This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of the FCA Donor Publication. The FCA publication is a gift from our FCA staff to all donors giving $50 or more annually. For more information about giving, visit here.
Felicia Legette-Jack is no stranger to the spotlight.
A standout basketball star at Syracuse University in the 1980s, the Central New York native added championships and records to her impressive athletic resume while coming into her own as a coach. She’s inducted into the Greater Syracuse Hall of Fame, the Syracuse Urban League Hall of Fame and the Syracuse Orange Plus Hall of Fame, and she helped coach the U.S. Pan American Games Women’s Basketball Team.
Her character on and off the court has garnered admiration from coaches, critics and competitors. She’s strong and secure in a space dominated by men, yet compassionate to point people to the deeper parts of life beyond the game.
FCA presented her with the 2024 Kay Yow “Heart of a Coach” Award, which honors basketball coaches who exemplify biblical principles over the course of their careers.
“She epitomizes FCA,” said William Payne, FCA Director at Syracuse University. “She’s all about engaging, equipping and empowering her players, making space for them to attend Huddles, and she tells them not to be afraid to share their faith.”
Her coaching prowess has captivated hundreds of athletes who have played for her, motivated by her motivation and belief in them. She coaches and lives with integrity, and the ferocious competitor also cares deeply for the wellbeing of her people and the God of her faith.
She digs to find the “why” in others—why they want to compete at the elite level, why they want to grow into the person God has made them to be and why they are where they are.
But what’s her why? What’s her story, the thing that motivates and makes her rise each morning to tackle a tough world of high-level athletics at a storied basketball program like Syracuse?
Why does she do what she does?
* * *
Coach Jack, as she’s called by her players, is passionate and protective. She protects her girls. She gives them space to be themselves while calling them higher in their game and in who they are. Along the way, she’s become a mother figure and a strong female mentor for the young women.
“Coach Jack will drop everything she’s doing and run and come get us if we need anything,” said Shy Hawkins, a sophomore guard for the Lady Orange. “She’ll drop everything she’s doing just to come to us. She puts us first.”
Her heart comes from a life where she is true to herself in all she says and does. “She wants to do all she can to honor and please [God],” Payne said. “She’s big into relationships—real relationships that matter. And I think that’s what makes her different.”
Added Hawkins, “Even when I’m down, I feel I can just go to her and talk to her. She makes me feel comfortable. She’s that person to lift me up when my days are bad.”
Passionate and protective, yes. But what else?
* * *
She’s authentic and community driven.
As a standout athlete at Syracuse with athletic and academic accolades piling up, Legette-Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. So she started going to the FCA Huddle on campus.
“I felt like this was my grounding point,” she said. “I found it late, like my senior year. So I always introduce FCA to the students wherever I coach [and] tell them it’s available to them.”
Over her 36-year coaching career—first at Westhill Senior High School in Syracuse, then as assistant at Boston College and Michigan State, to head coach at Hofstra, Indiana University and the University of Buffalo—Legette-Jack grew stronger in standing on her own convictions rather than trying to appease the whims of others. That meant being anchored with a core group of trusted individuals who pour into her and pray on a regular basis.
On March 26, 2022, Coach Jack returned home to become the head coach at Syracuse, where she earned honors as the school’s first two-time honorable mention All-American and helped lead the Lady Orange to their first Big East Championship and NCAA Tournament appearance. She’s found space to build community in a place that evokes great memories of her own career.
“This is a place where I’ve spent most of my life, and this thing has given me so much back already,” she said. “I’m just so grateful.”
* * *
Opportunities arise with Legette-Jack because she always seeks to find.
She has a thirst to keep learning, understanding and growing from what she hears, sees and experiences.
“When I stop learning from my players is the day I’m going to have to walk away,” she said.
Being head coach for a top-level basketball program brings eyes on her every move, and mouths moving about the moves she didn’t make. One thing she has been learning lately is patience and forgiveness.
“You’re a professional at an institution, but most times people see me as a woman in a woman’s sport,” she said. “Yet I have all this experience, and I can wonder, ‘When are you going to see me?’ The team is reading a book on the ‘Let Them’ theory. Let them say you’re just a woman because they own that. Let me be the one responsible for the energy that I bring in the room. Let me be responsible for what I engage in. Let me show grace and mercy.”
* * *
In a profession where every minute is marked by to-dos, scrutiny and a million decisions, how does Legette-Jack stay focused?
She leans into equilibrium.
“You walkout of your house and understand what armor you’re going to choose—to fight? To leave? Or is the armor going to be laced with God? You choose and you get centered and let...come what may because with God, you have an army. You pop out of bed, you put your armor on, you go in and you stay locked on Him.”
In a position with endless recruiting, strategizing and expectations, she also relies on good community and quality time for personal replenishment. She does this with her husband David, her son David Maceo and on her own.
“You have to put yourself in a position where you’re choosing yourself first for a bit,” she said. “Twenty-three hours could be for others. But you give yourself an hour and start filling your tank back up. Just step away.”
* * *
Her tank must be filled because at heart she’s a helper.
In the brave new world of NIL (name, image, likeness) and the transfer portal where championships and finances play a significant role in whether athletes stay or go, Legette-Jack’s legacy and humanity make quite an impression on her players.
For Hawkins, a sophomore from Mastic Beach, N.Y., Legette-Jack smoothed out her transition to college ball.
“When I first got here, I was ready to play, but I was also a bit shaken up, ”Hawkins said. “Everything is new and going way faster, classes are harder—it’s just different. Coach Jack emphasized unity—for upper classmen to help the underclassmen, make sure they’re good and know where they’re going. At practice, she’d slow things down for me, or afterwards, I’d go to her office and have a one-on-one to help me understand and catch up.”
“I’ve grown so much as a woman, as a basketball player,” said Angelica Velez, a junior who transferred from LSU last season. “She never stops pouring into women. I knew Coach Jack was just who I needed to play for.”
Legette-Jack’s genuineness, Payne said, is a deep draw for the plethora of players who have come through her programs. They know what they’re going to get with Coach Jack.
* * *
But really, what’s her “why”?
It’s a combination of all the above, with a core driving factor: She wants to impact the world in a way so everyone knows that God had to be involved.
Said Legette-Jack, “I want people to say, ‘The one thing I knew about her that mattered the most: She believed that God was the reason behind it all.’”
-FCA-
Photos courtesy of Syracuse University Athletics