Best of Philly

Autumn Lockwood

It was easy to watch the Birds’ victory and point to the plays that won the game: DeJean interception, Hurts-to-Smith bomb to put the game away, Milton Williams strip sack (and the ensuing Jalen Carter shot to Patrick Mahomes). What’s less obvious is all the work that led to those plays, and for that you have to thank Lockwood, the team’s associate performance coach. The Media native became the first Black woman coach to win the Super Bowl, and her skills were on wide display. Read More »

Dawn Staley

News broke back at the start of this year that North Philly’s own Dawn Staley had signed a multiyear contract with the University of South Carolina that made her the highest-paid women’s hoops coach ever. The deal, worth a jaw-dropping $25.25 million, shoots her past UConn’s Geno Auriemma and LSU’s Kim Mulkey. Since she headed south from her role as Temple’s head coach back in 2008, Staley has led USC teams to nine SEC tourney championships and seven Final Fours. Oh, and she has a new memoir out, too, in case you’re in need of inspo. Read More »

Erin Matson

We handed a Best-of nod to the Chadds Ford native and Unionville High grad last August after she was named the head coach of the women’s field hockey team at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina, at the tender age of 22, becoming the youngest head coach in NCAA D-1 history. Well, we’re lauding her again, because in her first season in that role, her Tar Heels won the national title. Go team! Read More »

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Dawn Staley

Oh look, another Best of Philly for North Philly native and former Temple coach Staley. This year she led her South Carolina Gamecocks to their third national championship (besting Caitlin Clark’s Iowa team, no less) and notched a perfect 38-0 season in the process. Plus, she’s been refreshingly outspoken about the rights of trans athletes at a time when other high-profile coaches prefer to sidestep the question. Read More »

Autumn Lockwood

Women continue to make major inroads into traditionally male-dominated sports. Philly scored a major splash in this regard when Lockwood, an assistant sports performance coach for the Eagles, became the first Black woman ever to coach in a Super Bowl. The Birds’ trip to the big game was aided by the fact that their star-studded roster was also one of the NFL’s healthiest. Can’t fly with broken wings, y’know. Read More »

Dawn Staley

We can’t get enough of North Philly native Dawn Staley, the former women’s basketball coach at Temple who this year won her second NCAA national title leading South Carolina’s team. (Her Twitter feed, highlighted by pup Champ, is worth reading.) Before her big April win, she revealed that after triumphing in her first national championship, in 2017, she purchased mini trophies for all her former teammates at UVA plus all her former players and fellow coaches at Temple and South Carolina and had them engraved with “Because of you.” Priceless. Read More »

Dawn Staley

The hoops being played in South Philly when the pandemic struck were maddeningly inconsistent. The Philly hoops being played farther south were consistently euphoric. The South Carolina Gamecocks’ women’s team — helmed by Philly legend Dawn Staley — went 32-1, won their last 26 games, and in a season without a tournament were the consensus national champs. Staley rightly won the prestigious Naismith Coach of the Year award, making her the first such winner to have also previously won the Naismith Player of the Year award (which she did in 1991 and ’92). One wonders what madness March might have wrought. Read More »