Lurline Jones, legendary girls’ basketball coach at University City High, has a street named in her honor

When Lurline Jones strode across the stage during her 1965 graduation ceremony at Baltimore’s Morgan College (now Morgan State), she already knew what to teach children back in Philadelphia.

“I wanted to teach and give my kids everything,” Jones said in a telephone interview. “Whether that was physical education, health, knowledge, nuggets, listen to problems, give solutions — anything I could give them.

“I just hope that something I said gave them inspiration or motivated them to do all the things they wanted to do.”

On Saturday, a sign that read Coach Lurline Jones U-City Way was unveiled on the 3600 block of West Warren Street, where University City High School once stood, while friends, family, former players, and city officials honored Jones’ history of coaching, advocacy, and mentorship.

“It was humbling,” Jones said. “It was awesome. It’s very difficult to describe in words. … It’s just really nice to know that folks thought that I did something that was good.”

City Council members Jamie R. Gauthier and Nina Ahmad introduced a resolution to honor Jones that was adopted in June.

“Coach Jones has been a tireless advocate for gender equality in sports, and her leadership helped hundreds of young women achieve athletic excellence and obtain college scholarships,” Gauthier said in a statement. “We stand on the shoulders of trailblazing women like Coach Jones.”

Jones, who coached for 52 years, finished her 33-year tenure at University City with the most Public League championships (12) in history.

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Jones, however, doesn’t define success with wins and losses.

“I enjoyed every minute of it because it wasn’t just about coaching the sport,” she said. “It was coaching them about life.”

Her mother, Mary Nixon, did something similar.

Nixon, who died in 1978, grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and later taught in a one-room classroom in Worton Point, Md.

When Nixon came to Philadelphia, however, Jones said Black teachers weren’t hired within the school district, so Nixon became a domestic worker, cleaning and cooking in the homes of the affluent.

Nixon, though, remained a teacher, albeit unofficially.

She taught Jones about Black history and organized trips for neighborhood children to visit historic sites, attend shows, or see the circus — anything that revealed that life existed beyond their surroundings.

“So a lot of the things I do for others,” Jones said, “really started with her. One of the things she often told me was to get an education so I didn’t have to work in white folks’ kitchens.”

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Nixon also taught her to fight injustice.

In October, 1979, Jones became the lead plaintiff in a complaint filed under Title IX, which became law in 1972, against the school district and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia because girls were excluded from the same city title games that boys competed in annually.

In 2019, Jones told WHYY she filed a suit “against the same school district that gave me a check every two weeks. I had to be out of my mind.”

The case stalled after the Archdiocese withdrew from the city title series, eliminating the possibility for boys and girls. Jones told WHYY that she became a “pariah,” and was insulted and threatened. The Public League and Catholic League began playing city championships in girls’ basketball in 2009.

That wasn’t her first fight for equality.

She was jailed for nearly a week along with other Morgan College students for protesting segregation during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Jones eventually retired from U-City in 2007. In 2013, the school was demolished. Years later she coached at Germantown before it closed, too.

Most recently, Jones coached five seasons at Martin Luther King, retiring in 2022.

She taught in the school district for 42 years and has coached some of the city’s best basketball players, including Yolanda Laney, a three-time Public League champion and an all-American at U-City, and Marcedes Walker, who starred at the University of Pittsburgh.

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True to form, though, Jones doesn’t judge her success by how many great players she produced.

“I had a coach tell me once, ‘Y’all won a lot of championships, but all your girls didn’t go to Division I programs,” Jones recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, but when my kids came out, they graduated, they turned their lives around.’ A lot of the kids I coached came from parents who didn’t complete high school or never even thought about college. Besides the 12 championships that University City won, I have three doctors, I have a bunch of nurses, a bunch of teachers, a bunch of entrepreneurs. That’s where the winning comes in. That’s what I’m most proud of.”