South Carolina campus erupts as Gameco*cks seal third women's basketball championship (2024)

COLUMBIA— It's starting to become a familiar scene on South Carolina's campus.

Sneakers strewn across the sidewalk. Sandstorm blasting from portable speakers. And students, joyful and partly undressed, storming into the Thomas Cooper Library's fountain, celebrating a women's basketball national championship.

As they did in 2017 and 2022, students packed the fountain's edge in the game's waning moments,counting down the last few seconds separating Dawn Staley's Gameco*cks from their second national title in three years.

And when the crowning final buzzer sounded 600 miles away in Cleveland, the crowd's roar was enough to convince anyone still hesitant about women's basketball's impact on campus.

"I go to a women's basketball school, and I am proud to say that," Nick Dirkman, a USC junior, said— fresh from a dip in the fountain.

The rest of the capital city will get a chance to celebrate with another championship parade, Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann confirmed in an April 7 Instagram post congratulating the team.

"Thanks to them, we have a parade returning to Main Street," he wrote. "Let's welcome them home to celebrate their undefeated season and National Championship title together!"

Blocks away from the soaking wet crowd on campus, a USC flag was already flying from the top of the Statehouse, as congratulations steamed in online from USC icons like country music star Darius Rucker, USC football coach Shane Beamer and even Pres. Joe Biden, who tweeted his congratulations to the team on X, the app formerly known as Twitter.

"Congratulations to @Gameco*ckWBB on closing out a perfect season with a NCAA Women's Basketball Championship win – your teamwork, focus, and tenacity was on full display all year," the president wrote in a tweet. "You've made your school and community proud."

For some of the students storming the fountain, seeing such passion surrounding a women's team made the win "a little bit close to home," as sophom*ore USC student Sam Lyons said.

"I've been a Gameco*ck since I was a baby, and I finally got to go to my dream school, and to see the girls win? I'm so proud of them," she said.

Different forms of celebration were anywhere one could look across campus.

One student in a rooster hat rallied atop a friend's shoulders under the fountain's spray, as GAME-co*ck and U-S-C chants rang out.

Students slid down the walls surrounding the fountain, some more gracefully than others, as a few haphazardly cannonballed into the shallow water.

Still-barefoot students tip-toed across the street as they headed to celebrate elsewhere, and babies and dogs accompanied their parents into the fray while more and more fans arrived to witness the spectacle.

And while the Empire State Building in New York City might be lit up in garnet and black to celebrate the win, as it announced on Twitter, there's little doubt that the beating heart of USC women's basketball is in the middle of that fray, right on campus.

"It's the biggest thing on campus right now, it'll be the biggest thing in a week, two weeks, three weeks, might carry into the summer," soaking wet freshman Patrick Champion said. "It's great to be a Gameco*ck."