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90 years before Dawn Staley, these women broke ground in North Philly

A t the intersection of 21st and Lehigh in North Philadelphia, it's just a few steps from Dobbins Tech to the site where Shibe Park stood.

Yet it's a journey that, in a curious way, took women 90 years to complete.

Dawn Staley was back at Dobbins last week, honored by her proud alma mater for coaching South Carolina to the 2016-17 NCAA women's basketball championship.

Staley's latest front-page accomplishment completed a circle in Philadelphia's women's sports history, one that began on April 20, 1927, at that ballpark that once stood catty-corner to Dobbins.

On that unusually warm spring day at Shibe Park, Helen Lackey and 14 others became the first female ushers at a Philadelphia ballpark.