Lori Locust made history in the NFL by becoming one of the first female assistant coaches in the league with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and she's now speaking out about it.
Locust spoke to the Tampa Bay Times about her new hiring, and she couldn't help but gush about the hiring being “surreal.”
“I packed up what little of my life I brought with me, and now I’m somewhere on I-75 with another hour to go. It’s surreal, it really is, and I mean in some ways, to me, it’s just knowing that I have to be ready to go to work.”
Locust is one of two women coaches that Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians hired this season. The other coach, according to the Washington Post, is Maral Javadifar, who is now an assistant strength and conditioning coach.
Locust played semi-professional football for four years, then launched her career as a coach, most recently working as a coaching intern for the Baltimore Ravens during last year’s training camp, a defensive line/linebackers coach and co-special teams coordinator of the Lehigh Valley Steelhawks of the National Arena League, and a defensive line coach for the Birmingham Iron of the Alliance of American Football.
Bruce Arians said that he knew Locust from his Temple University days, and he was very impressed with how she handled her business. Busting the barriers to coaching careers is nothing new to Arians, who has also been a leader when it comes to hiring black men as coaches. Despite the fact that 70 percent of the league’s players are black, the NFL continues to struggle with this task.
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