She did well at field hockey, and it helped her fit into school. “It saved me,” she says. After graduation, she enrolled at West Chester University, where she studied to become a teacher and learned to play lacrosse. She quickly picked up the sport. Soon she became one of the best lacrosse players in the nation and was chosen as a member of the U.S. women’s lacrosse team. She even traveled with the team to Australia and Japan to introduce the sport to young people. Her first teaching job was at a high school in the Philadelphia suburbs. There she was the only African American teacher on the staff. She says the experience gave her a broader view of the world, and she is grateful for that. After the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she felt it was time to return to Philadelphia. She’d heard him speak and admired him deeply. She felt she could make a greater contribution to young people by teaching and coaching in Philadelphia. Eventually, she became the lacrosse coach at Temple University. Her teams won three national championships, and her 1988 team went unde- feated. “It is not easy to win an NCAA champion- ship,” Mrs. Sloan Green says. “Everything has to be clicking, and you have to have some luck, too.” Tina Sloan Green Opening up opportunities through sports When Tina Sloan Green was a child, she didn’t participate in organized sports. They did not exist in her Philadelphia neighborhood, she says. But that did not stop her from running, playing hide-and- seek, and organizing kickball games. “I loved to be free and run,” she says. She first experienced organized sports as a freshman at The Philadelphia High School for Girls. Sports helped her to find a home there. It was a large school, and at first she felt a bit lost. Other students were more prepared in math and other academic subjects, while she excelled in sports. Noticing her athleticism, the physical education teachers asked her to try out for field hockey. The request startled her. She didn’t know any- thing about the sport. And a field hockey stick seemed like a “crazy thing,” Mrs. Sloan Green recalls. Still, “back then if a teacher told you to do something, there were no ifs, ands, or buts. You did it,” she says. 26