‘A dynamic woman’: How one Stony Brook volleyball player works for social change off court
By Kristan Bravo
Photo courtesy Stony Brook Athletics
When Nia Wattley moved from her hometown of Dallas to Long Island in 2018, a lot was new to her. Falling leaves in autumn and strange new road signs alerting her to watch out for animal crossings seemed to stick out almost immediately.
“I’ve never had to drive and be worried about am I going to hit a deer?” said Wattley, who made the 1,615-mile jump to attend Stony Brook University to play volleyball.
That wasn’t all. “The wind is wild — I hate it,” she griped.
And maybe the most relatable qualm of all: “People have no sense of personal space. I guess that’s New York in general,” she said.
As Wattley absorbed the differences between the two locations, none was as stark as the contrast in politics and race. On Long Island, she has been seen Blue Lives Matter protests and rigid segregation, which are less prevalent in “blue city” Dallas, she said.
“I thought Long Island was only white,” Wattley said. “Then I went to Wells Fargo in a Hispanic area, and I was like, ‘Whoa, I didn’t know that people other than white people lived on Long Island.’”
This served as an eye-opener for Wattley to the segregation of the neighborhoods surrounding Stony Brook’s campus. According to a 2019 study by Newsday, Long Island has 291 communities, and of those, most Black residents live in just 11.
“I came from a predominately Black and Hispanic area,” Wattley said. “Then I came to Stony Brook, which is a predominately white institution, and thought, ‘I’m out of place. This is not normal.’”
Wattley’s mother, Joi Afzal, didn’t want to shelter her daughter from the realities of another part of the country. “I encouraged her to go to school outside of Texas so that she could experience another way of life,” Afzal said.
According to Stony Brook’s fact book, the fall 2020 enrollment of both graduate and undergraduate students comprised 11,597 white students, compared to 2,349 African-American or Black students, who make up roughly 17 percent of the total student population. Wattley said the only time she saw other Black people on campus was in athletics. The Black Student-Athlete Huddle offered a different space for her to connect with her Black peers.
Formed in 2018, the BSAH promotes racial justice and serves as an outlet for those in its community. As a freshman in the fall of that year, Wattley felt the new-student pressure to get involved in campus organizations. She said her older teammates were all about the BSAH, and encouraged her to join. The group holds a meeting every other week with icebreakers: 15 to 20 attendees debate Nike versus Adidas or LeBron James versus Michael Jordan before transitioning to deeper conversations.
“We’ve talked about colorism, interracial dating, protests, [national anthem] kneeling, things like that,” Wattley said.
After two years of regular involvement, Wattley was appointed to the group’s five-member steering committee, which meets with the director of athletics, Shawn Heilbron, to discuss initiatives they would like to see in action. Wattley said although Heilbron might not understand everything they’re going through, he listens and wants to be proactive in his role.
“From a hiring standpoint, I’ve made a commitment,” Heilbron said. “I signed the collegiate coaching diversity pledge to create more opportunities for minority candidates, particularly in head coaching and senior administrator positions.”
Heilbron gushed when asked about Wattley, saying, “Nia is such a dynamic woman in our department,” and she “has found her voice and is using it to create the change we encourage.”
“Nia is an amazing example of what can happen when you find something that you’re passionate about and you give her the support and the backing to move it forward,” Heilbron said. “We want our student-athletes to be more than athletes, and reach across campus and create change.”
In October, the BSAH partnered with the campus NAACP chapter to hold a Black Lives Matter march at Stony Brook University, which was important to Wattley because she didn’t feel safe protesting in Dallas this summer.
“In my area, people were getting shot with rubber bullets and stuff, so I didn’t want to go out there and protest,” Wattley said. “But I wanted to protest. I wanted to make sure there was a safer environment, a controlled environment.”
That day, volleyball head coach Kristin Belzung held practice earlier and shortened it, so her whole team was free to attend the march. “There are some things that are just bigger than volleyball,” Belzung said. “Having the ability to stand in solidarity with our Black community was important. Anybody that wanted to be a part of that needed to have the opportunity to do so.”
The rest of Stony Brook athletics adjusted practice times as well, giving the march a turnout much greater than Wattley expected. “To ask people to voluntarily miss practice is a heavy, heavy ask,” Wattley said. “So, I’m glad coaches felt strongly about it too and wanted to make sure their players had the opportunity to attend.”
Belzung said Wattley’s increased involvement with the BSAH is a result of her growing confidence after moving so far away from her hometown. “Now she’s growing to the point where she wants to put energy into things outside of herself,” Belzung said. “That’s what you hope for in all of your student athletes.”
Growing up in Dallas, Wattley didn’t have siblings with whom she was close. She has two brothers who are 10 years older than she is. They have a different mom and didn’t grow up alongside her. Wattley’s biggest support system is her mother.
“My mom raised me. She took me everywhere. She went to my practices, stayed at my practices, and made sure I had the resources I needed to get better as a player,” Wattley said.
Afzal also provided Wattley with academic support, ensuring her daughter would be prepared for college. “If I had to sit down and spend hours and hours with her to help her understand a subject, I would,” Afzal said.
On top of reviewing homework and college essays, Afzal enrolled her daughter in SAT tutoring. Wattley said the tutoring was a luxury, knowing that many of her peers in Black and Hispanic communities didn’t have access to the same resources.
“The SAT was not created for our demographic,” Wattley said. “It was created for white men. A lot of us don’t do well on those tests because we might not have the resources to do well.”
Wattley cited this as one of many obstacles facing Black and Hispanic students as they strive to make it to college. She said her mom’s decision to pursue higher education pushed her to do the same, but many others in her demographic don’t share that experience.
“We talked about that in The Huddle one day,” Wattley said. “That was eye-opening for me because my mom has a master’s degree. So, college was my only option. It was cool to hear from the kids who didn’t have that, but were still in college and trying to figure out their way.”
In Afzal’s eyes, Wattley’s only choice was college, unless she had a solid, alternative plan in place that would allow her to be successful. “Especially being a Black woman in America, she would get more respect and recognition for having a degree than not having a degree,” Afzal said. “So, it was not an option. She was going to college.”
In February, Wattley took the inspiration her mom gave her and passed it to aspiring college athletes. Stony Brook athletics hosted high school students from DREAM, an East Harlem nonprofit that uses sports and academics to help young people in the community reach college. Wattley felt moved to speak to the group of students because she didn’t have many Black college volleyball players to look up to when she was their age.
“Especially for young Black and Hispanic kids — to see another Black or Hispanic kid doing what you want to do is very inspiring because for a lot of us — especially in volleyball — there aren’t that many Black players,” Wattley said. “There’s starting to be more, but when I was younger, there weren’t that many Black players.”
Wattley recalled highlighting academics as much as possible when she met with the students from DREAM. Full athletic scholarships are offered at the Division I level, but only a small number per school.
Wattley mentioned Cleveland Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., a former LSU star, who paid four members of LSU’s football program after the national championship game in January, noting that the program was forced to forfeit eight scholarships over the violation.
“That’s eight lives that could have been saved. People don’t even realize how much those scholarships weigh on a person’s life and a person’s success,” she said.
At the Division II level, partial athletic scholarships are awarded to student-athletes. Division III offers only academic scholarships.
“That’s why I was stressing academics to the kids. Everything is driven by your academics,” Wattley said.
After Wattley graduates from Stony Brook, she plans to stay connected to causes like DREAM so she can continue to be an inspirational figure for young members of Black and Hispanic communities.
“For the ‘Power Five’ schools and the schools that were winning national championships and things like that, there might have been one or two Black kids,” Wattley said. “If you’re not playing basketball or football, you don’t have those people to look up to and see doing well. It’s important to make sure they get that.”
