The month of March is known as Women’s History Month. There is a lot of rich history to be found in women’s sports on a local, national and international level. As Women’s History Month winds down, it is worth taking a look at some of the greatest figures in women’s sports who hail from Philadelphia.
Dawn Staley
The South Carolina University women’s basketball coach has had success at all levels of basketball as both a player and a coach. During her senior season at Dobbins Technical High School in Philadelphia, she won National High School Player of the Year.
Staley would go on to play college basketball at the University of Virginia where she helped guide the Cavaliers to three Final Fours and a National Championship game.
Professionally, Staley played in Europe for two years before returning to the United States, where she played eight seasons in the WNBA and earned All-Star accolades in six of them.
Staley became the women’s basketball head coach at Temple during the 2000-01 season, and would lead the Owls to three NCAA Tournament appearances. Since arriving in Columbia, South Carolina prior to the 2008-09 season, Staley has turned the Gamecocks into a national powerhouse, winning two National Championships in the process.
Staley has also represented the United States at the Olympic Games as both a player and a coach, winning gold on all four occasions.
Staley has guided South Carolina to an Elite 8 appearance and a 35-0 season. The Gamecocks play in the Final Four March 31.
Fredia Gibbs
Fredia Gibbs has a storied athletic history that is rivaled by few others from Philadelphia. The three time Taekwondo Champion was a star athlete in track and field and basketball at Chester High School, where she was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015 for basketball, and in 2016 for track and field.
Gibbs went undefeated in both kickboxing and taekwondo. She won all but one of her 25 bouts in the two sports.
Gibbs was a World Kickboxing Champion for multiple associations from 1994-2001.
Tina Sloan Green
Tina Sloan Green broke many barriers during her teaching, athletic and coaching career, but perhaps the biggest one was being the first Black American to play for the United States women’s national field hockey team.
Sloan Green began coaching the Temple women’s lacrosse team in 1975, becoming the first African American head coach of a women’s lacrosse team.
She led the Owls to an Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) National Championship in 1982 and two NCAA national titles in 1984 and 1988 and national runners up in 1983 and 1987. Sloan Green finished her coaching career at Temple with a 207-62-4 record and made eight total NCAA semifinals.
Sloan Green was also a field hockey and badminton coach while at Temple, and is a member of the U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
Anita DeFrantz
Anita DeFrantz is one of the most successful rowers in the history of Philadelphia, a city with a rich rowing tradition.
DeFrantz captained the United States National Women’s Rowing team at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, earning a bronze medal in the women’s eight.
DeFrantz has served on the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) twice, being the first female vice president of the IOC in 1997. She was elected again to a four-year term in 2017.
In 1990, DeFrantz was awarded the Jackie Robinson Sports Award, an NAACP Image Award that is given to athletes who promote social justice in addition to their elite athletic performance.
