Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks are worth following around the world. Just ask this superfan

Dr. Charlotte Lindler-Ellis is not afraid to say it: “It’s fun to watch winners. Let’s face it. When you don’t have a ton of winning games, you don’t feel much like attending.”

When Lindler-Ellis was a student at the University of South Carolina over 50 years ago, that winning atmosphere is what enticed her to Gamecock men’s basketball games. Though she can’t recall the exact year she graduated from USC — she knows it was in the early 1970s — she can rattle off the names of legendary coach Frank McGuire and Gamecock greats such as John Roche, John Ribock, Tom Riker and Tom Owens, just like she saw them play yesterday. The women’s squads of old, not so much.

That changed when Dawn Staley came to Columbia in 2008.

South Carolina pre- and post-Staley is “like night and day,” Lindler-Ellis said. She is quick to gush over the head coach, now in her 16th year at the helm. And understandably so. Lindler-Ellis has had an up-close seat — about eight to 10 rows behind the commentators at Colonial Life Arena — to Staley’s revolutionary tenure.

Now, she’s in Paris for the Gamecocks 2023-24 season opener at Halle Georges Carpentier Arena against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The arena will be at 3,500 capacity and is sold out for Monday’s game. Though an exact total isn’t available, South Carolina is expecting at least a few hundred of its fans to make the transatlantic trip to cheer on the Gamecocks.

In Lindler-Ellis’ case, she’s reflecting on a half-century of South Carolina basketball fandom.

“I did not ever think that we would do such a thing,” Lindler-Ellis said of the Paris game. “And I don’t think that a lot of people did.”

‘This young lady is gonna make us proud.’

Lindler-Ellis remembers when South Carolina women’s basketball didn’t lead the league in attendance every year. In fact, Colonial Life Arena felt pretty empty back then.

Then Staley’s hire created a buzz around the program unlike anything it had experienced before. She only needed two years to lead the team to a postseason berth and is now a two-time national champion coach. The more she won on the court, the more support she won from the community.

“It’s better to go out with a W than to go out with an L,” Lindler-Ellis said, summing up South Carolina’s meteoric rise.

USC women’s basketball has averaged over 10,000 fans per home game every year since the 2014-15 season (not including 2020-21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Tickets are in such high demand that the team is campaigning to sell 16,000 season tickets for 2023-24 in honor of Staley’s 16th season.

Lindler-Ellis, now a retired pediatrician, was stuck at work the first time her husband the Rev. Dr. Edgar Ellis met Staley. Ellis attended a booster club meeting in 2008 where folks heard from the new coach and picked their seats in the arena for the following season. Lindler-Ellis and her husband had already thought highly of Staley because of her role as United States flag bearer for the 2004 Olympics, her professional basketball career and her coaching success at Temple.

But after that meeting, Ellis felt incredibly sure of Staley.

“He said, ‘This young lady is gonna make us proud being our coach,’ ” Linder-Ellis remembered. “…I don’t know how he knew that.”

Ten years later, Lindler-Ellis and her husband sat in a vibrant Colonial Life Arena for South Carolina’s first national championship ring ceremony.

“I tell ya, I had a bright husband,” she said.

Women helping women

Lindler-Ellis feels a certain kinship with Staley.

The USC alumna graduated in the early 1970s with a bachelor’s degree in biology (minoring in chemistry) and a 3.68 GPA. She then spent four years at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she was one of six women (two of whom were Black) in her 165-person class. After a three-year residency in Mobile, Alabama, Lindler-Ellis returned to Columbia in 1979, where she took a job as a pediatric doctor working alongside three male physicians for 32 years.

She, like Staley, knows what it’s like to break into a male-dominated field. She, like Staley, feels that accomplishment demands she give back. That’s how Lindler-Ellis discovered South Carolina’s women’s basketball enhancement fund.

Before her husband died in July of 2020, he told her he wanted to give back to the schools that helped launch his career. After he passed, Lindler-Ellis decided she would take up the task and reached out to USC. She decided to donate to the basketball enhancement fund, meant to address the following program needs (per its website): locker room enhancements, yearly branding, in-game campaigns, official visits and — most importantly to Lindler-Ellis — professional development.

“I really felt like it was important for me to help young people that really were interested in making careers,” Lindler-Ellis said, “especially the ladies. Because I’m a lady.”

Staley has also made a point of using her success to impact others in and outside of women’s sports.

She fought for her historic seven-year, $22.4 million contract extension in order to set a benchmark for investing in women’s sports that other schools would have to follow (and have, in the case of Kim Mulkey’s new 10-year, $36 million extension at LSU). She cut up and mailed pieces of South Carolina’s 2017 NCAA championship net to every Black woman head coach in the country two years ago. And her charity Innersole provides new sneakers for children in need.

“She really cares about her team, but also cares about her audience, the fans,” Lindler-Ellis said. “Which, by the way, they call them ‘FAMS.’ F-A-M-S is her pet name for us folks that follow women’s basketball at Carolina.”

‘Is this really happening?’

If anyone could make a women’s college basketball game in Paris happen, it’s Staley, Lindler-Ellis said. And she can’t wait for tipoff.

“I think it’s just gonna be incredible,” Lindler-Ellis said.

“My response was, ‘Yes,’ as soon as I heard it.”

Lindler-Ellis’ initial reaction was to reflect on how innovative the whole idea of the event was. What a precedent this game will set, she thought, for women’s basketball and women’s sports at-large. Two elite programs with passionate fan bases taking the game worldwide.

How exciting.

Halle Georges Carpentier Arena, which will have 3,500 seats for the game, is sold out. About half the tickets were reserved for local Parisian fans, while the other half were made available to Gamecocks and Fighting Irish fans, according to event organizer Complete Sports Management. Tickets were sold from the venue, according to a South Carolina spokesperson, which doesn’t track attendee fandom. But USC requested around 300 to accommodate player guests and VIP Hospitality packages.

“What our fans have created is something truly special,” Staley said. “I think it’s really a great dynamic. It’s probably an untold story about the rise of our program and how they’ve inserted themselves in helping us grow.”

This is Lindler-Ellis’ first time in Paris. She traveled with a couple friends who’ve frequented South Carolina athletics events together over the years. They packed lots of Gamecocks gear.

“I think it’s just gonna be incredible,” Lindler-Ellis said. “I just cannot even imagine going to a country I’ve never been to and experiencing (a USC women’s basketball game) in a smaller gym or arena. It’s a ‘pinch me’ moment. Is this really happening?”