The state of high school girls basketball in South Philadelphia has never been better.
A Public League juggernaut in Universal Audenried, the resurgence of Catholic League champ Neumann-Goretti and the growing ball of momentum in the Academy at Palumbo have made South Philly center stage for high school girls hoops in the city.
They are three very different programs under three excellent leaders playing under three very different sets of circumstances. All three are thriving. But it wasn’t always that way.
“This is my 12th year, so I always let people know that this isn’t something that just happened,” Audenried coach Kevin Slaughter said. “We built this from the ground up from the mud.”
Audenried, located in the Grays Ferry neighborhood, became a charter school in 2011, just a few years before Slaughter arrived to coach the girls basketball team. The Rockets had benefitted from playing in the lower divisions in their early years.
“It’s funny because it was a reality check,” Slaughter said. “We were in a bad league because the year before, they were 3-13. You get an easy schedule. We were 18-5 at the end of my first year, but we were playing a terrible division. Everybody was bad. We got to the playoffs and we played Imhotep and they beat us by 40. I said, ‘Whoa. This is what it looks like. This is what a winning team looks like.’ ”
Since then, Audenried has slowly transformed into a Public League powerhouse that just won its third straight PPL title on Feb. 23, beating none other than Imhotep in the championship game. The Rockets were led by Penn State University commit Shayla Smith, who became the Public League’s all-time leading scorer this season with more than 2,500 points. As great as Smith has been, Slaughter expects the Rockets to keep pounding the pavement and get back to the PPL finals year after year.
“Now that we’ve put the pieces in place and Shayla is about to go off to Penn State, we still have some great pieces coming in next year and some really good ninth-graders on the team now,” he said.
At Neumann-Goretti, there was a stronger foundation of basketball history already in place and the Saints’ journey was to reclaim that glory. Neumann-Goretti had won back-to-back Catholic League titles in 2014 and 2015 but had found themselves a decade without a PCL championship despite a few trips to the finals and five state championships including four straight from 2015-18 and another in 2022.
Coach Andrea Peterson, who was the coach in 2015 during the Saints’ last PCL championship, knew she had something special in her locker room this season.
“Name a better team that has four downhill guards,” Peterson said. “You’re not going to see it. This is very rare. We have people on our team that can create. No one on our team has jealousy here. They share the ball. And I say all the time, this group never flinches. There was never a negative moment in the huddle. It was all positive.”
The PCL is regarded as one of the best leagues in the country. Sometimes you need a little edge.
“We play a nonleague schedule for a moment like this,” Peterson said. “We went down to Florida and beat two teams that have five state championships. We did it. We conquered it.”
The Saints navigated a national schedule that included victories over Rolesville (North Carolina) Monsignor Scanlon (New York), Manasquan (New Jersey), American Heritage (Florida), Cardinal Mooney (Florida), Clovis West (California) and Catholic (Virginia). And the Saints went perfect in the PCL in the regular season — right on up the ladder to cut down the nets at the Palestra. Over the last decade, only Neumann-Goretti and Archbishop Wood (last year) have been able to run undefeated to a PCL championship. It’s not an easy task.
“We’ve had long days at practice, but I’ve never had a complaint about practice,” Peterson said. “They are very eager through text messages that they send to each other saying, ‘Let’s go get this. Let’s eat. This is our time.’ They start that. They know what’s at stake. They handle it like champs and that’s what I’m proud of.”
In a battle of two champs, Audenried finally earned its shot for South Philly bragging rights as the Rockets took on Neumann-Goretti on Feb. 28 at La Salle University.
“The Neumann-Goretti game is my dream game and it’s finally here,” Slaughter said a few days before taking on the Saints. “I’ve been trying to get that game for five years.”
Audenried made the most of it in a 77-66 win over the Catholic League champs. They’ve come a long way from losing 40-point games a dozen years ago. Over the years, Slaughter started running summer basketball camps to not only attract good athletes, but to better the ones he had.
“I wasn’t finding kids, so I realized I needed to start teaching kids and working kids out and help them get better,” Slaughter said. “I started building a good reputation as a good trainer.”
Now Audenried is a destination.
“It’s just the culture,” Slaughter said. “It wasn’t a winning program before. It wasn’t a winning environment. I told the kids from South Philly that lived in the area, ‘Look, I’m trying to build something here.’ Fast forward, 10 years later, we won our first championship. Now we’re expected to be there.”
Over in the Bella Vista section of South Philly, Academy at Palumbo is taking large steps to get to the same place. The Griffins don’t have the same advantages of attracting top talent the way Catholic and charter schools can. Although certainly a destination for academics, Palumbo’s roster is mostly constructed of kids selected academically. The school does its best to support those athletes with a winning culture.
Impressively, the girls basketball team went toe-to-toe with other programs in the Public League that held distinct advantages via recruiting. Palumbo joined Audenried, Freire Charter and Imhotep Charter in the Final Four of the Public League playoffs.
“I mean, just to get here, we were the last true School District of Philadelphia team,” Griffins coach Chris Donnelly said. “We are relying on who gets in our school by lottery. We don’t get to pick players. I get whoever comes to my school.”
Senior Aisha Muibi became the school’s all-time scorer this season, surpassing 1,000 points. She was basically an unknown during her freshman year, having scored only 177 points that season. She became the face of a program.
“We had two goals this season,” Donnelly said. “One was for Aisha to score 1,000 (career) points. The other goal was to make the final four. It’s going to be a while before anybody can compete against these three charter schools. So for us to get here, we achieved what we wanted.”
It made it that much tougher for Palumbo when Muibi was injured in the semifinal game.
“We lost Aisha two and a half minutes into the game,” Donnelly said. “Whether she’s scoring or not, she’s the heart and soul of our defense. You could see it in everybody. It was already going to be a struggle, but that was a big blow. It made the mountain that much higher.”
The Palumbo girls walked off the court at La Salle with heads high, many of them had already experienced a Public League championship as members of the flag football team last spring, which was also coached by Donnelly. Several of her players aren’t even basketball-first kids. That doesn’t matter to Donnelly.
“I love the kids that I have,” Donnelly said. “I wouldn’t trade them for anybody.”
