LOS ANGELES — The USC women’s basketball team has ended every week of summer practices with a “Filthy Friday.”
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Kelly Dormandy, the Trojans’ director of women’s basketball sports performance, has dreamed up a range of challenges for each Filthy Friday that have varied from hot yoga to a fire station workout.
“The hope is that we’re playing into April, and this is supposed to be fun,” head coach Lindsay Gottlieb told reporters on Tuesday. “There’s a grind aspect to it. They are working really hard, but we want it to be different. We don’t want April to feel like an extension of July.”
When the Trojans arrived at Los Angeles County Fire Department Station 15 at 7 a.m. on one particular Friday, they were greeted by the tools that actual firefighters train with.
Laura Williams carried a dumbbell in one hand and a rescue saw in the other. JuJu Watkins and Saniyah Hall pulled a fire hose while wearing work gloves, while Jazzy Davidson banged on a firetruck tire with a sledgehammer.
Nearby, Brooklyn Shamblin squatted with a rescue manikin over her shoulders and Ryann Bennett did step-ups with a wrapped-up fire hose over her shoulder.
It’s all critical to building team chemistry in the eight weeks that the team has together this summer.
“Because we have a smaller squad, it’s always a risk being with the same people so many times – like, things can happen,” 6-foot-4 freshman forward Sitayah Fagan said. “But I think this group is really special. It’s just so fun, especially Filthy Fridays, even though it’s really rough. It’s definitely brought the group together.”
The team has five new players on the roster this season, which has made off-court bonding just as much of a priority.
Gottlieb brainstormed activities that could exclusively be done in Los Angeles, and she presented the idea of touring a music studio to USC general manager Selena Castillo.
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“And she’s, like, well, there’s Ice Cube’s people – she knows them and really interacted and so we reached out,” Gottlieb said. “They invited the team to the studio, and it was just a super cool collaboration that we were really grateful for.”
The group of players who attended were guided by Ice Cube’s sons, Darrell and O’Shea Jackson, and tried their hand at auto-tuned singing in a recording booth that was outfitted with a mic stand specially made to accommodate players’ heights.
Each intentional moment of the Trojans’ summer is embodied in the slogan on the back of their practice shirts: How we do anything is how we do everything, or “HWDA is HWDE” for short.
“I love that it’s on the shirt,” Bennett said, “because that’s a motto I use for myself and the team. It’s a big thing – how we treat each other in the locker room, how we treat our staff, how we are on time for everything. It’s a really big thing for us.”
Fagan fitting in
Freshman Sitayah Fagan enrolled early last season to train with the team, but she was unable to play in any games and was limited in how she could help the team prepare.
She arrived each day for an hour-long workout with assistant coach Jonathan Yim before participating in the team practice, mostly on the scout team. She traveled with the team and watched from the sidelines during games.
“(I saw) everyone’s composure,” Fagan said. “We had a lot of close games and just seeing how everyone reacted, seeing how everybody was able to adapt to those scenarios, it will definitely help me in the future.”
Associate head coach Beth Burns praised the natural talents of Fagan, who won gold with the Australian National Team and was named MVP of the 2025 FIBA U17 Oceania Cup.
“Sitaya Fagan doesn’t even know what she is yet, but (she has) gifts,” Burns said.
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