Meet the coach behind one of Philly’s top college football recruits: his mom

Star Wright, a bucket hat guarding her from the afternoon sun, stood last week with arms on her hips as players moved through the drill. Cheltenham’s season opener — Friday night’s clash at home under the lights with rival Abington — was a week away, and Wright needed to see more from her defensive linemen.

Ya’ll playing patty cake. Go, go, go. Those are dinosaur arms. Quick, quick, quick. Give me two hills. Let’s do it over.

Wright — one of the area’s few female high school football coaches — kicked off her sandals and strapped pads to her arms. The tackle dummy the players were rushing against wasn’t good enough. So Wright, the team’s defensive line coach, stepped into her own drill.

“I’m no size of an offensive lineman, and no one knocked me over yet,” Wright hollered, wearing just socks on the dusty field. “Just don’t step on my feet.”

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Wright plays in a women’s professional football league and demands her high school players give the same effort she shows when she straps on a helmet. And not even her son — star defensive end Kion Wright — can catch a break.

“I’m ‘Coach.’ I’m definitely ‘Coach,’” Wright said. “There’s no ‘Mom moments.’ Unless he gets injured or something, but even then, I’m like ‘Trainer!’ He calls me ‘Coach.’ If he messes up, he runs hills. There’s no favoritism. At the end of the day, I want him to be the best player he can be, so I treat them all the same.”

Kion Wright, one of the area’s top college recruits, transferred this season to Cheltenham after spending three years at Northeast High. He grew up in West Philly, learned to play with the Overbrook Monarchs, and has more than 20 scholarship offers from schools like Penn State, Nebraska, Temple, Cincinnati, Mississippi, and Syracuse.

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The family, Star Wright said, moved this year to Cheltenham, allowing the 6-foot-3 Wright to play for the Panthers and for his mom, who joined the team’s staff last season. He last played for his mom when he was playing Pop Warner for the North Philly Aztecs, but his mom was the linebackers coach and he was a lineman.

So this — his mom coaching his position — is different.

“We’re about to find out,” Kion Wright said. “It’s going to be the first time. We’re about to see what it’s like.”

Kion Wright played flag football for the Monarchs when he was 5 years old but didn’t come back the next season. He liked football as he played in the schoolyard and battled his buddies in Madden but didn’t feel compelled to join a team. And then his buddy Kaylin Johnson persuaded him to come back when he was 10.

They were best friends, both dreaming of the days where they would be Division I athletes. Johnson was a football and basketball player at Boys Latin and an energetic kid who always was the center of attention.

But those dreams were shattered last July when 16-year-old Johnson was shot and killed along with 18-year-old friend Tommie Frazier while seated in a car on the 200 block of North 56th Street in West Philadelphia.

“I miss him,” Wright said. “He’s the reason I started playing football. The life of the room. Everyone loved K.J. Everyone loves K.J.”

Johnson was murdered just before the start of football season, and Wright said he considered just quitting. It was the worst adversity Wright said he ever faced. His buddy was alive when he received his first scholarship offer, and Wright knew how proud he was of him. Wright couldn’t quit now.

“Instead of doing that, I just used that anger and used that rage as motivation and kept playing,” he said. “It worked out in the end.”

Wright wears a “Forever K.J.” T-shirt under his pads every game to remember his friend. He’ll write Johnson’s name on his headband or scribble his initials onto his cleats. He credits his football dream to Johnson pushing him to play. And he’s carrying his friend with him as that dream reaches new heights.

“It’s extra motivation for me,” Wright said. “I think about him every day. I know he’s proud of me, and I’m going to keep going. It’ll never change. High school, college, and when I’m playing on Sundays.”

Star Wright swam, played basketball, and ran track at Simon Gratz, but the thought of playing football didn’t occur until years later. She was at one of her son’s Pop Warner games in 2009, running up and down the sidelines cheering when the team’s coach asked her if she ever played football.

Wright never heard of a women’s football league and tryouts for the Philadelphia Firebirds were the next day. She went, made the squad, and has played ever since.

“The first year was just like ‘Be an athlete.’ Being an athlete got me an All-American bid,” said Wright, who is a linebacker and owner of the Philadelphia Phantomz. “I didn’t even know what I was doing out there, so then I started taking it more seriously and learning more about it and trying to impact my craft. I love football because nobody knows everything. It’s a very creative, strategic sport that tests your knowledge and keeps you fresh and thinking. That’s why I like it.”

She runs a foundation that teaches the sport to women in places like Ghana and the Ivory Coast, won the women’s football world championship with U.S Football, and keeps the Phantomz going all while working multiple jobs as a single mom. Wright described herself as “the extra mom on the sideline” at her son’s game more than 10 years ago. Now the game she didn’t quite understand is her life.

“It’s always been where we’re both playing,” Star Wright said. “It’s like his season and then my season and then his season and my season. In his season, I go to his games. In my season, he goes to my games. It’s just been our lives like that for so long.”

Kion Wright is agile enough to beat an offensive lineman on the edge but has the speed to play linebacker, making him a recruiter’s dream. His mom, Wright said, taught him how to be so quick off the line of scrimmage and how to use his hands to push away offensive lineman.

“There’s nothing that she doesn’t know,” Wright said. “She’s one of the best D-line coaches I know. Probably the best D-line coach. Everything she does helps me.”

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Wright visited schools around the country and plans to enroll in college in January after earning his high school diploma six months early. His goal at the start of high school was to leave with at least one college scholarship offer.

Now his options seem to increase every day as Georgia Tech offered him just two weeks before the start of the season. A strong senior season only will give him more choices.

“I’m so proud of him because he beat the odds,” Star Wright said. “And I know kids who didn’t beat the odds. I’ve coached kids who had the talent, but outside distractions limited them from their full potential. He’s not one of them. I just make sure he stays well-rounded, let him be himself, and watch him make good decisions.”

Wright said he’s not stressed about choosing a college as he views the process as a blessing. But first, he had a drill to run.

As his mom stood in her socks and dared defenders to knock her over, the son stood off to the side with his helmet off. He studied each lineman’s move, telling them where to place their hands and how to move their legs as they moved through the drill. Wright, just like his mom, was coaching.

“It’s definitely different for other people, but for us, it’s normal,” Star Wright said. “We don’t even think twice about it. Other people might see a mom coaching a son in a men’s sport and think it’s a little taboo, but once they realize ‘Oh, wait, Mom plays football, too’ and ‘Mom has been in this sport just as long as son’ it becomes a little less unusual.

“It teaches these young boys that no matter what your gender is, knowledge is knowledge. You don’t have to be a man to know football. Who said that? Where? Show it to me. You know what I mean?”