Dawn Staley to receive Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at ESPYS

Most of the awards Dawn Staley gets are for her work on the court. This one recognizes what she does off the court, too.

Staley, who in April won her third national title as coach at South Carolina, will receive the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at this year's ESPYS for her work in advocating for cancer research and bone marrow donors. Others who've received the award include Dick Vitale, Jim Kelly, Kay Yow and Liam Hendriks.

The ESPYS will air live at 8 p.m. ET on July 11 on ESPN. Caitlin Clark, Patrick Mahomes and Scottie Scheffler are among the athletes who've been nominated for other ESPY awards.

"I’m grateful to ESPN for their coverage and the honor of this award," Staley said in a statement. "We’ve come a long way, and we will continue to move the women’s game forward and push for equity and visibility for our sport.”

Unlike most of the ESPY awards, which recognize on-the-field performances, the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance honors Staley for her role in the fight against cancer as well as her success on the court and her advocacy for women's sports. The ESPYS help raise awareness and funds for the V Foundation, created by late N.C. State coach Jim Valvano.

Valvano was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a glandular cancer, in June 1992. He announced the creation of the V Foundation in an emotional speech at the ESPYS in March 1993, encouraging all who heard him, "Don't ever give up."

"Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind. It cannot touch my heart. And it cannot touch my soul," Valvano said. "And those three things are going to carry on forever."

Less than two months later, Valvano was dead.

Staley's status as a titan in the women's game is well established. A Hall of Famer as a point guard, she has become the preeminent college coach with three NCAA titles since 2017. This year's South Carolina squad finished the season 38-0, the first undefeated team since UConn in 2016.

But Staley has also been an outspoken advocate for "Be the Match," which encourages people to register to become bone marrow donors. Bone marrow can treat certain forms of cancer, and Staley's sister, Tracey Underwood, received a transplant from their brother after being diagnosed with leukemia.

According to Be the Match, 70% of people do not have a fully matched donor in their family. Depending on a person's genetic makeup, the chances of finding a match on the registry are between 29-79%, with Black or African-Americans having the lowest success rate.

“I hope through indirectly with what my family has gone through that we can raise the national level to a place where people feel really good about if they are diagnosed with leukemia,” Staley told WIS-TV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2021.

Staley's good friend and former assistant coach, Nikki McCray-Penson, also had cancer. She died last summer at 51.