I Wanted To Be A Soldier | By Caster Semenya

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur autventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.

Share this article

John Smith

"Add in a really fun quote here with a great fact or entertaining insight or data point! "

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantiuitatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur autventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo lorem ipsemu.

Lorem tore v eri tatis et quasi archi te cto be.

John Smith

"Add in a really fun quote here with a great fact or entertaining insight or data point! "

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur autventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explic abo lorem ipsemu.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantiuitatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia volupae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voltas sit aspernatur autventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo lorem ipsemu.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantiuitatis et ae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia volenim ipsam ae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia vol quia voluptas sit aspernatur autventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo lorem ipsemu.

Lorem tore v eri tatis et quasi archi te cto be.

Not a lot of young girls dream of being soldiers where I’m from. We have great pride in South Africa, but the army is not a job for a girl. I grew up in the bush with my siblings. We were all good kids but I was a bit of a troublemaker. I played soccer every day. There was not a girls club so I played with the boys. They thought I was very good so they let me play. My mother was a teacher and took care of me and my siblings. She was at home most of the time. My dad worked in Victoria and only came home once a month. I was close to both of them. They both raised me with respect and taught me about respect — how to let people be who they want to be. My parents told me that I could do anything. When I was 12, I started running. I was very good at it. It made me happy. I never thought about money — about running as a job — because, to me, I didn’t want to confuse why I ran. You see? At the end of the day, I run because I love to run.

Caster Semenya

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consect etur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incid lorems esa.

I Wanted To Be A Soldier

Lorem ipsum folour sit

Track & Field

I Wanted To Be A Soldier

BY Caster Semenya

Here’s the deal. This thing happened when I was 12 years old that changed my whole life. And I still don’t like to talk about it, because it’s still pretty raw to me, even today. See, basketball wasn’t my first love. I mean, I liked it. My big Christmas present when I was six years old was this triple-pack set with a basketball, soccer ball, and a football. And they were GLOW-IN-THE-DARK. I used to always be out in the street late-night with all my friends and cousins, shooting this glow’d-up basketball into a milkcrate that we’d nailed to a light pole. Good times. But soccer was really my thing. I was actually on the Bahamian youth national team. I was good, and I would let you know about it!

One day I will tell my grandchildren about my life. I will tell them about my childhood. About who I was. I will tell them that their grandmother was the best runner in the world. I will tell them about how I felt when I lost a race for the first time. I will tell them that family is most important. About how the rest of the world is nothing. Family is everything. I will teach them about respect. And to know yourself. And that the rest of the world won’t always believe you. I wanted to be a soldier. And I am in some ways now — fighting for fairness. Fighting for gender rights. This is a job for a girl. But as a real soldier, when you leave, you may never come home. Every day I come home to my wife’s beautiful smile. I wanted to represent my country. I do that every time I run. I am Caster Semenya, the girl from the South African bush who is the best runner in the world. I wanted to be a hero. I cannot be a hero yet because I am not done.

That, right there, is why I’m writing this. I only got the chance to become the goalie I was because I had to play with the boys — there wasn’t an option elsewhere. There was a girl’s hockey team in Wisconsin, where I grew up, but it wasn’t the level I wanted to play at. Year after year I proved I could hang with the boys, and they respected me and treated me like their sister (I actually played with my younger brother, Chase, as a U18), so I never felt the need to switch over. Even when I had coaches and parents from other teams telling me it was time to play with my own gender.

PHOTO BY:

Lauren Mulligan/The Players' Tribune

And these weren’t form letters, either. Or emails. Each one was individualized, and super detailed. I referenced specific things about each team, and I sent those things out in the mail. With stamps. The whole deal. I don’t know what I was thinking would come of it, but I was just so passionate about wanting to get into coaching. I figured it couldn’t hurt to take my shot and just be direct. After a few days, something incredible started happening. I’d getback from practice to my little PO Box at Brown, and there’d be all these response letters. I get emotional to this day just thinking about how the coaching community around the country responded to me back then with so much support and encouragement. Tara VanDerveer wrote back to me. Pat Summitt. I mean, can you imagine? There weren’t many jobs to go around, but in all the letters these amazing coaches just kept stressing that I had a bright future. So many of them were like, “The women’s game needs someone like you. Keep working toward your goal!” It was totally inspiring. Then, just before graduation, I landed an interview for an assistant coaching job at Syracuse, and the head coach there at the time told me that my letter was what got me in the door. “I couldn’t not call you after reading that thing.” I got the job, and I literally started coaching the day after I graduated from college. And I’ve been a coach every single day since.

A few years back I met with Commissioner Silver in New York to talk about women in the NBA, and how things might be advancing in the near future. It was clear he was ready to help push the league forward even back then — before any female coaches were in the League. He saw value in what women would bring, if given the opportunities. But I wasn’t quite sure how, if, or when that might affect me. So when I got word back in the spring that Koby Altman, the Cavs GM, wanted to talk with me, I made no assumptions about what he wanted to discuss. He’d recently hired Coach Beilein to lead the team. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But right off the bat, his level of discourse went far beyond most of the general conversations I’d had with people about women coaching in the league, and diversity, and just all the hypothetical stuff about what it might look like for more women to be in positions of power in men’s pro sports. Before I knew it, the conversation shifted from the abstract and became direct. I’m paraphrasing to some extent, but here’s the gist of what he said: “We want to do something different here. We’re going to build this new-look Cavs team with a strong culture as the foundation. We’ll have to differentiate ourselves through player development and being innovative, and by truly creating the team and organization that we want, with the right people, starting with Coach Beilein and his staff.” Then came the part that I wasn’t expecting … the most amazing part. “I’ve studied your background. I know exactly what you’ve done, and we think you can help our staff. We want you to think about joining us.” Wow. In that moment, my life changed. It was a dream come true. But it wasn’t just a dream, it was real life. That meant I had to factor in the realities of life as a working mom. So I talked with Koby and Coach Beilein about things that maybe they hadn’t talked about at the office before. Sure, the hoops chatter flowed easily. But I brought up other stuff, too. I wanted to be clear about what hiring me meant. I told them, “I am going to need to be there for my son in ways that are different from what you’re used to.”

I wasn’t hunting for a new job when the Cavs got in touch. I loved being at Cal, and the bonds and relationships I created with the student-athletes there are something that I will appreciate and maintain for as long as I live. Those players and coaches and everyone else I worked with at Berkeley … they’ll always be family. That brings us back to the original question: If I wasn’t looking for it, how did it happen? And more importantly, why? Why now, why the NBA, why this job? There are a couple big reasons. But let me start out with this one. Random fact about me: I’m kind of an information geek. Numbers, names, stats … I retain a lot of stuff. I embrace the “nerd” in me. So, yeah, I was aware of the number 5. Acutely aware. Five women in coaching roles in the NBA last season. And yet, I still thought that someday I might coach in the NBA. Not because I’m crazy, or cocky, or unrealistic. But because nobody told me that I couldn’t. Options. In fact, there were a few people in the game that I knew and respected who said I could. It’s important to have people in your life like that: the ones who will tell you what you are capable of. My parents. My college teammates. Even, believe it or not, Adam Silver.

Caster Semenya

Track & Field

NFL

NBA

WNBA

Hockey

Soccer

Baseball

Other Sports

Videos

Features

Power Has No Gender

Knuckleheads With Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles

Letter to My Younger Self

Mental Health

Photography

Join Our Newsletter

SEP 27 2019

Opting out means not just believing in ourselves, but going one step further: betting on ourselves.

This is the story of the greatest night of my entire life.

People in football love to talk about mental strength. Well, I’m the strongest dude you’re ever going to meet.

About

The Players' Shop

Athlete Application

Careers

Privacy

Terms

Join Our Newsletter

About

The Players' Shop

Athlete Application

Careers

Privacy

Terms

Application

By Caster Semenya

SEP 27 2019

hen I was a little girl, I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to protect my country. I wanted to represent my country. I wanted to be a hero.

When I was older, in 2009, I got an opportunity to represent my country. I was 18 and it was my first professional race — the 800 meters in Berlin. It was the IAAF World Championships. I won the gold. My first professional race and I won gold. I was the best in the world. But people did not celebrate that. That is not what they said about me. They said that I was a man. That I had an advantage. That my testosterone was too high. They did not say that I was the first black South African woman to win gold at the world championships. They did not say that I was the best. They did not see me as an 18-year-old woman. They did not see me as a young girl from the bush who was the best in the world. They did not see me as human at all. They saw me as science. They wanted to test my body. But you know what I do? I ignore all of them. I do not read such things. I do not hear them.

There are two types of people in this world. There are polite people — people who respect people. People who let people be who they are, who they want to be. My parents are polite people. My family are polite people. I am polite. I respect you when you tell me who you are and I see who you are. And then there are the other people. People who are threatened by greatness. People who are insecure or have to criticize other people for who they are. Those are the people I ignore. They do not exist. I shut them out. I have had to ignore a lot of people in my life and, now, for 10 years as a runner. They have tested my body. They have tried to make me change my body, to take medicine to lower my testosterone. I do not want to change my body. I do not know what effects that medicine will have on my body for the rest of my life. I know the reason for this is because I am great. If I had high testosterone and wasn’t winning would they even care at all? I know it is a way to have control. We in South Africa know about control. We know about domination and power. I am not like the other runners. That is a threat. There have been rules in place that allowed me to run until now. Now the president of the IAAF wants to change those rules. It is bull. I know they — those in power — have daughters. I know some of them have wives. They have children. At the end of the day, they go home and do not do this to their kids. They believe their children or wife when they say who they are. But they want to change my body? To put me through shameful tests when I tell them who I am? I am someone’s child. I am someone’s daughter. I am also someone’s wife. You would not do that to them. But you do it to me. I know who I am. I know I am the greatest runner in the world. I know what it means for me, as a woman, to be the best, though. I know I inspire young girls. If a young girl comes to me on the street and asks me, “Caster, what should I do with my life?” I tell her, “Young girl, what do you see? What do you want? What makes you happy? At the end of the day, that’s what you should do.” What we see and what we want is who we are. I would say the same thing to young boys. They can do anything. They can be happy. At the end of the day, whoever they say they want to be is who they can be.

The moment I woke up, it hit me. Like, Wow, This is for real! We’re drafting tonight. This is my job. I’m an NBA coach now. But then things took, well … let’s call it an unexpected turn. And before I knew it, I found myself right in the middle of an unforgettable story. After putting in some work at our practice facility with Coach Beilein, associate head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, and assistant coaches Antonio Lang and Dan Geriot, it was time to head over to our draft war room at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse downtown. We make the drive, walk up to the arena, head toward the entrance, and… We can’t get in. For real. I’m not making this up. None of the doors will open. When we finally get to an entrance that seems promising, there’s a woman sitting at a booth who, I mean … clearly this was her spot. She was in charge. After a stare down, she says, finally: “Do you guys have I.D.?” Now, of course she doesn’t know who I am. Why would she? But she doesn’t recognize any one of us. Time is ticking, and we have an early pick. Coach Beilein offers his name, along with a little smile. Then it really becomes like something straight out of an SNL skit. She’s like, “Who?” And Coach … he’s just so patient and unassuming. “Beilein” he says. “John Beilein.” But it’s still not registering, so after a pause, he adds on quietly, super humbly, almost like it’s an afterthought, “I’m the head coach of the team.” He hands her his I.D., and this woman, God bless her, she’s still not totally convinced. She says she’s gonna have to call over and talk to so and so, adding, “I need to make sure.” “Of course,” Coach says, smiling. “Yes. I completely understand.” Eventually … we did get in, and drafted Darius Garland, Dylan Windler and Kevin Porter Jr. We all just laughed about it at the time. All’s well that ends well, right? But the more I think about that story, the more I realize that it really epitomizes the type of person Coach Beilein is — kind, humble, thoughtful, patient – exactly the type of leader that I want to be around. In some ways, I feel like that whole thing — as harried and silly as it may have been — was the perfect way to receive affirmation, in real time, that I made the right call to join forces with someone like Coach.

It was the morning of the NBA draft, and I’d just been hired by the Cavs a week earlier.

Lauren Mulligan/The Players' Tribune

Fernanda Pesce Blazquez/The Players' Tribune

Lauren Mulligan/The Players' Tribune

Fernanda Pesce Blazquez/The Players' Tribune

Lauren Mulligan/The Players' Tribune

Fernanda Pesce Blazquez/The Players' Tribune

“I know who I am. I know I am the greatest runner in the world.”

Caster Semenya