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South Carolina's Dawn Staley seems to disagree with the lack of enforcement of the NCAA's non-jewelry policy. According to her, the ruling body didn't do a good enough job during the regular season of enforcing it.
The NCAA doesn't allow the use of jewelry by players during college basketball games, due to safety concerns of about what might happen during collisions on the court. However, the ruling body took a laissez-faire approach to the situation during the regular season.
Staley expressed her bewilderment at the inconsistency of the rule's enforcement after Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo was forced to have a piercing removed mid-game.
Here's what the coach said when asked about the incident that befell the Fighting Irish:
“I wasn’t alerted to anything, but, obviously, our players are into social media. They saw what took place. It’s strange... I guess the NCAA didn’t have the stamina to do it during the regular season, so they’ve got enough to do it now, you’ve got to adhere to the rules of real-time, and if it cramps the player’s style, you shouldn’t have been wearing it in the first place."
She also expressed that she and her coaching staff fought the use of jewelry by the players in any setting during the opening months of the season. However, she no longer has the stamina to fight it and now leaves it to the authorities to act on it.
What incident was South Carolina's Dawn Staley referring to? What happened to Hannah Hidalgo?
During the Fighting Irish's defeat to the Oregon State Beavers in the Sweet 16 65-70, Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo was forced to remove a nose-piercing mid-game. According to the player, she was told before the game that she could play with the piece of jewelry as long as she covered it. She played with a piece of tape over for much of the season.
Here's what Hidalgo told ESPN about the incident after the game:
"I thought it was B.S., because I'm on a run, I'm on a roll, I scored two baskets and then having to sit out for all that time, I was starting to get cold. I think [the officials] were worried about the wrong things. They should have reffed the game."
She gave a similar statement to USA Today.
