Texas assistant coach Sydney Carter’s style? ‘It’s mine. It’s confident. It’s experimental.’

Texas women’s basketball assistant coach Sydney Carter has known who she is long before the rest of the world caught on.

Fashion became her first form of self-expression as a young girl, earning her the childhood nickname “Boots” for her love of bold, Texas-inspired cowgirl boots.

For her iconic game day looks, Carter is her own stylist, meticulously curating her sideline looks by pulling, pairing and trying on outfits. She describes her style simply but definitively: “It’s mine. It’s confident. It’s experimental.”

Despite spending her entire life in Texas, from high school to college at Texas A&M and throughout her professional coaching career, her greatest style influence was her mother, who had strong Alabama and Southern roots that Carter adopted into her wardrobe.

“[My mom] brought her country flair to all of us,” Carter said. “I grew up around a bunch of women – like, I have four sisters. My mom was always stylish. I saw her in a pair of high-waisted pants one day and a shirt tucked in with a belt, and I said, ‘Girl!’ My mom just always had a thing about being super confident and teaching me that.”

Carter now works to pass down those lessons to her players. She said her goal as a coach is for her players to see her model confidence, emphasizing that dressing up for games allows her to be the best version of herself as an assistant coach.

“If I don’t feel my best, I cannot continue to put my best foot forward and be a good coach,” Carter said. “Everybody knows when you don’t feel good, the effort is not there, at least not for me. And so if I’m putting forth the effort to make sure I look good, definitely know that I’m going to continue to be the best coach I can be because I feel good from the start.”

As Carter’s life and body have evolved, so has her approach to fashion. She has learned to dress in ways that feel authentic and complementary to her body, embracing her curves.

“I just wear what I see fit to my body. I’m naturally curvy. I’m not the skinniest, but I think everything just fits,” she said. “I’m just big on making sure that just because I saw it look good on someone else, that doesn’t mean it’s going to look good on me.”

Carter’s outfits have turned heads and empowered her players, but sometimes they also have made her a target online. During moments of intense criticism, she said she forces herself to stand firm in her identity.

“I just knew that I could really make other women feel confident about themselves and inspire them to not pay attention to what else is being said out there. … At the end of the day,  all I did was show up to work in my true self,” she said.

Influenced by former Texas A&M women’s basketball coach Gary Blair, she views game day as a professional setting and carries with her Blair’s message to treat the job with pride.

“[My outfit] has no effect on whether we win or lose. The only thing that it’s doing is having me show up dressed to win. I am dressed for the occasion,” Carter said.

In Episode 4 of From Closet to Court, Carter highlights her journey to becoming one of basketball’s most unapologetic and memorable style-setters. She discusses dressing for her body type, her infamous pink leather pants, and what she would wear if the Longhorns made the national championship game.

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