Shady Side Academy graduate Gwyneth Philips, a native of Athens, Ohio, will play for Team USA in women’s hockey at the upcoming Olympic games. Philips graduated from the school in 2019.

She played collegiately at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. During her time in college, she finished with a .958 save percentage and was drafted by the Ottawa Charge in the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Philips helped Team USA win the IIHF Women’s World Championship in Czechia in 2025. Philips came on in the second period of the gold medal game against Canada after starting goalie Aerin Frankel was injured.

Philips stopped 17 of the 18 shots during a 4-3 overtime win. Philips was named the MVP of the PWHL playoffs last May, despite the fact the Charge lost to the Minnesota Frost in four games during the best-of-five PWHL finals.

All four games in the series went to overtime.

Staying busy

Jonna Burke will be thankful when the Shady Side Academy girls basketball team can get back to business. The Bulldogs have been forced to sit and wait for nearly two weeks due to the weather.

Shady Side Academy’s last game was a 54-23 win over Avonworth on Jan. 20 where Cassie Sauer finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds to help the Bulldogs pick up a win. In the interim, Burke has had to figure out a way to keep the team from getting bored.

“Obviously, we want to play,” Burke said. “It’s important for us to keep this thing moving forward. We’ve been trying to pinpoint what we want to work on and have been trying to keep the kids motivated.”

Keeping that motivation is important, as once the Bulldogs got back on the court, they would have a week where they would play four times. Shady Side Academy (14-2, 9-0) will have another matchup with Greensburg Central Catholic in a game that should determine the Section 2-3A champion.

The Bulldogs beat the Centurions, 66-59, in the first meeting between the teams. Burke said to help navigate through the monotony of practicing against each other, the Bulldogs have been changing up how they do things during practice.

“We’ve had shorter practices,” Burke said. “We’ve also been doing a lot of different scenarios in practice. We will say what the time and score is and work on different scenarios.”