Syracuse, NY – On her first day as head coach of the Syracuse University women’s basketball team, Felisha Legette-Jack made a FaceTime call to her high school basketball coach, Willetta Spease.
With all of Legette-Jack’s staff in her office, Spease told her over the phone that it was “about time” she was hired in Syracuse.
“I don’t care, I’m just telling the truth! It would be a problem if I wasn’t telling the truth!” Legette-Jack said of the phone call.
Spease coached Legette-Jack at Nottingham High School in the early 1980s, marking the beginning of a 21-year run at the school during which she led the Bulldogs to 12 Section III championships. She was named New York State Coach of the Year in 1989 and was inducted into the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996. She died in 2022. Full of tough love for her players, she is best remembered for her winning streak, but her influence went far beyond just coaching.
Crystal Starling, the leading scorer in Nottingham girls basketball, remembers Spease as offering her a safe haven away from home. Starling’s upbringing was not emotionally secure, and Spease offered the young guard the opportunity to join her for any activity, whether it was an errand or a basketball game.
“Anything she did in the community, she said, ‘I want you to come with me, I want you to learn, I want you to talk to these people,'” Starling said. “It was just to get me out of what I saw every day to know there was more.
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Nottingham girls basketball coach Willetta Spease
Not every Nottingham player went on to play Division I ball like Legette-Jack and Starling. For every player on the Bulldogs’ roster, Spease would push them to be the best person they could be, Legette-Jack said.
Spease would check the grades of all her players every semester and keep her team in the gym for hours after games to make sure they completed their homework. For a student who didn’t have food at home, she would make sure there was food at school. If a student needed money to get McDonald’s with the rest of the team, Spease would give her the money.
“She was just a person who helped you get through the pain, the sadness, but also the glory,” Legette-Jack said.
Spease did not let her players refer to her as “Coach” but instead just “Mrs. Spease”.
Starling’s basketball journey stretched from Nottingham to Virginia Tech, where she was named an All-Atlantic 10 Conference Player her freshman year. She played professionally in Turkey, Luxembourg and Spain as a practice player for the WNBA’s Sacramento Monarchs and was an assistant coach at Radford University. Her career may never have even started if it wasn’t for Spease.
Starling’s father and stepmother were Jehovah’s Witnesses and did not believe in participating in competitive sports. Her stepmother was “totally against it” and tried to stop Starling from playing. But Starling’s father knew Spease after his oldest daughter, Carmen, played basketball at Nottingham a few years earlier. He trusted Spease.
“I didn’t feel emotionally safe at home with my stepmother. But Miss Spease was my emotional safety,” Starling said. “So when I describe my relationship with Miss Spease, she saved me. She saved me emotionally. She taught me how to be a woman. She taught me how to be a woman of character.”
Spease never lost her openness. Starling grew up stuttering and the other kids at school would make fun of it. Her basketball coach is quick to correct her when she mispronounces a word.
“She would correct me and say, ‘Hey, don’t say this, say this. If you want to say it like that, you talk like that,’ you know?” Starling said. “She gave me the opportunity to feel confident in my voice.
Starling wanted to wear her sister Carmen’s number 22 at Nottingham; it was a family number. Spease wouldn’t allow it, he wanted younger sister Starling to make her own way in school.
“I said, ‘Listen, I need 22,'” Starling said.
“He says, ‘No, I retired that jersey. You’re not fit to wear that jersey yet.’
“I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’
“She was like, ‘Yeah, you, nuh-uh, you’re not Carmen Starling.’
Starling took the note in stride, determined to forge her own path and not compare herself to her sister. Spease told her he would challenge her every day—and she did. Starling used her coach’s constructive criticism to be the best basketball player she could be.
Cintia Johnson, Nottingham’s current head coach, played for Spease’s last two years leading the Bulldogs, 1999 and 2000. She joined the varsity team as a seventh grader, the youngest of the bunch. Instead of yelling, Spease would encourage her after mistakes, Johnson said. But she never lost her high expectations.
“She didn’t give birth to me even when I was a baby,” Johnson said.
Spease’s legacy is felt throughout the city of Syracuse, from its basketball courts to its schools and legislative bodies.
Rasheada Caldwell, an ordinary At-Large councilwoman, played for Spease alongside Legette-Jack. Pamela Odom, superintendent of the Syracuse City School District, played for Spease from seventh through twelfth grade.
“He will certainly tell you how he feels and what he thinks, but always with good intentions,” Odom said in an email.
Legette-Jack lacks Spease’s tough coaching style in today’s coaches. Her role as a coach is not to make friends with her players. It’s OK if she or Spease made a player feel bad in practice, she said, because she cares about their well-being for the next “70+ years.”
Odom’s management style as superintendent is a “team mentality” that came from her time as a basketball player, she said.
Nottingham dedicated its gym to Spease in November and Legette-Jack spoke at the ceremony. As a Spease tribute video played, she looked at the screen and spoke to her coach. After calling her former coach hundreds of times — including after every college game she played in — she had one more message for her mentor.
“I’m going to keep working hard and make you even prouder. I know you’re proud, you’ve already told me, but there’s more,” Legette-Jack told her.
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