janelle Bailey sent the team's rough draft to Fox and asked him for his design input.

Other teams have been fortunate enough to have a go-to artist already on the roster. Women's lacrosse goalkeeper Taylor Moreno has been an artist her entire life. So when Jenny Levy's squad spent over an hour on a Zoom call in early December discussing ideas for a warmup shirt, Moreno paid close attention. Even still, she was a little surprised when Levy closed the meeting by saying, "OK, Taylor, have you been taking notes? You got this?"

The answer, of course, was yes.

"We had a long conversation with each other about what we really wanted to focus on as a team in terms of social injustice, and what we really believed in as a group," Moreno said. "It was really important to have that conversation with each other about our personal beliefs and really dig into that side of each other."

Moreno took the team's ideas and jotted down some possibilities in a notebook. The end product is a shirt the Tar Heels will wear during warmups, with the first appearance coming in the 2021 home opener vs Stony Brook. Carolina will begin the season as the nation's top-ranked team.

"It was exciting to know I was making a shirt that was about something bigger than us," she says. "The fact that the team had faith in me to put everyone's ideas into something physical was an honor."

The opportunity to keep social issues at the forefront by displaying them on a uniform or in warmups has kept the discussion at the forefront rather than allowing it to be just a one-time topic. It's also caused student-athletes to think differently about the platform available to them.

"I used to just think of my platform as, 'I have Instagram and I have this many followers,'" Murray says. "Now I think about what I can do with all of this. I want to put something out there that can teach somebody, or can enable someone to relate to me or learn something from me."

University of North Carolina Athletics

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