{"id":37473,"date":"2025-04-23T14:23:39","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T18:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=37473"},"modified":"2025-05-01T10:37:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T14:37:05","slug":"magazine-above-the-rim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/magazine-above-the-rim\/","title":{"rendered":"Above the Rim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jackie Carson \u201900 was confident when she stepped onto the basketball court her senior year for the Southern Conference championship game against UNC Greensboro. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The two-time SoCon Player of the Year and 12-time player of the week had been part of the team her first year at Furman, when the No. 3 seed Paladins were knocked out of the tournament in an upset in the first round.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought to myself I\u2019m not leaving here without doing what I set out to do,\u201d Carson says. \u201cWe wanted a win, and we sensed it early.\u201d<\/p>\n

That night she\u2019d lead the team to its second SoCon tournament championship title. It\u2019s one of her legendary accolades during her four-year playing career that earned her a spot in the Furman Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005. Carson carried her successes with her after graduation as she went on to play internationally, then serve as an assistant coach at Bucknell and James Madison universities. She brought her Paladin pride back home in 2010 when she was hired as the head women\u2019s basketball coach at her alma mater.<\/p>\n

\"A

Former Furman Women\u2019s Basketball head coach Jackie Carson led the Paladins for 13 years, transforming the program and serving as a role model for her players.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt was never just about women\u2019s basketball,\u201d she says. \u201cFurman as a whole inspired me to get involved and make as big an impact as I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

While working at the university, Carson networked with Black alumni and served as an advocate for women in athletics, a cause she\u2019s championed her entire career. Several of the professors she had as an undergraduate were teaching her players, so she was able to connect with her team as a mentor and a Paladin. Carson recalled professors encouraging her after classes, asking her to sink a free throw for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust the knowledge that your professors are invested in you and proud of your accomplishments meant a lot to me, and I know it means a lot to students still,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

During her coaching career, Carson rallied the women\u2019s basketball team to a 20-win season in 2021-22. During her tenure Furman produced 19 All-SoCon performers, 12 All-Tournament players, three Freshmen of the Year, 12 SoCon All-Freshman Team picks and a player of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea, still to this day, how many games I won at Furman,\u201d Carson says. \u201cI remember the feeling of watching our ladies compete. It\u2019s seeing their goals come to fruition that gave me the most joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carson left her coaching position in June 2023 and took a role advocating for women\u2019s sports nationally as senior associate commissioner for women\u2019s basketball for the Atlantic Coast Conference.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 31, she returned to Furman during the Joseph Vaughn Day event to receive one more notch in her belt: the Idella Goodson Glenn \u201984 Outstanding Black Alumni Award. During her acceptance speech she said coming back to Furman was an emotional experience, one that celebrated a legacy of accomplished Black women paving a path for those who come after them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurman was home,\u201d she says, and it still inspires her today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jackie Carson ’00 went beyond the basketball court to advocate for and lift up the Furman Community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":36116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3344,1963,3342],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes-spring-2025","category-furman-magazine","category-spring-2025"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37473"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37728,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37473\/revisions\/37728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}