Sports Envoy
Sports Envoy Program

Katharine DeLorenzo

Field Hockey

Served as envoy

  • 2018  –  India
  • 2019  –  India
  • 2023  –  India

DeLorenzo enters her 19th season in 2019-20 as the head coach of the Panther field hockey program. She came to Middlebury after serving as the head field hockey and lacrosse coach at Skidmore for the previous six seasons.

DeLorenzo has led the Panthers to tremendous successes during her 18 years, including an impressive 287-61 record. In that time, the Panthers advanced to the NCAA Championship game on seven occasions with 16-straight trips to the NCAA Tournament (2003-18). During the 2015 season, she guided the Panthers to the program’s second NCAA Championship (1998) with a 1-0 victory over Bowdoin in Lexington, Virginia. In 2017, DeLorenzo and the Panthers claimed the program’s third overall NCAA Championship with a 4-0 win against Messiah in Louisville, Kentucky. Last fall, Middlebury earned its third NCAA title in the last four seasons with a 2-0 victory against Tufts in Manheim, Pennsylvania.

She earned New England Coach of the Year honors in 2003 and 2004, while being deemed the NCAA Division III National Coach of the Year in both 2003 and 2015. DeLorenzo and her coaching staff were named both the 2017 and 2018 NFHCA Coaching Staffs of the Year. The team also captured the 2003, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2018 NESCAC titles, with DeLorenzo earning NESCAC Coach of the Year honors three times.

DeLorenzo graduated from Goucher College in 1990, where she was an All-American field hockey and lacrosse player as well as a swimmer. She was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in the spring of 2013.

Following graduation, she attended Indiana State University where she earned her master’s degree in athletic administration in 1992. While at Indiana State, she began her coaching career with a two-year stint as an assistant field hockey coach for DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. In 1991, the Tigers advanced to the NCAA Tournament. After receiving her master’s degree, DeLorenzo took a position at Oberlin College in Ohio as the head field hockey and lacrosse coach in the fall of 1992, becoming an assistant athletic director during her third and final year.

DeLorenzo began working at Skidmore College in the fall of 1995 as the head field hockey and lacrosse coach. She led the field hockey team to NCAA Tournament appearances in 1998 and 1999 and was named the UCAA (Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association) Coach of the Year in both of those seasons. She earned a six-year record of 69-37 at Skidmore, including a school-record 18 wins in 1999 when she was named the NFCAA Regional Coach of the Year. That season, her team also captured the UCAA Championship.

She is an active member of several field hockey national committees, including stints with several rules committees, such as currently serving on the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association (IWLCA) National Rules Committee. DeLorenzo directs clinics on Middlebury’s campus throughout the year. She is also the director of two Nike field hockey camps as well as being involved with the United States Field Hockey Association (USFHA) Futures Program.

Michael “BearDaBeast” Key

E-Sports

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  China

After being highlighted as a top prospect in the 2019 NBA 2K League Draft, BearDaBeast was selected 11th overall by T-Wolves Gaming. After starting the season 3-6, he propelled the T-Wolves to eight-straight regular-season wins to sneak into the playoffs. Leading his team as the point guard, his team raised the 2019 NBA 2K League trophy and BearDaBeast was named the MVP of the Finals

Johnny Collins

Soccer

Served as envoy

  • 2018  –  Philippines
  • 2018  –  Vietnam
  • 2019  –  Burma
  • 2019  –  Ethiopia
  • 2019  –  Kuwait
  • 2022  –  Kyrgyzstan

Johnny Collins is an “A” licensed soccer coach who has been coaching all over the world for the past 25 years. He has coached at all levels but prefers working in youth development. An orphan himself, he loves working with underprivileged kids and he has an 18 year old daughter so empowering young women is also a passion of his.

Julian “Zeus” McClurkin

Harlem Globetrotters Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  Uzbekistan

Zeus McClurkin is a testament to not giving up or letting obstacles get in the way of achieving one’s dreams.

He was cut from every basketball team he tried out for from seventh grade through tenth grade, but he kept pushing and finally made his high school team his junior and senior seasons. He played his first couple of years of college ball at a Division II program, but the departure of the head coach left Zeus on the outside looking in. Undeterred, he enrolled at North Carolina A&T State University, and he made the basketball team as a walk-on, beating out 30 other hopefuls in the process. Zeus earned an undergraduate degree in business management at North Carolina A&T and then a master’s degree in marketing and communications from Franklin University, based in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

Zeus is also one of the most decorated athletes on the Globetrotters roster holding three Guinness World Records titles. Zeus has set the mark for most basketball slam dunks in one minute, with 16 (2017), most bounced three-pointers in one minute, with five (2017), and most behind-the-back three-pointers, with three baskets made (2018).

Zeus is known for his fun personality and crazy trick shots from places like Ohio State and the Mall of America, which have been featured on ESPN. Since joining the Globetrotters, he’s also transcended language barriers with appearances on popular Spanish-language television shows like Univision’s “Republica Deportiva,” and Telemundo’s “Un Nuevo Dia.”

He has accomplished all of this while dealing with exercise-induced asthma, a narrowing of the airways in the lungs that is triggered by strenuous exercise. To this day, Zeus carries an inhaler with him.

Zeus was introduced to basketball by his older brother, Robert, and cites his brother as the most influential person in his athletic career. “I fell in love with basketball because of my brother’s passion for the sport,” explains Zeus. “I wanted to be just like him, and to this day, I still can’t beat him one-on-one.”

An extremely versatile athlete, Zeus was on the swim team growing up and also played football, tennis, baseball, and soccer (“The best athletes in the world today are playing soccer,” he says). He also played volleyball and would have loved to have played professional beach volleyball and represent the U.S. in the Olympics.

Zeus has this piece of advice for young athletes: “Be coachable. Be the player that the coach never has to worry about and can depend on when called upon. I have played a lot of minutes over players that were more talented than me, simply because I was coachable and understood what the strategy and philosophy was for each team on which I played.”

Fatima “TNT” Lister

Harlem Globetrotters Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  Uzbekistan

Harlem Globetrotter TNT Lister joined a very elite group in the fall of 2011, becoming the first woman to don the red, white, and blue since 1993 – and her success opened the door for other female players to join the team in recent years.

TNT’s basketball journey started in the seventh grade. “I played my first basketball game at recess, and I fell in love with the game that day,” she says. She also excelled in volleyball and track and field during her teenage years – setting Colorado state records in both the long jump and triple jump – but she didn’t love those sports like she loved basketball. She was an all-conference selection in basketball in each of her four years in high school.

TNT began her college career at New Mexico before transferring to Temple, where she was lucky enough to be coached by Hall of Famer Dawn Staley. TNT says, “Coach Staley was not only a role model for me through her amazing basketball credentials, but she showed me balance – balance between being a player, taking care of family and giving back to the community. I admired her so much for her unique combination of kindness, toughness and ability to make the team feel like a family.”

The Globetrotters are like a family too, and TNT is honored to be a part of it. “Honestly, this means everything to me,” she says. “This team incorporates everything I love about basketball. Not only to play it, but to entertain, and to give back to the community. I’ve always dreamed of leaving a positive mark in basketball history, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so.”

When she thinks about 90-plus years of Globetrotters history, TNT says the player she would have enjoyed playing with most is the late Marques Haynes, because of how much she admires his dribbling skills.

When she’s not burning up the floor of all 50 states across the U.S. with her own ball handling – or shooting hoops with President Barack Obama, like she did during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll in 2012 – TNT likes to watch movies (Leonardo DiCaprio, Denzel Washington and Angela Bassett are her favorite actors), as well as skate and play pool, and she really loves to draw and paint. The Globetrotters star has brought her blistering basketball skills to shows like “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” “The Queen Latifah Show,” and “The Arsenio Hall Show.”

“The best part about being a female Globetrotter is being able to inspire girls and young women to follow their dreams,” says TNT. This holds especially true for her new daughter, Kali Rose. TNT went back to play for the world famous team only five months after having her baby. Adding, “I’m so proud to come back and do my thing and be able to tell my girl, ‘Hey, you can still chase your career when you become a mom.’”

“One of the most challenging parts of being a female Globetrotter is proving that you belong on the court with the men. I love a challenge, though,” she says. Ask any of her Globetrotter teammates, and they will tell you that TNT definitely belongs. The guys on the team embraced her from day one. “I walked in with two brothers, and now I have about 30,” says TNT with a smile.

Holly Warlick

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  Taiwan

In seven seasons at the helm of Tennessee women’s basketball, Holly Warlick built a very impressive résumé in her young head coaching career. Her worksheet contains accomplishments few coaches achieve in their entire careers, much less as first-time head coaches.

Those successes confirmed that Warlick was the right choice to take the reins at Tennessee and that she and her staff had the acumen to run a championship program. A disciple of the legendary Pat Summitt, Warlick maintained the core values of her former coach, co-worker and friend while at the same time employing her own personality, style and competitive energy to coach today’s players.

Whether as an All-America player from 1976-80, an assistant and associate head coach for 27 seasons from 1985 to 2012, or head coach from 2012 to 2019, Warlick thrived during her more than three decades in the spotlight at Rocky Top. She posted one of the top won-lost records in the nation during her tenure.

Warlick was announced as head coach of the Lady Vols on April 18, 2012, as women’s hoops legend Pat Summitt stepped into the role of head coach emeritus. In a touching and symbolic gesture the following day at a press conference announcing the changes, Summitt presented her coaching whistle to her long-time aide and former floor general.

On the international scene, Warlick was a gold medal coach, and two of her players joined her in earning that hardware. Warlick served as an assistant, while Mercedes Russell and Diamond DeShields played on the undefeated (6-0) 2015 USA World University Games Team in South Korea.

Warlick was recognized personally for her performance. In 2013, members of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association named her the Spalding Maggie Dixon Division I Rookie Coach of the Year. She was selected by the AP and league coaches as the 2013 SEC Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year, and members of the Tennessee Sports Writers Association also chose her as TSWA Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year that season.

In May 2017, Warlick was recognized for her years of leadership, volunteer activities, philanthropic work and professional accomplishments that have contributed to improving the quality of life in Tennessee. She was named the Tennessee Woman of Distinction at the 32nd annual Chattanooga Women of Distinction Awards luncheon. In 2019, she became a member of the Pat Summitt Foundation Advisory Board.

Craig Esherick

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  Azerbaijan

Craig Esherick is an Associate Professor in the Sport Management program at George Mason University, where the 2020 Fall Semester will be his thirteenth year. He is the Associate Director of the Center for Sport Management, the Academic Program Coordinator for the Sport Management program and also the Internship Coordinator.

Professor Esherick was a scholarship basketball player at Georgetown University while earning an undergraduate finance degree from the business school.

He attended the Georgetown University Law Center and was a graduate assistant basketball coach for two of those years. After graduating from law school and passing the DC Bar Exam, Professor Esherick became a full-time assistant coach at Georgetown for the men’s basketball team. His tenure as an assistant lasted 17 and a half years and included a stint as the assistant basketball coach for the USA Olympic Team that won a bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He became the head basketball coach in 1999 at Georgetown University and held that position long enough to win 103 games. He worked briefly for AOL’s new online radio venture from 2004 until 2005, where he commented on-air about college basketball news and wrote articles for the AOL Sports website. Craig took a job with a startup television network in New York in May of 2005; that network, CSTV, has now become CBS College Sports. Esherick came to Mason from NYU, where he taught in their Graduate Sports Management program for two years.

Craig has written or edited several books, articles and book reviews on a variety of topics in the sports industry. These works can be found in the History of Sport Encyclopedia, Sports Management and Marketing Encyclopedia, Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, History and Sport, Leadership in Sport, Cultures of Peace, The Journal of Sport for Development and the International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing. Esherick’s book titles include the third, fourth and fifth editions of Media Relations in Sport, Case Studies in Sport Diplomacy and Fundamentals of Sport Management.

Esherick has served on several Arlington and Fairfax County, Virginia boards and committees. He has worked with the US Department of State on many grants and sport diplomacy projects from 2009 to 2019. Craig provides expert commentary for news outlets, television and radio during college basketball season, primarily working for the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), Learfield and the Stadium/Sinclair network.

Chineze Nwagbo

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  Kosovo
  • 2019  –  Azerbaijan
  • 2019  –  Albania
  • 2019  –  Tanzania
  • 2023  –  Malaysia

Chineze Nwagbo started her basketball career at Duval Senior High School in Lanham, Maryland, where she is recognized as a four-year varsity letter recipient and two-time team captain. Her honors include two back-to-back State Championship Titles, All-American Honorable Mention, All-County First Team, All-Gazette, USA Today’s Most Improved and Most Important Player to Scout in Maryland, amongst a plethora of other accolades.

Chinny was a standout basketball player at Syracuse, where she earned her B.S. in Biology. Shortly after graduating, Chinny embarked on a career playing professionally for 11 years in Spain, Chile, Brazil, Poland, Portugal, & Israel, winning 4 MVP titles and appearances in championship games. The highlight of her career was when she represented her parent’s native country of Nigeria in the 2006 World Championship Games.

After retiring in 2016, Chinny began a series of ventures with the NBA. In China, she helped develop the grassroots implementation of an NBA-based basketball curriculum. She has done work for Jr. NBA programs, the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders developmental camps, and has been brought on to work with the Atlanta Hawks, NY Knicks, Washington Wizards, and the National Basketball Players Association as a youth development coach and mentor.

She has served as an Envoy for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Sports Diplomacy program, which was designed to use the transformative power of sports to create social change in global communities around the world by bridging divides, creating cultural understanding, supporting women’s empowerment (& gender equality), advocating safe environments for kids with disabilities to play, and championing the importance of creating a more equitable and peaceful society.

As an Envoy, Chinny has traveled to various parts of the world, building relations with various U.S. Embassies, Sports Federations, Sultans, Chargé d’ Affaires, administrators, coaches, and elite players. She has also dedicated her time as a motivational speaker to various youth programs and amazing nonprofits geared toward providing resources for under-represented & underserved youth worldwide. In her spare time, she has appeared on New Channel 8’s SportsTalk show as a guest sports analyst and hopes to play an instrumental role in the game’s growth, primarily serving as a role model for
young girls.

In 2020, Chinny joined PeacePlayers International, an organization utilizing the
transformative power of sports to bridge divides in historically conflicted
communities worldwide. There she served as the Director of Youth Programs & Development for Baltimore city providing unserved and underrepresented young people of color with afterschool programming geared towards connecting the community, providing equitable experiences and tools to mitigate conflict.

All these experiences have led Chinny to the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) where she is the Director of Player Programs and Engagement dedicated to creating programs and resources to ensure Professional Athletes succeed far beyond the playing field!

Carol Jue

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2019  –  Taiwan

Chapman’s all-time winningest women’s basketball coach, Jue has won over 300 games in her 17 years at the helm of the Panthers’ program. Over a nearly two-decade coaching career, Jue has won over 69 percent of her games and has led the Panthers to the SCIAC Tournament seven times since joining the conference in 2012-13.

Under her guidance, the Panthers have been considered amongst the elite programs in the West Region. Since 2003, Jue has led Chapman to nine NCAA Division III playoff berths (2004-09, ’11, ’14, ’18) and nine 20-win seasons. She has coached five All-West Region selections, three Academic All-Americans, six Academic All-District honorees and three SCIAC Athletes of the Year.

Jue led the Panthers to their first-ever SCIAC Tournament title in 2017-18 with a double overtime victory over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. The Panthers had their most successful SCIAC season ever with a 15-1 record in the SCIAC. Chapman went 23-5 overall for its most wins since the 2007-08 season that ended with a 24-4 record. Jue and her staff were recognized as the SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year for the third year in a row.

In 2010-11, Chapman went 22-6 and as a result, Jue earned Association of Division III Independents Coach of the Year honors for the third time in her career. She has earned SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year honors in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18.

She has led her teams into the SCIAC Tournament in each of Chapman’s six seasons in the conference -the only program on campus to accomplish that feat. The Panthers have appeared in the tournament finals four times, winning their first title game in 2017-18. Since joining the SCIAC in the 2012-13 season, Jue has led the Panthers to an incredible 78-18 SCIAC record with at least 10 win in every season.

In May 2009, Jue was also honored by the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California as the only Chinese-American head basketball coach (men’s or women’s) in the NCAA. She has taken her teams on two international tours in Taiwain. The Panthers played in the Jones Cup in 2010 and the BLIA Tournament in 2015.

Jue was no stranger to winning at the NCAA Division III level having spent four prior years at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges as an assistant coach and serving in the 2002-03 season as the interim head coach.

Jue played collegiately at both Cal State Los Angeles and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and was selected team MVP and named to the All-SCIAC team while playing at Claremont from 1991-92. She was a two-time All-San Gabriel Valley honoree as a player at Montebello High School in the mid-1980’s and was inducted into the Montebello High Hall of Fame in 2011.

Ruthie Bolton

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2008  –  Saudi Arabia
  • 2013  –  Kazakhstan
  • 2014  –  Moldova
  • 2015  –  Bangladesh
  • 2018  –  Armenia
  • 2018  –  Georgia
  • 2019  –  Kosovo
  • 2019  –  Albania

Two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and WNBA All-Star.

Scored over 2,000 career points, is fourth of the WNBA’s all-time 3-pointer list, and is the only player in the history of the Sacramento Monarchs to have her number retired.

First WNBA Player of the Week in July of 1997, a member of the 1999 First Team All WNBA, and a two-time WNBA All-Star in 1999 and 2001
The 1991 USA Basketball Female Athlete of the Year.

Played with the 1995-96 US Women’s National Team that compiled a perfect 60-0 record.

In four seasons at Auburn, she led her team to a combined record of 199-13, which included three Southeastern Conference Championships (1987-1989), four NCAA Tournament appearances and two runner-up finishes in 1988 and 1989.

She was named to the 1988 NCAA Women’s Final Four All-Tournament Team.

A 1st Lieutenant in the United States Army.

2011 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee.