College Award: NFCA Names Tiala Tagaloa of Texas – Permian Basin as Diversity Scholarship Recipient

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The NFCA has announced that University of Texas Permian Basin head coach Tiala Tagaloa is the 2021 recipient of the Association’s Diversity Scholarship.

The Diversity Scholarship is awarded to a minority member coach who shows a commitment to working with minorities, growing the game of fastpitch in their community and has a need for financial assistance to attend the Convention.

Recipients receive funding to attend the 2021 NFCA National Convention, Dec. 8-11 at Caesar’s Forum in Las Vegas, where they can improve their skills at educational seminars and through interaction with their fellow attendees.

Tagaloa has been at the helm of UT Permian Basin since 2015. With the university centralized within a large Hispanic community, Tagaloa, through her leadership, prioritizes involvement at the local elementary schools.

Each year, the team travels to those minority elementary schools and reads to the English Second Language (ESL) classes in Spanish.

“It is extremely important for NFCA to create opportunities for minority women so they can be inspired by women who look like them, who make them believe it is possible, and to harbor the love for the game in minorities,” said former UT Permian Basin assistant coach Lexes Wilson.

Tagaloa embraces her heritage as a Samoan woman and uses it to instill a culture of empowerment in local youth teams, which are mostly minorities, and her own current student-athletes. She emphasizes that embracing being a minority woman in the game of softball isn’t just rare, it’s extremely powerful and valuable. Tagaloa uses her platform in the hopes of emboldening these young women through softball.

According to Coach Wilson:

“Coach Tagaloa is never one to stop learning or stop educating herself. She always takes full advantage of all the materials and speakers to completely soak it in and to help empower her own student-athletes at UT Permian Basin.”

“Tiala’s vision for these young women is not just to help them succeed on the field, but to succeed in life as empowered strong women,” said Wilson.