Former Gamecocks Trade Rivalry for Service in Atlanta Reunion

Three players who once shared a locker room in Columbia set aside their professional rivalry Sunday when the Indiana Fever visited the Atlanta Dream — using the trip to spend the day giving back to the city that raised one of them and now employs the other two.

Raven Johnson, Te-Hina Paopao and Madina Okot all wore the Gamecock uniform under Dawn Staley, though their timelines in South Carolina barely crossed. Johnson anchored the Gamecocks’ backcourt for five seasons before Indiana made her the 10th overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft. Paopao, a transfer from Oregon, played for South Carolina in 2023-24 and 2024-25 before Atlanta took her in the second round of the 2025 draft. Okot arrived in Columbia for just the 2025-26 season after transferring from Mississippi State, and the Dream selected her 13th overall in April. The timing means Paopao and Okot were never actually teammates at South Carolina — their bond as Gamecocks alumnae formed only after both landed in Atlanta.

Johnson, by contrast, has deep roots in the city. Born and raised in Atlanta, she starred at Westlake High School, where she teamed with future Las Vegas Aces guard Ta’Niya Latson to win four straight state titles and a Geico High School National Championship Wikipedia . That hometown connection has made every trip back to Georgia something more than a road game for Johnson throughout her career.

A Pattern of Coming Home

Sunday’s community work wasn’t an isolated gesture. When South Carolina played North Carolina in an exhibition in Atlanta last October, the game doubled as a homecoming for Johnson and Latson, who played together at Westlake High in southwest Atlanta and won a national championship there On3 , drawing a large contingent of family and friends to the arena. Latson, playing in front of the crowd that watched her grow up, tied for a team-high 19 points in that exhibition. That same instinct — using an Atlanta appearance as an occasion to connect with the community — has now carried over into Johnson’s rookie WNBA season.

It also fits a broader pattern in Johnson’s giving. She has organized an annual back-to-school giveaway in Atlanta providing local kids with backpacks and supplies, donated basketball shoes to her former high school program, and sponsored a writing contest for local students — work recognized when the SEC named her to its Community Service Team for committing to uplifting youth in both Columbia and her hometown of Atlanta On3 . Sunday’s food-delivery effort extends that same off-court identity into her professional career, this time alongside two Gamecocks she never actually played alongside in college.

Why Open Hand Atlanta

The organization the three players partnered with carries its own history rooted in Atlanta’s response to crisis. Open Hand was founded in 1988 by Michael Edwards-Pruitt, who began by cooking and delivering meals to friends dying from AIDS who were too sick to cook for themselves Rough Draft Atlanta , working out of a single church kitchen with a small group of volunteers. Nearly four decades later, it has grown into the largest community-based provider of home-delivered meals and nutrition services in the Southeast DiningOut , an accredited “food is medicine” organization that has now delivered more than 37 million meals DiningOut to Georgians managing chronic and severe illness. The organization currently sends out roughly 5,000 made-from-scratch meals a day Rough Draft Atlanta to people living with serious health conditions, meals designed specifically for clients managing cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and kidney failure — the same population the source article identified as Sunday’s beneficiaries.

That mission gives the players’ involvement added weight beyond a standard team-organized charity stop. Open Hand’s meals are medically tailored and delivered directly to homebound residents, meaning the deliveries Johnson, Paopao and Okot made Sunday went straight into the hands of people managing serious illness, not to a general food pantry.

Two Franchises, One Shared Foundation

The reunion also reflects how thoroughly South Carolina’s roster has scattered across the league while staying connected. Johnson’s draft classmate and college teammate Latson now plays for the Aces; Paopao and Okot anchor rotation spots for a Dream team that has also added former LSU star Angel Reese since last spring, giving Atlanta one of the league’s most recognizable young cores. Meanwhile, Indiana’s roster — built around Caitlin Clark — has leaned on Johnson’s defensive identity, the same trait that earned her SEC Defensive Player of the Year and back-to-back All-Defensive Team honors in Columbia.

For Staley, whose program has now sent waves of players into the WNBA over the past several drafts, moments like Sunday’s are a quieter form of validation. The competitive rivalry between Fever and Dream is real — Johnson and her former teammates will spend most nights trying to beat each other on the scoreboard. But the South Carolina pipeline has also produced a group of players who, deliberately or not, keep finding reasons to show up for the same causes once the final buzzer sounds.

None of the three players is a stranger to using a platform for service beyond basketball. What made Sunday notable wasn’t that Johnson gave back in her hometown — she has done that for years — but that two teammates-turned-rivals from a program 400 miles away joined her, on the same day they were preparing to guard each other.