The Loyola Project Film Screening

The diversity of athletes within the United States and at the University of Florida is not a point of pride.

Benny Vaughn had firsthand experience with the discrimination faced by non-white athletes within Florida Gator programs: he was one of the first ten black athletes at UF in 1969.

Competing against white athletes was unheard of for Vaughn and his track team before considering college. Discrimination was constant; Vaughn had to be driven separately by his track coach to practice with white athletes, whom he regularly outperformed.

The Loyola Project is a film that centers around similar experiences of the 1963 Loyola-Chicago Ramblers. This team was racially integrated at the height of the US civil rights movement which created a mass of controversy around the team, school, players, and supporters.

Lucas Williamson, a film student and basketball player at the University of Loyola-Chicago, created his senior project to analyze the stigma surrounding the 1963 National Champions. Williamson’s intentions were for The Loyola Project to become “an easy way to ease into these harder conversations that we have to have as a society, as a nation.”

Dr. Michael Sagas, Director of the Institute for Coaching Excellence, brought the film to the Harn Museum on UF’s campus to begin this discussion.

40 viewers joined in The Loyola Project’s debut at the University of Florida and witnessed a panel of three former and current UF athletes: Yanis David, a National Champion Track & Field Athlete, Tre Orr, a former UF football player and current UF student-athlete advisor, and Benny Vaughn, one of the first black athletes at the UF in the 1960s.

Panelists analyzed the changes in racial acceptance throughout multiple generations and reflected upon similar and differing experiences to members of the 1963 Ramblers Team. Dr. Christine Wegner of the Department of Sport Management moderated the discussion between these esteemed Gator Alumni.

Although panelists and Dr. Wegner agreed that racial discrimination has decreased in the 60 years since the team of the film played collegiate basketball, there is still undoubtedly a need for continued analysis within the field of sport diversity, equity, and inclusion.