A seasoned trailblazer with deep roots in Caribbean and North American basketball circles, Daynia Benton has made a high-profile return to the St. John’s University Red Storm women’s basketball program, stepping into an assistant coaching role where she will collaborate closely with long-time head coach Joe Tartamella. The appointment marks a full-circle homecoming for the Saint Lucian coaching veteran, who has built a decades-long, award-winning career spanning collegiate, professional, and community sports spaces.
Born Daynia La Force, Benton grew up in Castries, Saint Lucia, before relocating to the United States to pursue higher education and launch her athletic journey. A standout four-year letterwinner on the Georgetown University Hoyas women’s basketball roster, she was a core contributor to the program’s 1993 Big East conference championship run, and later helped lead the team to the NCAA Sweet 16 elite stage in 1995.
Her first tenure with the Red Storm stretches back to 2002, when she joined the program as its inaugural assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator. Across a three-year term, she played a pivotal role in elevating the team’s competitive standing, securing back-to-back berths in the Big East tournament and guiding the squad to a spot in the 2005 National Invitational Tournament.
Before her initial St. John’s appointment, Benton cut her coaching teeth over a seven-year stint as an assistant at Long Island University. That foundational experience paved the way for her first top leadership role as head coach at the University of New Haven, where she steered the Chargers to an impressive 24-7 season record and earned Conference Coach of the Year honors for her transformative work.
Benton’s subsequent head coaching tenures further cemented her reputation as a turnaround specialist. She spent eight seasons leading the Northeastern Huskies from 2006 to 2014, then took the helm at Rhode Island from 2014 to 2019, where she orchestrated the largest single-season competitive improvement in the program’s recorded history. Her resume also extends to the top tier of women’s professional basketball: in 2019, she worked as an advanced scout and volunteer coach for the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, before joining the Atlanta Dream as a full assistant coach in 2021.
Beyond the sidelines, Benton has carved out a robust portfolio of community-focused sports initiatives. She serves as executive director and CEO of the Terance Mann Complete Player Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to supporting youth athletic and personal development, and is a co-founder of two sports-focused enterprises: BentForce Basketball, a player development program, and Courtside Moms Media, a platform elevating the voices of women in basketball spaces. Her family is deeply embedded in the global basketball ecosystem as well: her husband Eddie Benton currently works as associate head coach for the Robert Morris University women’s basketball team, and her eldest son Terance Mann, a guard for the Brooklyn Nets, has recently kicked off his eighth season in the NBA.