As Howard University celebrates its “Wildest Dreams” Homecoming theme, Howard athletics alumni reflect on their early accomplishments leading to where they are now. For many student athletes, making the team and breaking records is the first dream come true of many, and this has become a legacy passed on for generations.
Sequoya Howard already had her sights set on playing Division I basketball for Howard. What she did not imagine was that life after Howard would lead to a music career alongside her husband and three children.
She attended Howard University from 2003 to 2008, earning a bachelor’s degree in allied health sciences with concentrations in pre-physical therapy and exercise physiology. She played basketball at Howard University for four years and spent her fifth year as a student assistant.
“I knew I wanted to hoop since fourth grade,” Howard said. “Fortunately, I have extremely supportive parents and a really great village that poured into me and helped me to actualize those dreams.”
After graduating from Florida A&M University Developmental Research School, also known as FAMU High, she believed she found a team at Howard University whose identity centered on effort and loyalty.
“We were made up of a lot of really scrappy individuals,” she said. “We didn’t mind getting on the ground. We didn’t mind working hard for each other.”
Repeated losses during her first two years challenged the team’s confidence. Looking back, Howard said she recognizes those difficult seasons as a foundation for resilience.
For Alayah Hightower, Howard expanded both her athletic and academic opportunities. Beginning in 2016, she played goalkeeper in soccer and midfielder in lacrosse. She earned three degrees from Howard: a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2020, a master’s in business administration in 2022 and a master’s degree in finance in 2023.
A season-ending injury interrupted her early soccer career. Returning to the field required perseverance, and she said she later helped Howard win the 2018 Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament championship.
“Howard taught me a lot of resilience, and I didn’t realize what I was building at the time,” Hightower said.
She said her experience at Howard also broadened her ambitions beyond the field.
“I never could have imagined coming out of Howard University with three degrees. That wasn’t the plan going in,” said Hightower.
Howard similarly mentioned that the university pushed athletes “to go beyond what we thought we were capable of. It really prepared me to do something that I never would have thought I would have done.”
Today, she and her husband, John Howard, perform as the Agape Music Group, a Dove-nominated gospel group.
For Courtney Townsel, nicknamed Smiley, post-Howard life held a career caring for mothers and babies — and a research laboratory she said she never envisioned as an undergraduate.
Townsel graduated from Howard University in 2007, earning a bachelor’s degree in clinical laboratory science. As a women’s basketball forward, she learned to keep working before recognition arrived.
“I wasn’t a starter when I came to Howard. I wasn’t the top recruit, but by my senior year, I was the MVP and the MEAC Woman of the Year,” Townsel said.
Today, she is a board-certified OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine specialist. She said the teamwork she practiced as an athlete remains part of her approach to medicine.
“So much of being a student athlete is working with the team you have, figuring out everyone’s strengths, communicating clearly,” said Townsel. “All those things I think I bring to the work I do today.”
Dylan Beard attended Howard from 2021 to 2023, graduating with a master’s degree in public health. He now competes professionally in the 60-meter and 110-meter hurdles for Team USA Track and Field.
Beard’s ambitions remained rooted in competition. At Howard, he said, working with the current track and field head coach, David Oliver, helped him move closer to becoming a professional track and field athlete.
“Having him as a coach was pretty eye-opening and trajectory-changing for my career,” Beard said. “My first year as a Howard student-athlete, I equaled his school record, and then the following year I broke his school record.”
That progress came with a willingness to keep pursuing a goal before success felt certain.
“I truly followed my dream, even though I was probably delusional,” Beard said.
For Beard, his experience reflects a legacy that is visibly continuing across generations to come at Howard University.
“I still see the standard going up for the sport and athletic department,” said Beard. “We have greatness literally coming in and out of the school in every era.”
Townsel found her own way to give back to Howard as she trains OB-GYN residents at Howard University Hospital.
“My life has come full circle,” she said. “I’m back kind of where I started, and I love that,” said Townsel.
Copy edited by Jori Johnson
