Aces striker and South Carolina legend A’ja Wilson was honored with a statue outside the Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, SC on Monday.
Wilson’s statue opened on January 14, just under four years after she took South Carolina to the 2017 national championship.
“A’ja Wilson’s achievements, on and off the basketball court, make this statue so deserving,” South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner said in a statement. “She is an excellent representative of Gamecock Athletics and our university. I am very happy that we can celebrate her in this way. Thank you to everyone who helped to do this, including our large donors.”
Wilson is one of the most decorated college basketball players of the 2010s. She has won three SEC regular season titles in four years with the Gamecocks, reaching the Final Four twice. Wilson was also three times an All-American in South Carolina, as well as the National Player of the Year consensus in 2018. But it wasn’t just Wilson’s achievements on the court that led to the creation of the statue.
The Hopkins native, SC, emerged as one of the WNBA’s leading voices in the fight against racial injustice and police brutality last year. Wilson is a founding member of the league’s social justice council, which serves to “address this country’s long history of inequality, implicit prejudice and systemic racism that targets black and brown communities”.
Wilson spoke to the media today after the statue ceremony, noting the honor of hosting the event on the day of Martin Luther King Jr.
“Change doesn’t happen overnight,” said Wilson, “but you want to be part of something that plants seeds so that, later on, black girls can come back here and look at that statue and say, ‘wow, she was here. But at the same time she was in her community too. ‘And I think that’s the beauty of it all and I’m taking it all with grace, hopefully. “
“It really is a blessing, and falling for MLK Day is something really special to me.”
Wilson took his excellence in hardwood from South Carolina to the WNBA. She’s an All-Star twice in three seasons, earning MVP honors in 2020, averaging 20.5 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.