So they aren’t from Northwest Philly -- surely just a technicality -- but we would be remiss in not starting this annual review without noting that the Eagles won Super Bowl LIX in February. They didn’t just win. They blew out the Kansas City Chiefs, 40-22, earning a welcome victory for the team and its fans, and ending Kansas City’s bid for three consecutive championships.

The Eagles produced the second-largest first-half lead in Super Bowl history to hoist their second Lombardi Trophy. Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts broke his own record for the most postseason rushing yards for a quarterback. Head coach Nick Sirianni was bestowed with a Gatorade bath with 2:52 remaining. Fans poured into Center City and beyond, including Germantown Avenue, as the game ended.

Now, to our more local teams:

* Mount St. Joseph Academy was a triple winner, in swimming, tennis and volleyball.

The Mount churned to a seventh straight win in the 2025 Athletic Association of Catholic Academies Swimming and Diving Championships, despite the fact that the Magic were far behind on the scoreboard before the first swimmer could start to race. That’s because the diving competition preceded the swimming events, and the Mount had no divers on its team. Plus, its closest rival, Villa Maria, was well stocked with springboard talent and dominated the diving event, so much so that when the swimmers began to compete, the Mounties trailed the Hurricanes 91-0. The Magic, who won all of their regular-season meets in the league this year, made up that deficit and kept on going, outscoring Villa 599 to 514.5 in the final team points tally.

The Mount also clinched its 11th consecutive tennis championship in the Athletic Association of Catholic Academies, defeating Gwynedd Mercy Academy 4-1. Although the Magic still had one league match left to play, they could no longer be caught by any of their rivals. The AACA championship goes to the team that puts up the best record in the annual double round of league matches, and the Gwynedd win gave the Mounties a 9-0 mark. The second-place team, Villa Joseph Marie, already had lost twice to Mount St. Joe’s.

Finally, Mount St. Joe claimed the Athletic Association of Catholic Academies volleyball championship with an 8-2 record in league matches, splitting with Merion Mercy and Villa Joseph Marie and winning home/away sweeps of all of the other teams.

* The William Penn Charter School girls came in first at the 2025 Inter-Ac League Cross Country Championships, but not without a slight hiccup. Tradition calls for the previous year’s winners to bring the trophy to the competition the next year -- and PC, the defending champion, forgot to do that. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, since the Quakers would have carried the cup back home with them anyway. Taking the top four places and having their fifth scorer come in eighth, they overwhelmed the competition, winning the title.

* The Penn Charter boys soccer team topped Germantown Academy to win the Inter-Ac League soccer championship. It came down to the last game of the 2025 season, but in the end the Penn Charter lads were able to take care of business. At home on Maguire Field, the Quakers defeated their historic rival, 2-1.

* Springside Chestnut Hill Academy claimed the Inter-Ac football title with a close win over Malvern Preparatory School. It was a remarkable turnaround: For nearly six decades, Inter-Ac play has ended the same way, with SCH losing to Malvern. They hadn’t beaten the Friars since 1966, not even en route to an Inter-Ac title in 2009. This time was different, as SCH won in an overtime thriller, 21-20, in front of a packed crowd that included former players, friends, and members of the SCH community who had lived through decades of close calls.

“There are so many people from [SCH] who have been around here a long time that haven’t seen that,” Coach Rick Knox said. “They did it. Nobody can ever take that away from them.”

* The La Salle College High School football team defeated Pittsburgh Central Catholic, 34-20, in the PIAA Class 6A state championship at Cumberland Valley High School.

“Since freshman year, we have been planning on this,” said Explorers’ defensive lineman Jemel Williams. “For three years we have worked hard for this. It’s not just something we came up with -- we worked hard for this every single year, every summer. On those long summer days, we were working when nobody else was.”