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UHS grad Autumn Lockwood will be first Black woman to coach in a Super Bowl

History will be made on Sunday, Feb. 12 as Autumn Lockwood will become the first Black woman to ever coach in the big game, according to the NFL. Lockwood, a 2012 University High School graduate, is an assistant sports performance coach for the Philadelphia Eagles this season, her first in the NFL.

The Eagles organization denied a request to interview Lockwood prior to the Super Bowl.

Lockwood will be the fourth woman overall to ever coach in the Super Bowl. The first was Katie Sowes with the San Francisco 49ers in 2020. The following year, Maral Javadifar and Lori Locust both coached for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl 55, becoming the first female coaches to ever win a Super Bowl.

Lockwood was a standout soccer player during her high school years, helping the Hawks to WVSSAC Class AAA state titles in 2009 and 2010. She was an all-state selection and was named co-defender of the year in 2012.

She matriculated to Arizona upon graduation and spent three seasons playing for the Wildcats women’s soccer team. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice in 2015.

Her first foray into football came in 2017 as an assistant football strength and conditioning coach at UNLV.

Lockwood graduated from East Tennessee State University with a master’s degree in sports management in 2020, where she had worked as the assistant director of basketball sports performance. The following year, Lockwood served as the coordinator of sports performance for women’s soccer, women’s basketball and softball at the University of Houston before joining the Eagles in August of 2022.

Coaching runs in the Lockwood family as Lockwood’s father, David, is a long-time college football assistant coach. After playing cornerback at WVU from 1985-88, the elder Lockwood has enjoyed a 30-plus year coaching career, eventually returning to his alma mater as a cornerbacks coach from 2008-11. Among his many coaching stops were Arizona (2012-15) and UNLV (2017), overlapping with his daughter at both institutions. David Lockwood most recently served as safeties coach at Appalachian State.

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