‘A seat at the table’: Why Johnson C. Smith athletic director’s story is so important
Denisha Hendricks, the athletic director at Johnson C. Smith, wasn’t an athlete in high school. But she often ended up on the football field at halftime.
“I was in the band,” she said, laughing. “I played alto saxophone.”
Now Hendricks is a conductor of sorts: She supervises the 15 sports, 264 athletes and $4.4 million athletic budget at J.C. Smith, a Division II school that had one of its most successful football seasons in 2024.
As we celebrate National Girls & Women in Sports Day on Feb. 5, Hendricks’ path to her current job is a fascinating case study. She didn’t have an “in” to an AD role due to being a star athlete or a championship-winning coach. Instead, she progressed on the administrative side, earning a doctorate and making several out-of-state moves to climb her career ladder.
Growing up in Auburn, Alabama, Hendricks was the only child of a nursing professor (her mother) and a band director (her father). At first, she liked the idea of becoming a certified athletic trainer, and enrolled at the University of South Carolina with the idea she would become one.
But at a Gamecocks football game in the 1990s, she had a revelation. Hendricks was a 19-year-old student athletic trainer on the field readying coolers of Gatorade for the football players while watching the pregame ceremony. Several USC women’s sports like softball and volleyball were being recognized for their academic achievements.
“The majority of the students out there on the field looked like me,” Hendricks said. “But I also realized that very few people in the athletic administration out there looked like me. There were no women that day. There were two African-American men. That was it. And I thought, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’”
Hendricks decided to modify her dream. What if she became an AD herself, giving students a role model at the very top of a collegiate athletic department?
After she finished her degree in athletic training, she went straight into graduate school back home at Auburn. Hendricks eventually obtained a Ph.D. in higher education administration while also interning in the Auburn athletic department.
Hendricks worked in New Hampshire, Illinois, Kentucky and Alabama along with Johnson C. Smith, where she was first employed from 2005-09 in an administrative role with less responsibility than she has now.
“I really never wanted to leave here,” she said, gesturing at the J.C. Smith campus. “But in order for me to grow as a professional, I needed to go. ... I wanted to be an AD. I wanted to learn some other things and get some other experiences. But when I left, I thought that somehow, some way, I would wind back up here.”
Hendricks was hired by JCSU president Valerie Kinloch in February 2024 as the AD and a visiting associate professor of sport management (she currently teaches one class). She began her new job on May 1, 2024.
That date was less than two months after Steve Joyner — the legendary Johnson C. Smith basketball coach who won 600 games and also served as AD off and on for years for the Golden Bulls — retired from the college. Kinloch hired Antwain Banks as interim men’s basketball coach for one season before Hendricks officially started her job; Hendricks is currently conducting an active search to fill the position permanently.
That’s a decision she wants to get right, because men’s basketball is such a driving force at the school. The current team hovers around .500.
Football, meanwhile, had a terrific season in 2024. Under head coach Maurice Flowers, the team started 8-0, finished 8-2 and drew some of the biggest crowds in recent history. As Kinloch, the university president, told me of that season in November: “It enhanced a sense of belonging.”
Hendricks isn’t married and has no children except, she said with a smile, “for the 264 we have here.” She was referring to the number of student-athletes on the J.C. Smith campus — about 20% of the 1,300 enrolled students play a varsity sport.
What’s Hendricks’ biggest challenge at Charlotte’s 158-year-old HBCU, which was founded in 1867 by two reverends as a way to educate formerly enslaved Black people?
She didn’t hesitate.
“Facilities,” she said.
To give one example: the on-campus Brayboy Gym, which seats 1,369 people at capacity and is beloved by generations of Smith alumni, opened in 1963.
“It’s the only gym we have and it’s the largest space on campus,” Hendricks said. “That means it gets utilized for a lot of things not associated with sports, which is great. However, it can pose an issue, because it’s also the only indoor sports facility we have. So if it rains, everybody is trying to get in one space.”
The job of athletic director can be a thankless one. While they get to celebrate victories, they also have to deal with items as mundane as “making sure the officials get something to eat,” Hendricks noted, and a thousand other tasks, too.
At any school, ADs are usually one of the first points of contact when something goes wrong.
But Hendricks said she loves her job and that she’s in the situation she wanted to be in ever since she was a teenager, stirring that Gatorade before a South Carolina football game and looking out across the field.
“I still go back to my 19-year-old self,” she said. “What I wanted was an opportunity to have a seat at the table to help make good decisions that affect students. And even though some decisions may be difficult, if it’s a good decision for the right reasons ... then that’s OK.”
