City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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Emilia Coleman knew early on that basketball was her sport.

It seemed like a given anyway, with a dad who coached and two older sisters who also played. When she started winning drills against the boys at her dad’s summer camps, that’s when Emilia knew she could go places with basketball.

The Upper Dublin junior has decided where the next place will be, announcing her commitment to La Salle University on Saturday.

“It was my connection with the players and the coaches,” Coleman said on Sunday. “I did an overnight in November before our basketball season really picked up and that really helped me.

“The style they play is how I like to play and Coach Mountain told me ‘you will make an impact on the program and you will help rebuild the team,’ so that really spoke to me.”

Coleman, in her first season with Upper Dublin after playing the last two years at Gwynedd Mercy Academy, picked up an offer from Explorers coach Mountain MacGillivray and his staff in late April. It was her first Division I offer and while Manhattan also extended an offer later in the spring and several other programs had been watching closely, La Salle kept checking off boxes.

Once she got the offer, Coleman said she’d been talking to current La Salle freshman Joan Quinn – who played for the Comets program like Coleman currently does – plenty about her experience on 20th and Olney so far. While she had another summer playing for the Comets on the GUAA circuit and could have waited to see what else was out there, Coleman kept coming back to La Salle as the right choice.

“I thought it was a really good fit and they expressed how much they wanted me,” Coleman said. “So why wait when you know someone really wants you.”

From the time she first picked up a ball, Coleman had some good role models to follow. Her dad Bill, now the head coach at Hatboro-Horsham, spent a dozen years as the head coach of Pennsbury’s boys’ basketball team and her twin sisters Bianca and Sofia are only two years older, so they’ve spent plenty of time in the gym together.

“As a kid, I’d always envisioned playing college basketball and watching my sisters grow in the game throughout the years really reinforced that I wanted to play in college,” Coleman said. “I remember watching my dad coach at Pennsbury, I would go to his practices and camps and after the games, I got to go in the locker room with him and his players.”

It was at Pennsbury summer camps where Emilia first figured out she had a pretty strong affinity for the game.

“During the camps, I won the three-on-three competition a few times and it was an all-boys camp so it was fun for me doing that,” Coleman said.

After she announced her commitment, one of the first people Coleman reached out to was Tom Lonergan. Lonergan, in his first year at Lansdale Catholic, had coached Bianca and Sofia all four years at GMA and Emilia the last two seasons and was elated to see Emilia find a good fit.

With her Upper Dublin team also scheduled to face his Lansdale Catholic team the next day, Lonergan jokingly responded to Coleman telling her to really go all-out celebrating on Saturday night.

“My response back was ‘congratulations and I’m all in favor of you taking tomorrow off,’ but I’m just so happy for her,” Lonergan said after LC downed UD on Sunday. “She was even getting a lot of attention last year as a sophomore. La Salle’s where I went to school and I’m just extremely happy she’ll have that opportunity.”

“He coached my sisters, so it felt like I had him for six years even though I only played two years with him,” Coleman said.

Coleman, who was the AACA’s MVP last year at Gwynedd Mercy Academy, has been a perfect fit at Upper Dublin. It certainly helps that she's back playing with a lifelong teammate and friend in Megan Ngo - the UD junior point guard committed to FDU - and Coleman has stepped right into a prominent role.

Upper Dublin assistant coach Steve Gelone was Coleman’s coach this past spring and summer with the Comets and likewise agreed it was a good fit for both parties. 

“With their style of play, she’s such a versatile player and has such a high IQ, she just fits really well,” Gelone said. “Her shooting ability is outstanding and she continues to get better and better as a rebounder and defender too, so that to me is something that will get her more time.”

At 5-foot-11 with a long wingspan, Coleman has established herself as a strong two-way player. Offensively, she’s a terrific perimeter shooter and Gelone added that she’s also a strong off-ball player in terms of moving without the ball and relocating within the offense.

Defensively, Coleman has taken on the top assignments for Upper Dublin this season. She reads passing lanes well and is able to play high minutes because she doesn’t get into foul trouble on that end of the floor.

“She’s a very mature kid, she’s quiet at times but she thinks the game well,” Gelone said. “She knows when, she knows how, she knows how to present herself and then she knows what to do. The way La Salle plays, I think it’s a great fit and I couldn’t be happier for her.”

Their GUAA team, which played at the 16U level this past summer, had a run of injuries that often left them shorthanded for tournaments. Coleman proved herself pretty durable, something Gelone said is an underrated part of the package she brings to a team.

“She’s tougher than a lot of people give her credit for,” Gelone said. “To her credit, the stuff she’s doing off the court to keep her body right is paying off.

“I’ve seen her get even more dialed in from last summer to now, she’s even more committed. She’s putting in really good quality work, she’s being smart about that and it’s really going to help her in college.”

The more she thought about it and the more she talked about it with her family, the more Coleman kept coming back to La Salle. 

“I liked the idea of playing in the city and being part of the Big Five, that definitely really spoke to me,” Coleman said.