Lori Locust, recently promoted by the Tennessee Titans, is back in Pa. to grow girls’ flag football

Lori Locust is an avid listener of Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson’s podcast, Calm Down With Erin and Charissa, and one message has resonated with her.

Andrews and Thompson, on-air hosts and reporters for Fox Sports, discuss the “reentry phase” following football season. Locust, a Philadelphia native and Temple alumna, has experienced that transition lately. With about a month to go until training camp opens with the Tennessee Titans, she enters Year 7 of her NFL coaching career with a new title and additional responsibilities.

Locust makes her offseason home in Tampa, Fla., with her youngest son and dog. During the 13-hour drive from Nashville recently, she had time to reflect on her NFL journey, which began in 2019 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

» READ MORE: Groundbreaking NFL coach Lori Locust, a Philly native and Temple alumna, on her path to the Titans

“[What] we’ve tried to share at the [NFL Women’s Forum] over the years … is that when you first come into the league, there’s really nothing that can prepare you for that position adequately because we just don’t have that history,” Locust, who was promoted to defensive assistant in February, said in a telephone interview. “There’s a lot of learning on the fly, especially in the beginning. And I really was grateful to have corporate experience coming in, knowing kind of the inner workings of how an office can be from a political standpoint, because that could happen, knowing how to do all of the support things that are needed.

“I just feel like I have a better perspective going into the season of what it takes to get through a season, what it takes to be successful, what it takes to not be blindsided when the staff gets fired, or when I get fired again as a coach, because it’s inevitable. It’s gathered experiences that you just tuck away and [don’t] really focus on on a daily basis, but you just have to be ready for anything that comes at you.”

Those gathered experiences helped her “make my plate bigger because you can’t let anything overwhelm you to a point where you just can’t do this anymore.”

Locust, who was hired by the Titans in 2023 as a defensive quality control coach under previous head coach Mike Vrabel, remained on the staff when the team hired Brian Callahan last year.

Former Eagles defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson was brought in as the defensive coordinator by the new regime, and Locust sees parallels between him and Todd Bowles, the head coach when she was with Tampa Bay.

“I appreciate so much being able to be in a system where the defense is set up to be so aggressive and punishing at every level,” said Locust, who noted that the Titans and Bucs have preseason joint practices in Tampa. “I’m doing more with coverages. I’m doing more in the meetings. I’ve taken on more responsibility as it relates to game-day stuff.

“Just being able to be a little bit more ingrained with an incredible staff is probably the biggest shift for me overall.”

Before coaching in the NFL, Locust played tackle football for the Central Penn Vipers, a women’s semipro football team, and was the team’s MVP in 2007. She also played coed flag football for several years and has been privy to the growth of girls’ flag football, which became a sanctioned PIAA sport last fall. While she was in Tampa, Locust saw how involved the Buccaneers were in girls’ flag football; the club sponsored a preseason tournament in which thousands of athletes competed.

» READ MORE: Zaire Franklin hosts girls flag football event at his former stomping ground to help grow the game

So when Dana Sparling, the executive director of the Women’s Gridiron Foundation, reached out about a four-day girls’ flag football camp from June 26-29 at Millersville University, “if there’s any way possible [I could do it], I was going to do it,” said Locust, who has known Sparling since their days in the tackle leagues.

“I’m really looking forward to learning because I’ve not been exposed to the actual coaching of girls’ flag,” Locust said. “Ron [Johnson]’s bringing a lot of experience in from the camps that he’s run. He’s bringing in some really high-level college coaches to speak to the girls and run the drills, which I think will be really valuable.”

The camp is hosted by Johnson’s Rising Stars Football Academy. Johnson, who played with the Eagles for a season in 2003 before a spinal cord injury ended his career, has been a big advocate of girls’ flag football. The York, Pa., native founded his academy 17 years ago based on five pillars: academic excellence, leadership, life/social skills, mental health, and financial literacy.

“Seeing the energy behind it, seeing the talent, starting to see girls receive scholarships to play collegiately, and starting to see that this is becoming an Olympic sport, there was just a great energy behind everything, and we wanted to try to be a part of that,” said Johnson, who’s also the director of girls’ flag football for Big 33. “All of our efforts are guided around overall development and talking to our kids about their academics, but also their overall mental health and wellness because everything that we’re talking about right now as far as what we do off the field is more important than what you do on the football field.”

» READ MORE: Girls' flag football is on the rise in Pennsylvania — with some help from the Eagles

Johnson believes next week’s camp will be the “first girls’ flag football residential camp.” Days will start at 6:30 a.m., meals will be provided in the dining hall, and there will be two practices a day, followed by an evening classroom session that will feature guest speakers with a focus on “mental health and wellness, sleep nutrition, financial literacy, academics, and college scholarship requirements.”

He says he is excited to have Locust, who will be at the camp for two days, along with several other female coaches from the NFL, college, and youth flag football. About 65 girls have signed up for the inaugural camp, with 10 coming from as far away as Hawaii.

“We specifically wanted to create a camp that … should be the same opportunities in the same way that we’re doing it for the boys because girls and female student-athletes deserve that, too,” Johnson said. “We are ultimately showing these girls what it’s like to be a collegiate student athlete.

“They have to get up on time. They have to report to different places on the campus, not just practice, but also the study halls and where we go for the academics and development. We are giving them an inside as to, ‘This is what it’s going to be like if you do want to play at the next level.’”

Added Locust: “This hopefully will be a catalyst for the same type of treatment, the same type of training, the same type of coaching availability, that we’ve not seen happen. And hopefully, Ron, being at the forefront of it, will be able to continue it. I really give him kudos for being such a forward thinker to be able to provide this. … I’m just looking forward to coming back and spending a little bit of time up there seeing what I can lend or what I can add to the conversation.”