IRVINE — When I say UC Irvine senior Diaba Konaté is utterly determined to win her next game, to do everything she can to extend her beloved basketball career, you say of course she is. So are hundreds of seniors whose playing days likely will end when their teams’ NCAA Tournament runs do. What makes her any different?
Well, nothing.
But one thing.
Konaté, like so many others, has been plying her trade since she was a kid, in her case an 11-year-old in Paris who soon had a hoop dream of playing college ball.
She’s 23 now, and she’s living it, a testament to hard work and dedication. Aptitude, attitude – she’s the ray of sunshine solar-powering the No. 13-seeded Anteaters (23-8) into their first-round matchup against No. 4 Gonzaga (30-3) on the Zags’ home floor at 4:30 p.m. Saturday in Spokane, Washington.
Later this year, Konaté will go home as a Big West champion who helped lead UCI to its second NCAA Tournament appearance in program history.
UC Irvine’s Diaba Konaté cheers during a net-cutting ceremony after the Anteaters’ victory over UC Davis in the Big West Tournament championship game Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Henderson, Nevada. (Photo by Zak Krill/Getty Images)
And, yes, there is women’s basketball in France.
But not for women like her.
Oh, Konaté is good enough to continue playing. The 5-foot-7 guard is Spider-Woman on defense – the Big West’s “Best Defensive Player” this season – with a nifty grab bag of offensive tricks. She led the Big West with 115 assists. So she’d had this next part all worked out too, she said, what was to happen after college: “I came to America, I got better and then I can show my talents to my friends and family back home.”
Absolutely, the plan was to keep playing, and there’s no reason to think she wouldn’t still be in the running to make France’s 3×3 national team.
Except that she’s a Muslim woman in a hijab.
Almost time #TogetherWeZot | #RipEm pic.twitter.com/UqC6fmunk4
— UCI Women’s Basketball (@UCIwbb) March 16, 2024
A Muslim woman who chooses to cover her head in public, something she started doing in 2021 during a period of reflection during the pandemic. She realized, she said, how much comfort and love she felt when she leaned into her faith. “I just wanted to commit more,” she said, “and for me, it was by wearing the hijab.”
But then in early 2022, the French Senate voted to ban hijabs in sports competitions, insisting that “neutrality” is a requirement and stipulating that wearing “conspicuous religious symbols is prohibited.”
Liberté, egalité, fraternité. And, these days, a hotly debated emphasis on laïcité – secularism.
So in one breath, France’s sporting federations make declarations of non-discrimination, of preventing “any discrimination or attack on the dignity of a person, particularly because of their sex, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, of his social condition, his physical appearance, his beliefs …”
Their sex, huh? Beliefs, eh?
In the next breath, they’ve introduced rules like Section 9.3 of the General Sports Regulations in Basketball: “The wearing of any equipment with a religious or political connotation is strictly prohibited all players and participants in the match … during all departmental, regional and national 5×5 and 3×3 competitions. If applicable, the referee must not start the match.”
This came as a shock to Konaté – who’d just transferred from Idaho State to UC Irvine – when she showed up to play in a 3×3 tournament on June 5, 2022, in Le Pouliguen, a few hours outside of Paris.
“A few hours before the game, they told me, ‘You can’t play,’” Konaté recounted after practice Tuesday, turned sideways in a bleacher seat inside Bren Events Center to better make eye contact.
All smiles and soul, this woman on her second day of Ramadan fasting, something she’s doing along with her Muslim teammate, Sweden’s Moulayna Johnson Sidi Baba. It’s the first time they’ll be fasting while playing in the NCAA Tournament.
Diaba!!!
4Q (9:04) | UCI 52, UCSD 47#TogetherWeZot pic.twitter.com/xTHZ0FSEnS
— UCI Women’s Basketball (@UCIwbb) February 24, 2024
“I got there (to the 3×3 tournament) and it was like, ‘I’m gonna play with my friends and we’re gonna win and it’s gonna be so much fun,’” she said. “But then one of the organizers told me, ‘Hey, you can’t play with your hijab.’ And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Excuse me? Why?’”
She was told it now was policy, the law. Another of France’s public restrictions on what Muslim women can wear, which now also include bans on a loose-fitting, full-length robes called abayas, on full-body-covering bathing suits known as burkinis and on face coverings – except, contradictorily, for face coverings that were mandated during COVID. All those restrictions seeming, incorrectly and harmfully, to conflate religious dress with fundamentalism.
“You just can’t play, you have to take it off,’” Konaté was told. “And I’m like, ‘No, that’s like my T-shirt or my pants, you know? I don’t do that.’
“My first reaction? I was not understanding. And then I felt ashamed. I cried. ‘Is it going to be my whole life now, because I wear the hijab? Am I, like, done playing basketball in France?’ … lots of questions came up in my mind, and it was very humiliating. And I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t do any thing.”
What she did was call UCI coach Tamara Inoue, who cried with her on the phone and then, after learning more about the ban, wrote a letter of complaint to the French Embassy.
And recently Konaté has been speaking up about the ban. She added her name atop Amnesty International’s open letter ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris that urges the French Federation of Basketball to overturn its policy banning religious headwear. FIFA and FIBA already did in 2012 and 2017, since which time Muslim women have been able to compete internationally in hijabs designed specifically for athletes, like those Konaté has been wearing here, without issue.
The letter reads: “Enabling Muslim women and girls to participate … in sport does not threaten public safety, nor are there any reports indicating this causation. On the contrary, excluding a group of people from sports simply because of their religious beliefs and practices goes against the Olympic Charter, which affirms that access to sport is a human right.”
DIABA PUTS THE SPIN CYCLE ON THE DEFENSE
3Q (2:35) | UCI 46, LBSU 37 pic.twitter.com/LprrXyiZPc
— UCI Women’s Basketball (@UCIwbb) January 25, 2024
Access to sport has changed Konaté’s life in obvious and profound ways.
It brought her to America to play AAU ball – and experience the glory of fast-food drink refills for the first time – as a teen. It brought her back as a young woman to further her education on the court and in class. It’s introduced her to who-knows-how-many impactful people – and her to them.
“When you think of someone who plays with joy, it’s Diaba,” said junior guard Déja Lee, the Big West Tournament MVP and UCI’s first Big West Player of the Year. “She doesn’t put a lot of pressure on herself, it’s more like she just wants to enjoy it, and you can see that enjoyment through how she plays.”
UC Irvine guard Diaba Konaté dribbles the ball against UC Davis in the championship game of the Big West Tournament on Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Henderson, Nevada. (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill)
Konaté, I should point out, is playing with so much joy on a torn meniscus that she’s been dealing with for three years.
“Honestly, she’s one of my best friends,” said Nikki Tom, a junior guard from Fresno. “Just being around her is so much fun, and her husband is awesome … they’re just so perfect for each other, their chemistry, they always make each other laugh. I love being around them – that’s what I want in life!”
You should know, too, that except for occasional visits between here and France, for most of the year, Konaté and her husband Benjamin are apart, missing each other incredibly.
“She makes me think of just enjoying being where your feet is at,” said Johnson Sidi Baba, the guard from Stockholm via Miami who was tabbed as the Big West Newcomer of the Year.
UC Irvine guard Diaba Konaté waits with her teammates Sunday, March 17, 2024, in the Newkirk Alumni Center to learn who they will face in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Contributing Photographer)
“To really enjoy the moment because, really, a lot of stuff is noise around you. I see Diaba every day just having this positive mindset, so why should I be stressed about things, when she has so much going on?”
What’s going on, of course, is that Konaté is staring into a political abyss, all too aware that the lights could soon go out prematurely on her once-bright basketball future.
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That there’s a law at home now that’s in place purportedly to protect women’s rights in a country that’s home to about 5.7 million Muslims, but that instead strips women like her of their right to pursue their athletic passion.
What the heck, France?
“I still don’t know,” Konaté said. “People ask me about it and I don’t even know; it doesn’t make sense.”
No. 13 seed UC Irvine (23-8) vs. No. 4 seed Gonzaga (30-3)
What: NCAA Tournament first round
When: 4:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: McCarthey Athletic Center, Spokane, Wash.
TV: ESPN2