How an NBA player turned referee created a new HBCU basketball tournament

For Haywoode Workman, the idea began forming in his mind when listening to his fellow referees.

“In my experience transitioning from playing to being an NBA official, I didn’t see HBCUs at the Maui Invitational,” Workman said by phone this week.

Workman, now 59, was a grinder, both as a point guard who played for five teams in eight seasons from 1989 to 2000 and as an NBA referee for 13 seasons. He was one of just a handful of former players — Leon Wood, the 10th pick of the 1984 NBA Draft, and Bernie Fryer, who played parts of two NBA seasons in the 1970s, also did so — to cross over into officiating. Among his most memorable moments as a ref was working Kobe Bryant’s last game.

But as his next act began, Workman wanted to be more intentional in helping out historically Black colleges and universities.

He played basketball and football for one season at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina before transferring to Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. But he was profoundly impacted by his year at Winston-Salem.

“I’m coming in contact with a lot of college referees, and they talked about college ball,” he said. “But when you look at the things that were being offered for the PWIs (predominantly White institutions), there just wasn’t (a premier tournament) for the HBCUs. Once I got off the court, I said that’s what I’m going to do. I didn’t know how; I knew I needed to put a team together.

“But that’s what my vision was: to do an exclusive HBCU basketball tournament at the same level as the Maui Invitational.”

The vision of Workman and his wife, Monique Rocchild, will come to fruition this weekend with the inaugural HBCU Hoops Invitational, which will be held at the State Farm Field House located at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort starting Friday. Eight schools, in men’s and women’s divisions, will take part, including all four HBCU institutions in the state of Florida: Florida A&M University, Bethune-Cookman University, Florida Memorial University and Edward Waters University. Tuskegee University, Hampton University, Livingstone College and Barber-Scotia College are also in the bracket. Semifinal games will take place Friday, and the third-place and championship games will be played Saturday.

The winning men’s head coach will receive the Clarence “Big House” Gaines Award, named after the legendary, Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who coached for more than four decades at Winston-Salem. Gaines won 828 games in 47 seasons there and coached the likes of Earl Monroe and Cleo Hill. His 1967 team became the first HBCU team to win an NCAA national championship, capturing the Division II title.

The winning women’s head coach will receive the Vivian Stringer Award, named after the Hall of Fame coach whose storied career, which spanned 50 seasons, began at Cheney State University in 1972. Stringer, who went on to coach at Iowa and Rutgers, is fourth all-time in women’s college coaching history in victories with 1,055. She also was the first Black head coach, male or female, to win more than 1,000 college games.

The NBA has centered HBCUs during its All-Star Weekend since 2022 with its NBA HBCU Classic. Hampton and North Carolina A&T State University are scheduled to play Feb. 13 in Los Angeles, the Friday before Sunday’s All-Star Game.

And just as with the NBA’s HBCU activations, the games at State Farm Field House are the tentpole event for the weekend’s underpinnings: providing both the student-athletes taking part in the tournament and other students in the Orlando area opportunities to network and meet business professionals who can help them when they’re done with college. A job fair will run concurrently with the games, along with an Honors and Recognition Presidents’ reception, as well as a symposium specifically for the players, concentrating on financial literacy and wellness, physical and mental health and wellness, providing them a blueprint for their post-playing careers.

Hall of Fame center Alonzo Mourning will receive the inaugural Dr. Robert “Bob” Lee Billingslea Legacy Award for Business and Community Impact. Billingslea, who died in 2017, was a longtime executive at Disney who was instrumental in leading the company’s efforts to increase its diversity and outreach to the local community. He also became a longtime trustee at Bethune-Cookman.

The hashtag for the weekend’s events, reflecting a 360-degree view of Black students’ academic potential — whether they play sports or not — as they enter the pipeline to college is #SeeWhatWeSee.

“It was important to us to make sure that we included the youth as well, middle and high school students, to expose them not only to basketball, because they already know basketball,” Rocchild said. “We were quite surprised that there were many within our community that didn’t really know about HBCUs. Maybe (they) had a small awareness. Some of them actually didn’t have an awareness about HBCUs, which shocked us.

“(We want to) expose students not only to basketball, and what it could do for you and careers, but to expose them to HBCUs, expose them to other partners within the workforce and throughout the community.”

The event’s board and advisory council is looking to raise $180,000, toward its stretch goal of $250,000, before the end of the calendar year. That money will not only help with the weekend’s activities, but assist up to 1,500 students looking to attend the tournament and job fair that don’t have the financial means to attend.

Making sure Florida’s four HBCUs were a part of the inaugural event was important. In particular, getting Florida A&M, with its large alumni base in the Orlando area and throughout the state, was desired.

“Haywoode, we competed against each other, and I’ve been knowing him for a while,” said Charlie Ward, the 1993 Heisman Trophy winner at Florida State and longtime NBA guard, mostly for the New York Knicks, who’s in his first season as head coach of Florida A&M.

“He and his wife reached out and had this idea, and they wanted to include FAMU as one of the HBCUs for the invitational. “So, this is the first year for them and me, and knowing Haywoode, we just made it happen when it came down to it. We had to continue to work to get what we needed, but the experience for us, being in the tournament and our brand, FAMU’s brand in Orlando, is well received.

“We have quite a few alums down there, so it’ll be a good experience for our school, our players, to be in that environment and being in a tournament. It’s getting us prepared for developing those habits once we can get to the SWAC Tournament, and the goal is to win the tournament. We’re looking forward to that opportunity.”

The off-court activities at the Invitational aren’t designed to crush the hoop dreams of the players, but to provide them with additional information about alternatives.

“We’re not saying you won’t play professional basketball, but the odds are that you will not,” said Anthony Stepney, the tournament’s chief development officer. “What’s so important is that we help students as well as employers understand the power of the skill set and the leadership qualities that you develop being an athlete, and how you can transfer them into entrepreneurship, into corporate space, into the military, in trades.

“I’m in tech. We’re really, really focusing on technology and helping young people understand that technology is everything. No matter what area you decide to go into … technology is a very real aspect of it, now and especially into the future. Not just being a coder, but understanding what it means to be an engineer.”

Each school will get an allotment of tickets for the weekend, with local community groups like the Boys & Girls Clubs, fraternities and sororities receiving invitations to attend. A local YMCA, Stepney said, might spend $6,000 or more to send their student members to a similarly sized job fair or symposium.

“Our program is holistic in its approach,” Ward said. “Any opportunity we have to do something off the court that’s going to help benefit our young men, and even coaches, build relationships, understand what’s next for them, that’s our goal. This is right down our alley when it comes to the symposiums, being able to gain some information. But more importantly, build relationships with people that can potentially help us — not just talking about FAMU, but help us individually, grow our brand, whatever our brand is.

“We’re just excited about those opportunities. Not everyone’s going to go and play professional basketball, regardless of wherever that professional basketball is, but we’re going to be pro in something after we graduate.”

Workman’s experiences on the court, whether orchestrating an offense or blowing his whistle against a defense, gave him a unique viewpoint on the game. He learned how a team came together in a locker room and where fans should evacuate from an arena if something catastrophic happened during a game.

He is hoping the Invitational and the weekend’s events will provide that kind of detailed knowledge about all the different opportunities around the game to others.

“It’s always been in my soul to give back to HBCUs, but also give back to basketball, which has been so generous and kind to me,” Workman said. “I know there are a lot of up-and-coming Haywoode Workmans out there. How can I reach the masses? I think (it’s by) getting their attention by something that we can all relate to, basketball … to help them get over their speed bumps and hurdles to help them out.

“The information I have is not for me to keep, so I want to pass it on.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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