Former NCCU women’s basketball coach said she was fired over fight for equity
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- NCCU fired Trisha Stafford-Odom on Sept. 13, 2023, amid equity dispute.
- Her March 2024 lawsuit alleges disparate salaries, recruiting and budgets.
- NCCU settled the lawsuit in October 2025, agreeing to pay Stafford-Odom $100,000.
Last week, North Carolina Central University officials introduced a new women’s basketball coach, saying they hope she will help elevate the program.
But a settled lawsuit between the school and a former coach hired with similar expectations says she lost her job less than three years after pushing for equal resources for the women’s team.
Trisha Stafford-Odom coached the women’s team from 2017 until she was fired in September 2023. She now coaches for the Charlotte Crown, one of the first teams in the Upshot League, a new women’s professional basketball league whose season started Friday.
NCCU fired Stafford-Odom because she “was a zealous advocate on the NCCU campus for gender equity and because she fought to ensure that the NCCU’s women’s basketball team was properly resourced and treated on par with men’s athletics,” according to Stafford-Odom’s March 2024 lawsuit.
Stafford-Odom’s lawsuit said she constantly raised questions about disparate salaries of coaches and recruiting and operating budgets of women’s teams versus men’s teams, in “a clear violation” of federal law that requires equal access to resources for women’s sports, the lawsuit states.
Stafford-Odom said she was not the only one who paid the price, the lawsuit states. Her players were also harmed as players’ injuries lingered amid inconsistent training and conditioning support.
“Because of a lack of continuity and support by a dedicated trainer and training staff, injuries that female players should have overcome in short periods of time persisted for much longer,” the lawsuit states.
NCCU strongly denies the accusations.
In a statement, a spokesperson said the university fired Stafford-Odom for several reasons, including concerns about roster turnover, poor graduation rates, and “the safety and welfare” of student-athletes in the program.
Last fall, the school settled with the coach, agreeing to pay her $100,000, far less than the $268,750 she said she was owed under her contract, which expired in June 2025.
The settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by the university, the statement said, but reflected what officials considered the best course of action given the costs and resources required to fight the lawsuit.
“The university continues to ardently support its women’s athletic teams, including its women’s basketball team,” the statement said.
Neither Stafford-Odom nor her attorney responded to phone messages left Monday.
New NCCU basketball coach announced
The 2025 settlement came months before NCCU again turned to a new coach to lift the program.
Last week, the school named Olivia Gaines, who was let go in March from Allen University in Columbia, S.C., as the new women’s basketball head coach. She replaces Terrence Baxter, who coached the team after Stafford-Odom left.
“The university believes Coach Gaines is the right person to elevate the program and is committed to providing her with all the support she needs in order to be successful,” the statement said.
The women’s basketball team has 15 full scholarships compared to the men’s team’s 13 and maintains the same number of staff positions as the men’s basketball team, the statement said.
Stafford-Odom started at NCCU in 2017
Before coming to NCCU, Stafford-Odom coached at Concordia University in California. The former WNBA player also worked as an assistant coach with women’s basketball teams at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University.
In 2019-20, Stafford-Odom led the Lady Eagles to a new NCAA Division I program record with 13 wins — the most the team had won in 13 years — and 17 losses.
The Eagles advanced to the semifinals of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament for the first time in program history after defeating rival N.C. A&T in the quarterfinals, but they were unable to play after the coronavirus pandemic cut the season short.
In the 2022-23 season, NCCU came the closest it had come in years to a winning record, with 15 wins and 16 losses.
But by the next season, the dispute over resources had sharpened into a crisis over player housing, the lawsuit states.
In April 2023, Stafford-Odom said she gave NCCU’s athletic department a list of the team’s housing needs for the upcoming season. But when players arrived on campus in August, two athletes still did not have housing.
As Stafford-Odom sought help, the athletic department “was noncommunicative and failed to follow through on requests,” the lawsuit states.
Athletes escorted out the dorm
After Stafford-Odom emailed the vice president of student affairs on Aug. 11, Louis “Skip” Perkins issued her a written warning for insubordination 10 days later. Stafford-Odom called it retaliation for pressing the university about housing for the players.
In court documents, NCCU officials said the warning was for “failure to comply with directives related to campus housing for student athletes.”
The players without housing ended up staying with teammates in the dorm until housing could be found, the lawsuit states. On Sept. 5, a resident assistant was directed by NCCU officials to inspect the basketball players’ dorm suite and found the two players sleeping on a couch and cot, the lawsuit states NCCU officials, including campus police, removed them from the dorm around 1 a.m. on the fifth day of classes at their new campus in Durham.
“The players had no money for housing from the athletic department, had no vehicles, and they had nowhere to stay,” the lawsuit states.
The players called Stafford-Odom, who took them to her home. The next morning, NCCU staff questioned the coach and players about whether she had violated NCAA rules by giving them a place to stay, according to the lawsuit.
Stafford-Odom was fired Sept. 13. The lawsuit says the termination letter stated she was fired for cause but did not provide any supporting facts.
After Stafford-Odom left NCCU, the lawsuit says, the two players were threatened with the loss of their scholarships and penalized for communicating with their former coach.
