The Whooping Women Behind Immanuel Quickley

If you’ve been to or watched a Kentucky Basketball game in the past two seasons, you’ve heard them: a pack of loud, proud women behind the basket in shirts and hats bearing the name and likeness of No. 5, Immanuel Quickley. Their trademark cheers ring through Rupp Arena, welcomed trills of joy in an often-dead environment.

“I like to wait until the crowd is silent and go, WHOOP, WHOOP!” Quickley’s grandmother Ellen Hamilton said.

“DE-FENSE! DE-FENSE! DE-FENSE!” Aunt Demetria Caldwell chanted.

“There are a lot of cheers,” his mother Nitrease said, laughing.

There are also a lot of shirts. Ellen made the first one when Quickley was in high school with iron-on letters and numbers. As his career…