LSU
basketball star Hailey van Lith has taken responsibility for defending some of her teammates from
racism after a
Los Angeles Times column described some players as "dirty debutantes." The 22-year-old joined reigning national champions LSU from Louisville in the offseason and has become a key player in Kim Mulkey's team, alongside the likes of Angel Reese and Flau'jae Johnson. A win over UCLA has put the into the Elite Eight, where they will contest a national championship rematch from last year against Caitlin Clark's Iowa. However, heading into the matchup with the Hawkeyes, says narratives around about some LSU players are fuelled by racism. Reese, in particular, gets . Van Lith says she's as equally as bad with trash talk - but receives a different reaction. "We do have a lot of Black
Women on this team, and unfortunately, that bias does exist still today, and a lot of the people that are making those comments are being racist towards my teammates," Van Lith said. "I'm in a unique situation where I see with myself, I'll talk trash and I'll get a different reaction than if Angel [Reese] talks trash. I have a duty to my teammates to have their back. Some of the words that were used in that article were very sad and upsetting." Van Lith added: "Calling us the dirty debutantes, that has nothing to do with sports. That's not motivating. But in my opinion, I know for a fact that people see us differently because we do have a lot of Black women on our team who have an attitude and like to talk trash and people feel a way about it. At the end of the day, I'm rocking with them because they don't let that change who they are. They stay true to themselves, and so I'll have their back." Van Lith highlighted that she saw the double standard while growing up in Louisville in a majority-white area. From her high school days, the guard recalls attempts to cancel an assembly on Martin Luther King Jr. "I've experienced it at Louisville. I've experienced it my whole life," Van Lith said. "A lot of the times, I'm one of the only white people on the team and so I do see things from a different perspective. I think a lot of people who live in communities that everyone is like them, that's when they tend to think, 'Oh, racism doesn't exist today.' But I have seen it and I experienced it, and I watch it happen to my teammates. I watch it happen to my
Friends. "So, when I go back home, which is a mostly white community, I do share those experiences. When I was in high school, they tried to cancel the Martin Luther King Jr. assembly because we didn't have enough time for it, but every other holiday we had enough time for. We were a majority-white high school, so no one had a problem with it. It's my responsibility to say things when that happens because I'm in a unique position."