City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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Steph Garafolo laughs at the memory. There is a sneaky, jovial side that stems from her youth. She never wanted the kiddy ball. She had to have the big ball, the one larger than her. The one her older brother, Frankie, was playing with. 

Her parents, Jennifer and Frank, were basketball coaches at Good Shepherd in Southwest Philadelphia before moving to Delaware County, to coach at St. Pius X in Broomall, when Steph was younger. She was a pest, she recalls, who had to be in every basketball picture. There’s one shot of her in diapers holding a plastic ball, another when she’s a little older wearing the omnipresent headband to mimic her favorite player, former 76ers’ star Allen Iverson.

Steph can recall going to the Palestra with her father, seated up in the corners by the radiators, because that offered the best perch to watch games.

She was born around basketball. She was raised in the sport. The game is a part of her, in her DNA.

It’s why this seems like a natural fit that Steph, 27, will be the new events director for City of Basketball Love she was told on Sunday, June 18 and announced Tuesday.

It makes sense.

“Basketball has been a part of my life since I was a little kid, and I wanted basketball to be my full-time job, so when this position opened, it was a no-brainer,” said Steph, in her raspy coach’s voice.

As CoBL’s events director, Garafolo will be in charge of planning, organizing and running CoBL’s in-season and offseason events, camps, clinics and more. CoBL ran its first camps and events in 2014 and has expanded them since, running more than a dozen events in 2023, with plans to grow that number in 2024 and beyond.

“We are beyond excited about adding Steph to the team,” CoBL founder and editor-in-chief Josh Verlin said. “Her lifelong passion for the game, combined with her professional experience, tremendous work ethic and outgoing personality, made her an easy choice to help us grow the events side of CoBL, even from an outstanding group of finalists.”

She’s been an assistant coach at Cardinal O’Hara on Chrissie Doogan’s staff since 2020, winning two PIAA state titles and one Catholic League championship during that time. 

“I’ve been constantly around basketball. I was surrounded by the sport,” Steph said. “I grew up going against Frankie, who’s 18 months older. I always wanted to beat him in everything I did. I was definitely the pesky, little sister.”

Steph, a 2014 O’Hara graduate and 2018 Penn State grad with a marketing degree, didn’t get a chance to truly beat Frankie until she entered high school. He stopped playing, she continued—and continued to get better on the family stand-up court in the back of the house, taking as much of the daylight hours as they could squeeze out until mom called them in for dinner. 

The Garafolo wars would go on in wiffleball, basketball, soccer and football. The Christmas present basketball had to be broken in, so their games even spilled into holidays. Frankie was Steph’s measuring stick, reluctant to give in to his younger sibling. Her evolution translated into becoming a starter by her senior year at O’Hara, under legendary coach Linus McGinty, and then new assistant, former O’Hara star Chrissie Doogan.

To this day, however, Steph has yet to beat her father in a game of HORSE.

“He still has too many trick shots, and never misses a bank shot,” she says.

The reason she chose O’Hara comes from watching as a 13-year-old former Lions’ stars Stephanie Holzer and Alicia Manning going against Ursuline Academy’s superstar Elena Delle Donne.

“I was lucky enough to play at O’Hara and my senior year was Chrissie’s first year as a coach,” said Steph, who won the Catholic League championship as a junior at O’Hara. “That’s when my relationship with Chrissie started. I always loved coming back during the summers and helping kids chase their dreams and hopefully one day get to the Palestra. It was weird initially being on the other side of it, because I was so young when I used to come back. It’s why I love this new role (as CoBL events director). I got a chance to live my dream and play at the Palestra. It’s a part of me. It’s not technically coaching, but it’s about helping kids live their dreams, which is awesome.

“I can’t wait. There’s going to be a lot going on, and I can’t wait to meet new people and get to know them. Philadelphia high school basketball is massive, and combining my passion for the game with what City of Basketball Love does is a great fit.”

Steph has an incredibly divergent background. She’s from a Penn State family. She realized early, being 5-foot-4 on a good day, her playing career had an expiration date. She thought about playing D-III ball or going to a big school. The big school won out. Just out of college, she began working with the Hershey Company, in sales, then for the New York Jets in ticket sales. She moved back home and worked in group and executive sales for the Wilmington Blue Rocks minor league baseball team when COVID-19 hit in 2020, which brought her back to coaching at O’Hara as well as private training.

“A big priority has been basketball, and it’s been a priority of mine as an adult,” she said. “This puts me constantly around basketball, coaching at O’Hara and this. I’ve always been competitive. If you go back to pictures of me as a baby, you would see me in diapers with the big ball, because I never wanted the baby ball. My parents are retired, but my mom has been reffing at the high school level for the last 12, 13 years. She reffed one of my scrimmages in high school, and I remember I didn’t like a few of her calls and let her know. We didn’t talk for a few days (laughs). Dad is retired, but he comes to all the O’Hara games and he’s always going to games.

“This is like a full circle moment for me. I grew up around the game, and went from watching it to playing it, to watching games at the Palestra to playing at the Palestra. This new job was perfect timing. I tell people all the time if my life was just basketball, I would be the happiest girl in the world.”

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Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.