Photos/video: Coach Sydney Carter used to be criticized for her courtside looks, now she’s celebrated for them

As assistant coach and director of player development at the University of Texas at Austin, Sydney Carter has played a critical role in bringing its women’s basketball team to the elite eight in 2025’s NCAA Tournament. In addition to demonstrating her coaching prowess, Carter, a retired WNBA player, has also attracted widespread attention for her game day looks.

Carter’s courtside style hasn’t always been celebrated. In fact, the 34-year-old Texas Longhorns coach has been criticized for choosing to use fashion as a means of self-expression on the court.  “I just think that people are uncomfortable with a Black woman being in a power position,” Carter told Yahoo Life in 2022. “When you see a Black woman who is actually confident and embracing herself, I think that that’s very intimidating.”

Criticism against Carter and her game-day style hit a fever pitch on Feb. 6, 2022, when the Texas A&M Aggies faced off against the Kentucky Wildcats. Carter, who was the assistant coach for Texas A&M at the time, stepped onto the Memorial Coliseum court in Lexington, Ky., wearing bubblegum-pink patent leather pants, a ribbed, white turtleneck and nude heels with clear vinyl straps. Despite the outfit being a nod to Breast Cancer Awareness Month during the 2021/22 basketball season’s Cancer Awareness game night, some viewers questioned whether Carter’s look was “appropriate as a basketball coach.”

“I’m still getting my job done at the end of the day, and not once have I been hindered in wearing high heels or leather pants or just if I wanted to wear denim on the bench,” Carter told Good Morning America in 2022. “I’m not the first person to wear heels on the bench nor leather pants, and nor will I be the last.”  Carter started dressing up for games during the coronavirus pandemic. While other coaches were in a standard uniform of quarter-zip sweaters and khaki pants, Carter chose a different direction.

“When I started working under the coach that I played for in college, he was always like, ‘You wear what you want to wear. You don’t let anybody tell you that this is too much or this is extra.’ He was like, ‘Just be yourself,’” Carter told Spotify’s “For the Record” in 2023. “And so it was me and him dressing up to the nines, and it’s what I’m comfortable in. I feel like I’m putting my best foot forward for our kids if I’m looking my best.”  Carter is still staying true to herself. Rather than let the criticism influence her on-court style, she continues to take cues from her own playbook.

Her decision to bring personal style onto the court has even inspired the women she coaches, like Texas Longhorns forward Aaliyah Moore.  “It’s nice to have a Black woman to kind of look up to and we’re both into fashion,” Moore said about her coach in a statement to Yahoo Entertainment. “While [Carter] might have beat your butt on the court, she also was very feminine off the court, and she was just herself.”

For Moore, Carter’s serving as an example to future coaches who might also have a flair for fashion.  “I feel like if I did go into the coaching space, I’d also be very expressive with how I dress as well,” she continued. “So it’s kind of like she’s paving the way for someone like me to be, in a sense, less nervous to do it because I see Sydney do it, so why can’t I?”  Carter is no stranger to sharing her gameday looks on social media. On Instagram, where she has 1.5 million followers and counting, the Texas Longhorns assistant coach frequently posts photos of her outfit from each game.

when you ask me what the outfit vibes are for our plans and i show you this photo of Sydney Carter just know that we are dressing to impress!!! pic.twitter.com/l3iYu3OmQ0

— Sports Girls Club (@girlsclubsports) March 31, 2025

Carter’s style playbook seems boundless. When she’s not pulling from the collection of vibrant suits she designed in collaboration with the brand Olarsgrace, Carter is mixing fabrics and playing into her eclectic aesthetic.  Born and raised in Texas, Carter often uses fashion as a nod to her home state. In early March, Carter wore a sleek, coordinating dark denim look. The silver accents on the shirt’s buttons, the belt’s buckle and the toes of her black boots made for sophisticated finishing touches. A week later, Carter leveled up her pattern play when she coordinated her cow-print belt with knee-high cow-print boots, which she paired with a dark brown skirt suit.

 

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A post shared by Sydney Carter (@coachsydcarter)

In a similar display of state pride, the Texas A&M alum stepped out in a light denim look in February that featured pleats along the chest and wrists. She amped up the Texan flair with a longhorn bolo tie.  Danielle Holmes, a fan of Carter’s, left a comment about the outfit on Instagram. “Every game I’m looking for Coach Carter and what you are wearing that game,” she wrote. “You eat every single time! This one though hit different! I love this era of cowgirl.”

Carter also wore a black-and-white polka-dot sweater with “texas” embroidered in cursive and a statement cow-print belt with an ornate silver buckle that matched her cow-print sandals in December 2024.  “This young lady can put on a shower curtain and make it [fire emojis],” Instagram user Danita Matthews wrote in a comment about Carter’s embroidered sweater look. “Style is unmatched!”

Also among Carter’s greatest courtside hits are the cherry red, snake-printed Balmain suit and black Saint Laurent pumps she wore in January and the light pink, Gucci logo knit top with matching pink trousers she wore for Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year.  Carter also demonstrated that she’s no stranger to method dressing when she hit the court in a strapless, red latex dress with three-dimensional hearts for Valentine’s Day this year. She paired the dress with a crisp white button-up and red-and-white striped sandals.

Whether or not Carter’s courtside looks are perceived as being too much is never an issue for her.  “I can’t leave my curves at home at the end of the day. I have to be authentically myself every day because it’s all I have,” she told Andscape in 2023. “I feel like it was my time to lead [the conversation] in the form of not just being a Black woman, not just being a curvy woman, but I am a woman in a male-dominated profession. So every day, every game, you’re gonna get the same Black, curvy woman and her outfit.”  Fashion, for Carter, is a source of her vitality.  “At the end of the day, I want to be on the right side of everything,” she told Tamron Hall on the TV host’s eponymous talk show in 2024. “And when I’m putting on my clothes, that’s my superpower.”