Georgetown girls’s basketball coach Tasha Butts died Monday after a two-year battle with breast most cancers, the varsity’s athletic director stated.
The 41-year-old coach was identified with superior stage breast most cancers in 2021. She stepped away from teaching Georgetown final month. Her analysis impressed the Tasha Powerful marketing campaign which has introduced consciousness and raised cash to carry high quality care to girls who can’t afford it via the Kay Yow Most cancers Fund.
“I’m heartbroken for Tasha’s household, mates, gamers, teammates and colleagues,” stated Georgetown athletic director Lee Reed. “After I met Tasha, I knew she was a winner on the court docket, and an unbelievable particular person whose drive, ardour and dedication was second to none. She exhibited these qualities each as a pacesetter and in her combat towards breast most cancers. It is a tough time for your entire Georgetown neighborhood, and we are going to come collectively to honor her reminiscence.”
She got here to Georgetown from Georgia Tech this previous April after an extended teaching {and professional} WNBA profession. She joined the Georgia Tech girls’s basketball workers as an assistant coach in April 2019, and was promoted to affiliate head coach two years later.
“The information of Tasha’s passing is extremely unhappy,” Georgia Tech coach Nell Fortner stated. “Tasha was so instrumental to the success of this program. What she did as a member of this teaching workers can’t be undervalued. She was robust — robust on her children, robust in her expectations, however but she was mushy beneath when gamers wanted her to be there for them, and she or he was all the time there for them.”
Whereas at Georgia Tech in 2021, Butts introduced she had been identified with superior stage metastatic breast most cancers.
“Tasha’s passing is a devastating loss. She was extraordinary,” Georgetown president John J. DeGioia stated. “Tasha was an individual of character, dedication, imaginative and prescient, and kindness. She might be deeply missed by our neighborhood and by so many individuals across the nation who’ve been impressed by her life.”
When Butts stepped away final month, Georgetown named assistant Darnell Haney because the interim head coach. He stated final week that he had been in fixed contact with Butts whereas she was present process therapy.
“We saved her updated with what’s occurring with this system. Shoot her a textual content on how apply went, how issues are going within the convention,” he stated. “Do stuff to make her smile and maintain her thoughts off what was she was going via. We’d ship her movie from apply.”
Groups throughout the nation would publish movies on social media each Tuesday throughout October to try to raise Butts’ spirits and remind her she wasn’t alone within the combat towards most cancers.
Earlier than teaching at Georgia Tech, Butts was an assistant first at Duquesne, UCLA and LSU. She spent eight seasons with the Tigers.
“Tasha was an awesome participant and went on to have a profitable profession as a coach too,” stated LSU coach Kim Mulkey. “Extra importantly, she had an affect on so many lives all through her lifetime. We’re unhappy to lose her at such a younger age.”
Butts starred at Tennessee from 2000-04, enjoying for Corridor of Fame coach Pat Summitt. The Woman Vols went 124-17 along with her enjoying and superior to the NCAA championship sport in 2003 and 04. She was a part of 4 SEC regular-season championship groups on the college.
“Our program is heartbroken to lose a member of our Woman Vol sisterhood a lot, a lot too quickly,” Tennessee coach Kellie Harper. “Tasha was the kind of one that related with individuals all over the place she went. She had such a constructive affect not solely on our Tennessee household however on girls’s basketball as an entire.”
She had a quick profession within the WNBA after getting chosen twentieth by the Minnesota Lynx within the 2004 draft. She performed for Minnesota, Charlotte and Houston.
Butts is survived by her mother and father Spencer, Sr. and Evelyn, her brother Spencer, Jr. and her nephew Marquis.
AP girls’s faculty basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball
