Photo by Maricela Gonzales<\/a><\/p>\nThe UTA women\u2019s wheelchair basketball team introduced new head coach John McPhail at a press conference Thursday.<\/p>\n
McPhail, known as Dingo in wheelchair basketball circles, has been a volunteer assistant with the Lady Movin\u2019 Mavs program since 2022. He is taking over for former head coach Morgan Wood, who announced in June that she was stepping down to be with family.<\/p>\n
The team was shocked by Wood\u2019s departure, according to senior player Brittany Yeomans, but became excited upon learning of McPhail\u2019s promotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all kind of expected it anyways,\u201d Yeomans said. \u201cHe really has gotten to know us, and he has a lot of passion for the sport and the program, so we just knew that we were in good hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
McPhail enters his first collegiate head coaching role with experience at nearly every level of wheelchair basketball. As a player, the Peakhurst, Australia, native was a Movin\u2019 Mav from 2009 to 2014, a professional in Germany from 2015 to 2017 and a player with the Australian national team, becoming a 2010 world champion and 2020 Paralympian.<\/p>\n
McPhail also gained experience running the UTA program before becoming the head coach, when he took on an interim role in early 2026 while Wood was on maternity leave.<\/p>\n
McPhail is becoming the team\u2019s head coach as the Lady Movin\u2019 Mavs enter their first full season as part of the Athletics department, which McPhail said marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to just be here in Athletics. I don\u2019t want to be part of the furniture,\u201d McPhail said. \u201cWhen we look back in 20 years, that we look back at 2026 as the day that we started for both programs, not just the women\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cezar Olivas, UTA\u2019s assistant director of Adapted Sports, said that despite a wealth of candidates, some coming from other colleges or alumni with experience in the Movin\u2019 Mav program, McPhail\u2019s hire was one of the easiest he\u2019s ever made.<\/p>\n
McPhail said he\u2019s felt a deep connection to the UTA campus and the people on it since he first arrived in Arlington as a college freshman, and he hopes to be with the university as long as he can.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the teams that you walk in with, the guys that you go to battle with, the ladies that you go to battle with,\u201d McPhail said. \u201cEvery corner of this campus has amazing people who have been here for years, and I just will never leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his time assisting the Lady Movin\u2019 Mavs, McPhail was also the head coach of the professional Dallas Wheelchair Mavericks, where he led the team to championships in 2024 and 2026.<\/p>\n
McPhail said that he would continue to coach at Dallas despite his collegiate promotion but that his focus and preference on any scheduling conflicts would go to UTA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Lady Movin\u2019 Mavs are 100% my intention. We\u2019ve already spoken about backup plans, between me and Cezar and Dallas,\u201d McPhail said. \u201cIf we\u2019ve got a tournament, or if we\u2019re at a mission-critical part of the season, most of the guys on my team are 30 years old and should be able to run a practice session or two without me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside team success, McPhail also said he hopes to increase the team\u2019s popularity as it begins playing full-time in the 7,000-seat College Park Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to try and get the most people here that we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d McPhail said. \u201cI\u2019m over having 20, 30, 40 people here, which are mostly friends and family, which is great. But it\u2019s time to get into the community with UTA and Arlington, and really show that we are where we meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lady Movin\u2019 Mavs have made it to the national championship in each of the last four seasons, but fell to The University of Alabama every time. McPhail\u2019s most immediate goal is to bring the team its third national championship, which would be the team\u2019s first since 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t get there four years in a row by luck. It\u2019s just keeping what works, throwing out what may not work as well as it did a couple of years ago, and forging into the future and making sure that we can stand toe to toe with Alabama,\u201d McPhail said. \u201cDynasties are meant to come to an end, and ours is ready to begin.\u201d<\/p>\n
@TyRoland06<\/p>\n
sports-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John McPhail, Lady Movin\u2019 Mavs head coach, speaks during a press conference Aug. 13 at College Park Center.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,154,18110],"class_list":["post-410428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-sports","tag-women_basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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