Twenty-Three Out of Twenty-Nine
Tim Hickey coached the girls track program at William Penn — now closed — for 31 seasons, from 1973 through 2003. Across that span, he won 23 of 29 possible Public League girls outdoor track championships. The only years another school finished first were 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1997 (when William Penn had to forfeit its title after an ineligible runner was discovered), and 1999. An informal 1974 meet was also won by William Penn, bringing Hickey's effective total to 24 championships in 30 attempts.
No other coach in Philadelphia scholastic athletics — track, basketball, football, anything — has ever produced a run of title-game dominance anywhere close to Hickey's at William Penn. The Public League unofficially named him its girls-track historian. He was the guy everyone called when they needed to look up a meet result, a record, or the identity of a 1983 hurdler nobody else could remember.
The 2003 Finale — Christina Smith
Hickey's 23rd and final championship came in 2003, at Thomas Edison High, in a cold rain that began as annoying and finished as drenching. His star Juanita Broaddus — bound for Barton County (Kansas) Community College — had been marked absent from school that morning and, by Public League rule, was ineligible to compete. Broaddus showed up at Edison expecting to run anyway. Hickey had to tell her she couldn't.
It broke my heart to have to tell Juanita that, but rules are rules. But I feel happy for Christina. She was overshadowed all year long by Juanita. Not today. This was her meet.
Instead, the day belonged to senior Christina Smith, bound for Clemson, who had spent her entire senior season in Broaddus's shadow. With Broaddus out, Smith — who had already won the high jump at 5 feet, 2 inches in the previous day's field-events meet at Roxborough — won the 100-meter high hurdles (14.56), the 400 intermediate hurdles (1:01.09), and the 200 meters (25.31) at Edison. According to Hickey himself (the Public League's historian, remember), Smith became the first girl in league history to win four individual events at a single Public League championship meet.
