Mitty girls basketball coach Sue Phillips to be inducted into the 2024 Women's Basketball Hall of Fame
Mitty girls basketball coach Sue Phillips preaches being a good teammate. She's lived it too as a star softball and basketball player at Mitty, where she graduated in 1986, and as an All-Big Ten Conference softball standout at Northwestern University.
She teaches sharing the ball, sharing victories — she's won 789 (138 defeats) over 30 seasons at Mitty with six California state, 14 NorCal and 22 Central Coast Section titles — and remaining humble, gracious and classy in both victory and defeat.
Phillips has endured some bitter losses at the highest level and biggest games, most recently in March when Etiwanda fought back from a seven-point deficit with 2:30 to beat the Monarchs 69-67 on a buzzer-beating putback by Jada Sanders for the CIF State Open title.
Sue Phillips has led Mitty to a 153-14 record over the last six seasons.
Photo: Darren Yamashita
It was the third straight state Open Division defeat for the Monarchs over the years, and as painful as it was, Phillips gave credit where it was due — "Gott credit Etiwanda for their resolves, they continued to persevere," she said that night in the interview room at Golden 1 Center in Sacrament. "They continued to persevere."
She also lauded her team that surprisingly outrebounded Etiwanda and made 20 of 22 free throws. "It came down to a one-possession game. I couldn't be prouder of our team. They're a pleasure to coach. None of them should have their head down."
All had their heads up on Thursday, when it was announced that their head coach was inducted ithe Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, one from the 2024 class that will also honor former WNBA stars Maya Moore and Seimone Augustus.
Moore is just one of 10 players in history to have won a WNBA title, an NCAA crown, an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship. At UConn, Moore won two national titles and was a four-time All-American.
Augustus was an eight-time WNBA All-Star, a four-time WNBA champion, a Naismith winner at LSU and the first pick of the 2006 WNBA draft.
Others who will be inducted into the class on April 27 include Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Violet Palmer, Rita Gail Easterling and Roonie Scovel.
Phillips' accomplishment as a coach, teacher and leader go far beyond Mitty as she's been a vital cog as a coach and ambassador with USA Basketball for more than two decades. She recently made her sixth coaching assignment when leading the 2023 USA Women's Nike Hoop Summit team.
See all of her USA Basketball achievements here
But for all of it, she was elected Thursday into the highest ranking a player/coach can reach in her sport. She's won countless state and national coaching honors and in 2019 served as McDonald's All-American Game head coach.
Among she has coached at Mitty are WNBA players Haley Jones and Danielle Robinson and she currently leads preseason All-Americans Morgan Cheli, a UConn signee, and sophomore McKenna Woliczko, the SBLive 2022-23 National Freshman of the Year.
Predictably, Phillips shared the award — like she shared the ball as a point guard in her playing days — with all who crossed her path.
"I'm incredibly overwhelmed with gratitude," she said Thursday. "But to be clear — it's a shared honor. I'm standing on the shoulders of my current and former assistants and players."
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