Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
A cardinal – as it often has the past couple of years – will likely be chirping outside the window of her office in the Wright State Pavilion today.
For Katrina Merriweather, the head coach of the Wright State women’s basketball team, the melodious redbird represents more than just splash of brilliant color on another gray winter day, it’s a sign that the bright times finally define her again.
Today, Merriweather almost certainly will be named the Horizon League Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year.
Her 24-6 team is the regular season league champion — it’s the first time in school history the Raiders have won the title outright — and it’s the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, which begins tonight with WSU’s first-round game against No. 8 seed Oakland at the Nutter Center. The winner will advance to the semifinals next Monday at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
If put to words the cardinal’s song of celebration would say: “I knew you could do it.”
Merriweather has long thought the cardinal is a reincarnation her great grandmother, Pearl Posey – her beloved Nana as she calls her – the woman who raised her early on.
“We lived with her until she passed when I was nine,” Merriweather said. “I slept with her. I watched The Price is Right with her. She was the one who braided my hair. I spent a lot of time with her.”
Although Nana died 30 years ago, she remains the embodiment of the family mantra used to raise Merriweather: “It takes a village.”
Today, Merriweather has been able to further establish WSU women’s basketball as one of the best mid-major programs in the nation thanks to the support of another “village” that includes her mentor, former Raiders coach Mike Bradbury, WSU athletics director Bob Grant, who took a chance on her when some other administrators would not and, of course, her own assistant coaches and players.
After a four-year exile from college basketball, Merriweather joined Bradbury when he took over the WSU program in 2010. Over the next six seasons, the Raiders would win 128 games and get five postseason bids, including the program’s only NCAA Tournament invite in 2014.
When Bradbury left for New Mexico in 2016, Merriweather was chosen to replace him.
Her teams have now won 72 games in three seasons, gotten two WNIT bids and will get another postseason chance once the Horizon League Tournament is over.
After the Raiders finished the regular season with a victory over this same Oakland team last Saturday in Rochester, Mich., Merriweather admitted she was in tears in the dressing room:
“I was just really emotional because of everything that has happened.”
It wasn’t that long ago that the internet trolls were beating up on her.
One jibe she said she still remembers: “It said, ‘She’s got a better chance of being a samurai ninja warrior than a Division I coach again.’”
