Since 2021, the Black Student-Athlete Summit has been on the radar of Senior Associate Athletic Director Glenna Andrews. When the university received sufficient funding from student-athlete support donations in 2024, Andrews was finally able to send a cohort of eight students to attend the summit in Los Angeles.
After returning from the following 2025 summit in Chicago, the group was once again captivated by the summit experience, according to Pilots Black Student-Athletes (BSA) “visionary” and graduate student and volleyball middle blocker Neveah Bray.
“That’s when we decided we need to bring this energy back and this feeling that we all got while at the summit of feeling inclusion and belonging, heard and seen,” Bray said. “Bringing that back to Portland at a smaller scale.”
Cohort that attended the Black Student-Athlete Summit in Chicago in May 2025. Photo courtesy of Neveah Bray.
This past summer, Bray and other students who attended the summit created BSA. This new organization builds community among Black student-athletes at UP and interacts with the local community beyond campus. A goal of BSA is to emulate how the summit fostered camaraderie across the different sports for Black student-athletes, according to Anthony Giesch, the group’s media and operations coordinator and junior men’s cross country athlete.
With the additional stress a student-athlete faces compared to a typical student, founders of the organization say BSA provides a unique space for Black student-athletes to connect and share their experiences.
“I feel like as athletes in general, you're held to a different standard and expectation, and your workload is so unique compared to the regular student experience,” Bray said. “[BSA] allows us a very unique opportunity to come together and share belonging in that way as a Black student-athlete, and also the spotlight and pedestals that we’re put on.”
BSA cultivates unity through hosting team-building, community engagement and educational events. The group also plans to coordinate meetings that discuss mental health, Black history and more. These meetings and events will be open for all students and Portland community members.
St. Johns Community Clean-Up with Big Yard Foundation. Photo by Evan Luecke. Photo courtesy of Nevaeh Bray.
Team-building events like their Sept. 2 BSA Cookout are intended for Black student-athletes to connect, but they also host engagement events like their Sept. 14 community clean-up in the St. Johns neighborhood, a collaboration with Big Yard Foundation.
BSA aims to have an impact in the broader Portland community, which it hopes engagement events and educational meetings may initiate.
“We're thinking about ways to connect with Portland State or Oregon State or [University of] Oregon this year to bring our communities together,” Andrews said. “It is community first, everything that we're doing.”
Members like Bray and Giesch who’ve contributed to developing the club so far are part of BSA’s leadership board, which isn’t structured like a typical club. BSA’s titles are unique to the organization, like Bray’s job as visionary — which means guiding the group and shaping its direction.
According to Giesch, this is to enforce that the organization is not hierarchical. The BSA board can also expand to include any title and set of responsibilities a member is passionate about.
“It’s not about titles,” a portlandpilotsbsa Instagram post from July 7 said. “It’s about putting in the work and building something that lasts.”
While the group is new, BSA is impressed by the campus community’s involvement so far. Bray estimates 70-80% of Black student-athletes attended the Sept. 2 cookout.
Organizations similar to BSA have existed in the past, but they largely faded away through staff turnover and graduation of members, according to Andrews. BSA hopes that getting underclassmen involved early on will help the organization last.
“I see it now with this group of freshmen,” Giesch said. “There’s a new generation coming in already that I think could keep this going.”
More information about BSA can be found on their Instagram.
Kaeden Souki is the Sports Editor for The Beacon, he can be reached at souki28@up.edu.
