'You Have to Stand Up,' Says Stringer

March 5, 2008 -- It was almost a year ago when Vivian Stringer and her Rutgers women's basketball team were playing against powerhouse Tennessee in the women's NCAA finals — a game that would later grab headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The team's incredible story was overshadowed by racially charged comments by shock jock Don Imus, who used what many would consider a racist and sexist slur while discussing the team.

Those racially charged comments forever changed the lives of a group of young players and of Stringer, one of the game's finest coaches.

Stringer heard about Imus' comments on the way back from a ceremony where her team was being honored.

"I really didn't, even then, fully appreciate the magnitude of what was being said, until I could say it over in my mind," Stringer remembered.

Stringer, who is famous for both her calm reserve and her ability to be a no-nonsense disciplinarian, didn't feel ready until now to discuss in detail what really happened between her team and Imus after last year's playoff game. Stringer said that after she grasped the magnitude of what Imus had said, she immediately thought, "How do I protect these young women who will hear this?"

The team was young — five of them freshman — and overwhelmed and hurt by what had happened. In a way, Stringer had been preparing for this all her life. She was the first black student to try out for the cheerleading squad in her high school in a coal mining town in western Pennsylvania.

"I really was gifted when it came to flips and all these other things with gymnastics, I was really gifted," Stringer said. "So I did my back flips and my round offs. And so, when they called later that day to say who the players was or the young people were that made the squad, my name wasn't called."

Stringer said she was not the type of person that ever "wanted to cause any kind of friction," and so she thought maybe she just needed to fine-tune her techniques.